September 10, 2025
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM
1539 Longworth House Office Building
Remarks by Richard Ghazal
Executive Director, In Defense of Christians
Good morning, and thank you all for joining us today. I’m Richard Ghazal, Executive Director of In Defense of Christians (IDC).
We stand here today united in the belief that the United States and the international community have both a moral obligation and a strategic interest in protecting Syria’s vulnerable civilians during this volatile period of political transition in Syria.
The reality on the ground in Syria is urgent. Since the rise to power of the Syrian Transitional Government in December of 2024, ethnic and religious minorities in Syria, including Christians, Alawites, Druze, and others, have been targeted by various Islamist groups, empowered by the Syrian Transitional Government, creating a culture of impunity.
On June 22, 2025, a suicide bomber entered Saint Elias Church in Damascus and unleashed unimaginable carnage, killing more than 30 people and injuring scores more. While the Syrian Civil War came to a formal end in December of 2024, the horrors for Christians, Alawites and Druze in Syria have only intensified.
The attack illustrates a sobering reality: Syrian Christians, who have endured centuries of political repression and sectarian violence, now face an existential crisis. With every suicide bombing, every desecrated church, every community exodus, Syria edges closer to losing a two-thousand year-old spiritual and cultural pillar.
Syria is home to the world’s oldest existing Christian communities, which trace their lineage back to the Apostles. It was in the ancient Syrian city of Antioch where followers of Christ were first called Christians, and it was on the road to Damascus where the Apostle Paul himself became a Christian.
Cities like Maaloula and Qamishli still preserve the Aramaic language spoken by Jesus. Ancient churches and monasteries fill the landscape, bearing silent witness to Syria’s role as a cradle of Christian civilization.
Prior to the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Christians made up approximately 10 percent of Syria’s population and played key roles in academia, medicine, commerce and in public life. They coexisted with their Muslim neighbors to preserve a fragile but buoyant multiethnic, multi-confessional social fabric.
Today, fewer than 300,000 Christians remain in Syria, down from roughly 2 million prior to the war. The recent bombing of Saint Elias Church is not just another act of terror — it’s a signal of the accelerating cultural and religious erasure.
For centuries, Christians, Alawites and Druze have served as a moderating force in Syria, offering Syrian society a model of compassion, coexistence and moral restraint. Their elimination would cause a narrowing of ideas, identities and beliefs, which would enable radical ideologies to reach an otherwise moderate Muslim demographic.
Christianity’s extinction in Syria would also mark the loss of a vital bridge between East and West. Syriac Christianity has provided unique access into the mind, culture and worldview native to Christ and the Apostles, and thus shaped the theology of the early church, and connected the Western tradition with its Semitic roots. Its loss would sever a crucial link in this shared civilizational heritage.
In response to the rapid increase in Sunni radicalism and religiously-motivated violence in Syria, the United States must press the Syrian Transitional Government to bring perpetrators to justice, formalize and enforce constitutional safeguards, and implement robust security measures to protect the country’s ethnic and religious minority components.
There is no doubt that total diplomatic disengagement and isolation by the United States would present the risk of creating a vacuum, further empowering extremists. But we must also remember that the Syrian Transitional Government is a coalition of Islamist factions with problematic, radical histories. Diplomatic relations that are totally unconditional will further incentivize radicalism and impunity.
Any diplomatic normalization must be strategically structured to establish guardrails for the Transitional Government’s behavior and mechanisms for accountability, providing a framework for leverage and influence. The U.S. must condition any formal diplomatic normalization on the Syrian Transitional Government’s guarantee to protect minority rights, religious freedom and enshrine constitutional safeguards.
To this end, the U.S. should:
- Establish measured diplomatic relations with the Syrian Transitional Government to promote security, stability and human rights. Diplomatic recognition should be leveraged to compel concrete commitments for reform and representative governance under the law.
- Require constitutional protections that enshrine equal citizenship, religious freedom, and dignity for all components of Syrian society, including Christians, Alawites, Druze, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs. Any new Syrian constitution must guarantee minority religious components’ right to worship freely, run their own institutions and participate fully in public life.
- Require the Reform and Professionalization of Syrian Security Forces to ensure broad inclusion and institutional integrity—replacing the current patchwork of militias and foreign jihadist fighters. Syrian security forces must enforce the rule of law, while also remaining accountable to the same rule of law.
- Require security guarantees to ensure that the Syrian Transitional Government establishes and enforces robust security protocols to safeguard houses of worship, religious minority leaders, communities and neighborhoods.
- Urge Syrian Transitional Government initiatives for cultural preservation. Such initiatives would include the restoration and preservation of historically and religiously significant sites (many of which have been desecrated, damaged and destroyed in the conflict). These efforts should include community leaders and local communities in both planning and implementation.
- Deliver humanitarian aid to assist in the rebuilding of infrastructure, the establishment of stable governance and the implementation of robust security measures. Vetted non-governmental organizations and religious institutions representing vulnerable communities should also receive direct aid for local humanitarian relief and to support the safe resettlement of displaced and devastated communities.
World leaders and policymakers must move beyond reactive condemnations and adopt proactive strategies to preserve what remains of Syria’s religiously diverse heritage — recognizing its enduring significance to global civilization. The consequences of indifference would not stop at Syria’s borders. The disappearance of pluralism in the Middle East will fuel continued destabilization in the region.
As the blood stains dry on the pews of Saint Elias Church, the United States and international community must reckon with the price of indifference — and resolve to pursue the moral obligation of civilized nations.
Thank you.