Karam Abadi, a tour guide who works for Come Taste and See Syria, didn’t notice anything unusual when he arrived at Saint Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus on the morning of Sunday, June 22.
Two of his clients spent the night at the church’s monastery, a comfortable and affordable option for travelers, he noted. That morning, Abadi met the women and walked with them to their next destination, a hotel several blocks away.
At around 6:30 p.m., Abadi was attending an evening service at a Nazarene church with his clients when he heard an explosion. He soon learned the details. A terrorist had opened fire during mass at Saint Elias Church, then detonated his explosive vest, killing 25 people and injuring at least 60 others.
Syrian authorities blamed the Islamic State for the attack, but a less prominent jihadist group, Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, claimed responsibility days later.
Abadi said he was shocked when he heard the group targeted a church. “We’ve experienced war, but not threats specifically against Christians,” Abadi said. Christianity Today agreed not to use his real name due to the heightened risks.
The bombing was the first deadly attack targeting Christians since Islamist-led forces seized power in December from Bashar al-Assad, whose family ruled Syria for more than five decades.
Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa promised to protect religious minority groups, but a string of deadly attacks has cast doubt on his ability to control the country’s loose network of terrorist organizations and rebel fighters. A March attack on Syria’s Alawite communities left hundreds of people dead. In April, dozens of people, including 10 civilians, died from clashes between armed rebels and the minority Druze population.
Christians were concerned they would be next. Abadi and his wife have seen signs of Islamist groups seeking influence over social norms and society in the past six months. Salafists, members of a fundamentalist revival movement within Sunni Islam, have been proselytizing in the streets of Damascus, including in the Christian quarter. Abadi has seen videos of the street preachers calling people on loudspeakers to convert to Islam, and his wife witnessed one of their recent visits.
Abadi said the men’s long beards and robes distinguish them from their more moderate Muslim neighbors, including many who asked the men to leave their neighborhood. According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Syrian government banned unauthorized proselytizing after Salafists targeted an area in front of Saint Elias Church in late March, perhaps explaining why jihadists bombed that particular church.
Meanwhile, the government is enforcing a stricter dress code than what existed when Assad was in power. In June, Damascus announced new guidelines requiring full-body swimwear for women at public beaches. Abadi has heard reports of authorities beating men wearing shorts in public. The new laws apply to both Muslims and religious minority groups, he added.
Several acts of violence have heightened the concerns. During the past seven months, armed individuals set a Christmas tree on fire, fired bullets at a church, and damaged a cross at an Orthodox church in Homs. “All the church leaders were like, ‘You should do something,’” Abadi said. “They started talking to authorities and security people and said, ‘Why don’t you act and try to do your part?’”
Sharaa was once a member of al-Qaeda and spent time in US detention facilities in Iraq for his involvement in local insurgencies. After his release, Sharaa created Jabhat al-Nusra as an al-Qaeda affiliate in 2011. The group later merged into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, and under Sharaa, toppled Assad’s regime late last year.
Since gaining power, Sharaa has projected a more moderate image, including appointing Hind Kabawat, a Christian woman, to his transitional cabinet. Following the bombing, Kabawat visited Saint Elias Church and met with priests and parishioners, calling the attack a “heinous crime.”
“This attack was not only against Christians, but against all Syrians,” Kabawat told the Greek newspaper Kathimerini. “Our Christian community is an essential part of Syria’s social and cultural fabric.”
Many Christians are concerned that the authorities aren’t taking the threats against them seriously. “Many people have said, ‘They don’t want us here. We should just leave,’” Abadi explained. “So there’s concerns … about a Christian exodus, which would be unfortunate.”
The Syrian Christian population has dwindled significantly in recent years, from more than a million people before the 2011 civil war to approximately 300,000 today.
Since the church bombing, some Christians have been afraid to meet for church. A group of Kurdish Christians who are currently living in Aleppo have paused their church services, according to Majeed Kurdi, a US-based Iraqi Kurdish pastor working with Freedom Seekers International to provide aid to that group.
“The pastor told me that they are really frustrated and very scared,” he said. “You know, most of the churches, they don’t dare to gather together.” He said women and children rarely attended even before the church attack due to security concerns. Now, the men only gather in small groups and without public notice.
From the northern town of Afrin, the group was originally composed of around 500 Kurdish Christians who are part of the nondenominational Good Shepherd Church. More Kurds have joined the group each time it evacuated a town or refugee camp. Currently they number around 1,200 people, including some non-Christians.
Kurdi said they have not been able to return to Afrin because the government has failed to protect them from terrorist groups ruling over their city. They are living in unfinished houses in Aleppo and facing a food shortage.
In Damascus, churches are still holding services “despite the threats and all the messages radicals are communicating,” Abadi said. The day after the bombing, Christians from different denominations gathered at Saint Elias Church and prayed together, chanting “Jesus is risen.”
This week, the Trump administration revoked sanctions on Syria and removed the foreign terrorist designation for HTS. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the decision “recognizes the positive actions taken by the new Syrian government under President Ahmed al-Sharaa.”
Abadi said Syrians long for better relations with the West and want sanctions to be lifted but wonder whether or not the West will put pressure on Damascus to protect minority groups. “We hope and pray for positive results and impact, but I think it’s also a cautious hope,” Abadi said.
