The Canonisation of the Al Qaeda Regime in Syria Is a Global Disgrace

World politics is rarely the realm of morality. As Christendom marks Holy Week, Syria’s new ruler and former Al Qaeda capo Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in Germany, where the performatively ‘Christian Democratic’ government of Chancellor Merz gave him a hero’s welcome. He later flew to London, where Britain’s embattled Prime Minister Starmer shamefully welcomed him to Downing Street. 

The rushed canonisation of Syria’s new ruler, of which his German visit is but the latest episode in what increasingly looks like a victory tour, has provided the history books with astonishing pictures of political cynicism. Just over a year after his Islamist army took Damascus by storm, the former generalissimo of Al Qaeda in Syria and one of the leading lieutenants to the defunct ISIS ‘caliph’ Al Baghdadi is being welcomed by the same leaders who spent a decade fighting his comrades. 

From Washington to Moscow and Paris to London, the Damascus regime has found it stunningly easy to earn a spot in the global community—even as, at home, churches are burnt, Christians and other minorities harassed, women brutalised, and sham elections held. Indeed, even as Merz disgraced himself in Berlin, Islamist thugs associated with the Jolani regime were engaging in anti-Christian pogroms back at home. The wave of violence even forced the Christian Patriarchs of Syria to jointly cancel outdoor Easter celebrations this year—the first time this has happened in modern Syria.

The way Europe has chosen to welcome and legitimise the vile Islamist regime in Syria is a stain that will not soon be forgotten. The constraints of Realpolitik notwithstanding, there is something decidedly grim beneath the normalisation of the Damascus regime: a tacit acknowledgement that violence, waged successfully enough, will eventually translate into legitimacy. 

This is why a bit of history is important here. Al-Sharaa began his eventual career in neighbouring Iraq, where he fought the U.S. and its allies as an Al Qaeda operative. He was arrested in Abu Ghraib as a terrorist. Later, Sharaa joined ISIS, serving under the terror organisation’s two first leaders: the founder, Abu Omar al Baghdadi, and his successor, the more (in)famous Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. When the Syrian Civil War began, taking the form of a nationwide, largely Islamist-inspired insurrection against then-President Bashar Al Assad, Sharaa went home to join Al Qaeda’s main Syrian affiliate, the Al Nusra Front. That is when he became known by his nom de guerre ‘Al Jolani’. The organisation’s atrocious history of crimes and massacres gave it a toxic reputation—that is why, in 2017, Sharaa refounded Nusra under its more recent name, Hay’at Tahrir al Sham, or HTS.

Despite attempts to camouflage its ties to Al Qaeda, Sharaa’s HTS did not change. Its record during the Syrian civil war is well-documented. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International carefully reported endless cases of arbitrary detention, summary executions, and sectarian war crimes under the HTS regime. Before Assad’s ouster, in late 2024, HTS—Jolani, that is—ruled Idlib as a religious police state; it taxed humanitarian convoys and hassled both minorities and dissidents. Under Sharaa’s rule, Idlib became one of the world’s leading terrorist hotspots, attracting miscreants from all over the world. Not surprisingly, he was a wanted man for years. The U.S. State Department used to offer a prize of $10 million for information on his whereabouts. The offer was only rescinded after Jolani took hold of Damascus. 

Today, a lot of those same institutions exist under different names. Their methods and goals have not changed; only their power and newfound interest in looking palatable to foreign eyes. Yet, human rights monitors have reported widespread slaughter and persistent repression in territories under the control of the new ‘government.’ For instance, a recent UN report details numerous instances of brutal persecution of minorities, particularly the Druze, Alawites, Kurds, and Christians. Arrests and enforced disappearances have been documented by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in Latakia and Tartus. In Suwayda, demonstrators belonging to the Druze religious minority and demanding regional self-management were forcibly dispersed, and several were reported dead. There have been hundreds dead and nearly 200,000 displaced.

It is therefore stunning that, even as al-Sharaa presides over such horrors in his country, he is welcomed into Europe’s halls of power. Of course, the process of whitewashing him—one of the world’s foulest brigands—started under the Biden administration. Under him, Washington lifted sanctions on Syria on “humanitarian” grounds. The European Union followed suit, sending delegations to “assess reconstruction prospects.” Gulf capitals have been competing with each other to reopen their embassies in Damascus.

This ugly affair will likely not be without consequences. If the international community is prepared to legitimise a regime whose leadership stands accused of such monstrous crimes, it is not hard to understand the message that will be sent to the next generation of terrorists. Will time and political convenience absolve it all? It seems so. Alas, it does seem that one may dominate by fear and commit some of the most egregious crimes humanity has seen in a generation as long as, once victorious, he trims his beard and puts on a suit. 

That nothing was done by Europe to prevent the obliteration of Syrian Christianity is an immense shame. That a veteran terrorist is being welcomed and eulogised by the Western political class while his followers brutalised Christians and other minorities is nothing short of appalling. The Christian communities of Aleppo, the Alawites of Latakia, and the Druze of Suwayda all live in terror. As Sharaa goes on international charm tours, his regime is hard at work reshaping Syria as a de facto extremist emirate right on the shores of the Mediterranean. He hasn’t exactly been discrete about it, either—a Taliban-inspired white Shahada flag now holds semi-official status as the country’s post-Assad ensign. 

The West has often displayed remarkable gullibility in its international dealings. In the 1970s, there was no lack of commentators assuring the world that the Khmer Rouge were being misunderstood and that Pol Pot and his ilk could even prove useful allies against Soviet-aligned Vietnam. Sartre convinced an entire generation that the brutal and corrupt Algerian FLN was a noble self-determination movement fighting not France, but “French colonialism.” Of course, the moment the French left, the FLN ruthlessly slaughtered between 30,000 and 150,000 pro-French Arabs and thousands of Pieds Noirs—local residents of European French ancestry. More recently, in 2021, the Western media had no qualms about singing the praises of the Taliban once the Akhunds had laughably promised to respect civil liberties and women’s rights. Everyone now knows how that ended.

The canonisation of the al-Sharaa regime isn’t just morally repugnant. It is a strategic mistake that will return to haunt us all.