What if we were wrong to think we could separate people from the ideologies they flee, and are now paying the price?
Adam Starzynski
Aug 14, 2025 - 9:26 AM
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The Horror in Southern Syria
Gruesome videos are emerging from southern Syria - graphic, brutal, and largely ignored by the Western world. One of the most shocking shows Hosam Saray, an American citizen from Oklahoma, gunned down alongside his Druze relatives by Syrian regime forces while visiting family in the Suwayda region. He never made it home.
Another viral clip captures armed Islamists confronting a man, demanding to know: “Are you Druze or Muslim?” When he refuses to choose and replies, “I’m a Syrian,” they press again. He finally admits he’s Druze. They shoot him dead on the spot.
Western audiences may think the Syrian civil war is over. It’s not. It only vanished from our newsfeeds. Millions now rally for Gaza, but not a word is spoken about the Druze, the Alawites, the Kurds, or the Christian martyrs of Syria. Their blood, it seems, doesn’t count.
Syria’s Violence
Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, the country has been torn apart by sectarian, ethnic, and religious conflict. Between 2012 and 2018, clashes among Sunni rebel factions, the Alawite-led Assad regime, and ISIS left much of the country in ruins. Minority groups - including Druze, Christians, and Kurds - were often targeted or displaced. While some areas have returned to a fragile stability, localized violence, repression, and persecution remain a persistent reality across divided territories.
Violence in Syria reached a horrifying new peak in late 2024. Under terrorist leader Al-Julani, now calling himself “President Al-Shara”, the Syrian regime massacred 1,500 Alawite civilians. Entire villages were wiped out by orders from Damascus. By July 2025, sectarian clashes erupted again as Bedouin tribes fought the Druze in Suwayda, with regime forces siding in. Hundreds of Druze were slaughtered.
Now that tribal violence is crossing into Europe — not with tanks, but via mass migration. In fact, Europe faces two threats: a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a wave of mostly young men arriving from conflict zones steeped in religious extremism. And these men aren’t becoming Europeans. They’re bringing the Middle East with them.
Europe’s Delusion
In 2015, at the height of the Syrian conflict, Germany opened its borders to over a million Syrians. Some were genuine refugees fleeing violence. But many were young men from patriarchal societies shaped by violence and values at odds with Europe’s Christian foundations. Are we seriously to believe that no war criminals slipped through? That not a single jihadist carried the same violent ideologies still terrorizing minorities in Syria?
Culture shapes nations. That’s why Syria is Syria, and Germany is Germany. But in postmodern Europe, even stating this out loud has become taboo. We’ve been taught a dangerous fiction: that all cultures are equal and all values compatible. This is cultural relativism — the belief that no worldview is better or worse, just different. But what happens when a liberal society imports people who believe apostates deserve death and unveiled women are immoral?
Polling inside Syria is too dangerous to conduct. But surveys in neighboring countries are revealing: In Lebanon, Iraq, and Tunisia, between 30% and 50% believe leaving Islam should be punishable by death.
And when you import that worldview, the violence doesn’t stay behind. Between February and May this year alone:
- In Berlin, a 19-year-old Syrian asylum seeker stabbed a Spanish tourist at the Holocaust Memorial, declaring he “wanted to kill Jews.”
- In Austria, a 23-year-old Syrian pledging allegiance to ISIS killed a 14-year-old girl and injured five more in a stabbing spree.
- Another Syrian, also 23, randomly stabbed five students outside a bar in Bielefeld.
Three Islamist attacks in just a few months, in the German-speaking world alone.
Europe Was Warned
Experts from the Middle East have long cautioned Europe about the risks of ignoring these challenges. In 2017, the UAE’s Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed delivered a chilling prediction: the next wave of Islamist radicalization wouldn’t rise from the Middle East, it would rise from Europe. Why?
Because Europe, he warned, had grown too politically correct, convinced it understood Islam better than those raised in it. While countries like the UAE clamp down on extremist ideology, the West invites it in.
This is the cost of Europe’s postmodern moral relativism. After nearly 80 years of peace, Europeans have forgotten what real war looks like. They can’t imagine being executed for their faith. In Syria, that’s not hypothetical. It’s happening now.
War Is Knocking at Europe’s Door
Europe stands at a crossroads. Unless it abandons the fantasy of peaceful multiculturalism and confronts the clash between radical ideologies and liberal democracy, the next war won’t just be at its borders, it will be inside its cities.
In fact, the West may even lose the war before a single shot is fired. Muammar Gaddafi warned us back in 2006:
“We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe, without swords, without guns, without conquest. We will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”
If Europe fails to secure its borders and face the ideological threats within, Gaddafi’s grim prophecy could become reality.
