This Ramadan, Relief and Hope Bump against Uncertainty in the New Syria

Residents walk in the market on the first day of Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, in Damascus, Syria, Saturday March 1, 2025.(AP)
Residents walk in the market on the first day of Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, in Damascus, Syria, Saturday March 1, 2025.(AP)
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This Ramadan, Relief and Hope Bump against Uncertainty in the New Syria

Residents walk in the market on the first day of Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, in Damascus, Syria, Saturday March 1, 2025.(AP)
Residents walk in the market on the first day of Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, in Damascus, Syria, Saturday March 1, 2025.(AP)

Sahar Diab had visited Damascus’ famed Umayyad Mosque previously. But as the Syrian lawyer went there to pray during her country’s first Ramadan after the end of the Assad family’s iron-fisted rule, she felt something new, something priceless: A sense of ease.

“The rituals have become much more beautiful,” she said. “Before, we were restricted in what we could say. ... Now, there’s freedom.”

As Diab spoke recently, however, details were trickling in from outside Damascus about deadly clashes. The bloodshed took on sectarian overtones and devolved into the worst violence since former President Bashar Assad was overthrown in December by armed insurgents led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

This Ramadan — the Muslim holy month of daily fasting and heightened worship — such are the realities of a Syria undergoing complex transition. Relief, hope and joy at new openings — after 53 years of the Assad dynasty’s reign, prolonged civil war and crushing economic woes — intermingle with uncertainty, fear by some, and a particularly bloody and worrisome wave of violence.

Some are feeling empowered, others vulnerable.

“We’re not afraid of anything,” Diab said. She wants her country to be rebuilt and to get rid of Assad-era “corruption and bribery.”

At the Umayyad Mosque, the rituals were age-old: A woman fingering a prayer bead and kissing a copy of the Quran; the faithful standing shoulder-to-shoulder and prostrating in prayer; the Umayyad’s iconic and unusual group call to prayer, recited by several people.

Muslim worshippers pray during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, Friday March 7, 2025. (AP)

The sermon, by contrast, was fiery in delivery and new in message.

The speaker, often interrupted by loud chants of “God is great,” railed against Assad and hailed the uprising against him.

“Our revolution is not a sectarian revolution even though we’d been slaughtered by the sword of sectarianism,” he said.

This Ramadan, Syrians marked the 14th anniversary of the start of their country’s civil war. The conflict began as a peaceful revolt against the regime, before Assad crushed the protests and a civil war erupted.

It became increasingly fought along sectarian lines, drawing in foreign powers and fighters. Assad, who had ruled over a majority Sunni population, belongs to the minority Alawite sect and had drawn from Alawite ranks for military and security positions, fueling resentment. That, Alawites say now, shouldn’t mean collective blame for his actions.

Many Syrians speak of omnipresent fear under Assad, often citing the Arabic saying, “the walls have ears,” reflecting that speaking up even privately didn’t feel safe. They talk of hardships, injustices and brutality. Now, for example, many celebrate freedom from dreaded Assad-era checkpoints.

“They would harass us,” said Ahmed Saad Aldeen, who came to the Umayyad Mosque from the city of Homs. “You go out ... and you don’t know whether you’ll return home or not.”

He said more than a dozen cousins are missing; a search for them in prisons proved futile.

Mohammed Qudmani said even going to the mosque caused anxiety for some before, for fear of getting on security forces’ radar screen or being labeled a “terrorist.”

Now, Damascus streets are bedecked with the new three-starred flag, not long ago a symbol of Assad's opponents. It flutters from poles and is plastered to walls, sometimes with the words “God is great” handwritten on it.

One billboard declares this the “Ramadan of victory.” On a government building, the faces of former presidents Bashar and Hafez al-Assad are partly cut off from a painting; in their place, “Freedom” is scribbled in Arabic.

Haidar Haidar, who owns a sweets shop, said he was touched that new security force members gave him water and dates while he was out when a call to prayer signaled that those fasting can eat and drink.

“We never saw such things here,” he said, adding that he used to recite Quranic verses for protection before passing through Assad’s checkpoints.

He said his business was doing well this Ramadan and ingredients have become more available.

A boy buys sweets on the first day of Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, in Damascus, Syria, Saturday March 1, 2025.(AP)

Still, challenges — economic, geopolitical and otherwise — abound.

Many dream of a new Syria, but exactly how that would look remains uncertain.

“The situation is foggy,” said Damascus resident Wassim Bassimah. “Of course, there’s great joy that we’ve gotten rid of the cancer we had, but there’s also a lot of wariness.”

Syrians, he added, must be mindful to protect their country from sliding back into civil war and should maintain a dialogue that is inclusive of all.

“The external enemies are still there,” he said. “So are the enemies from within.”

The war’s scars are inescapable.

Just outside of Damascus, death and destruction are seared into some landscapes littered with pockmarked and ruined structures. Many Syrians grieve the missing and killed; many families have been divided by the exodus of millions as refugees.

Ramadan typically sees festive gatherings with loved ones to break the daily fast. Some Syrians huddle around food and juices at restaurants or throng to Ramadan tents to break their fast and smoke waterpipes as they listen to songs.

But this month’s violence in Syria’s coastal region has stoked fears among some.

The bloodshed began after reports of attacks by Assad loyalists on government security forces. Human rights and monitoring groups reported revenge killings in the counteroffensive, which they said saw the involvement of multiple groups. According to them, hundreds of civilians, or more, were killed; figures couldn't be independently confirmed. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the killed civilians were Alawites in addition to a number of armed Alawites and security forces. Syrian authorities have formed a committee tasked with investigating the violence.

Even before the bloodshed, while many celebrated the new government, others questioned what the ascent of the former opposition forces would mean for freedoms, including of minorities and of those in the majority who are secular-minded or adhere to less conservative interpretations of Islam. The new authorities have made assurances about pluralism.

Sheikh Adham al-Khatib, a representative of Twelver Shiites in Syria, said many from the Shiite minority felt scared after Assad’s ouster and some fled the country. Some later returned, encouraged by a relative calm and the new authorities’ reassurances, he said, but the recent violence and some “individual transgressions" have rekindled fears.



Seating Plan for a Pope’s Funeral – It’s Complicated, or Compliqué

Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
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Seating Plan for a Pope’s Funeral – It’s Complicated, or Compliqué

Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)

They may be the most powerful people on earth, but for the seating arrangement at Pope Francis' funeral on Saturday, all foreign leaders will play second fiddle to the Argentines and Italians and surrender to the whims of the French alphabet.

About 130 foreign delegations had so far expressed their desire to attend the funeral, the Vatican said on Friday, and more were expected to do so throughout the day. Those include around 50 heads of state who have been confirmed as attending, among them US President Donald Trump and 10 reigning monarchs.

Apart from the VIPs, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend the funeral in St. Peter's Square, which starts at 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) on Saturday. Italian police have laid on one of the most complex security operations in decades.

The official delegations will sit at a section to the right of the altar at the top of the steps leading toward St. Peter's Basilica.

Pride of place goes to Argentina, Francis' native country, whose president, Javier Milei, will sit in the front row. Milei, a maverick right-wing libertarian, had heaped insults on Francis while he was campaigning in 2023, calling him an "imbecile who defends social justice". But the president shifted his tone after he took office that year.

Next comes Italy, the country that surrounds the Vatican and which agreed in 1929 to recognize its sovereignty as the world's smallest state. It gets the second-best seats in the VIP section also because the pope is bishop of Rome and primate of the Catholic bishops of Italy.

That is when the alphabet in French – still considered the language of diplomacy – kicks in for the other delegations. The countries following Italy are ordered according to their names in French and not in their native languages.

So, it is Etats Unis and not United States, Allemagne instead of Deutschland (Germany), and Pays-Bas instead of Nederland (The Netherlands).

Royalty will take precedence. Reigning monarchs -- expected to include royalty such as the kings and queens of Spain and Belgium and Prince Albert of Monaco -- will be seated in front of other heads of state.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Friday that no distinction would be made between Catholic and non-Catholic royalty for the seating order. After the royals come the remaining heads of state. Trump, who attracted criticism from Francis because of his immigration policies, will sit ahead of many other leaders because Etats Unis begins with an "E".

That alphabetic logic means that Trump - currently engaged in trying to get a peace deal in the war in Ukraine - will not be sitting near Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Former US President Joe Biden, who has been the target of constant criticism by Trump, is attending the funeral, but will not be part of the official US delegation, a diplomatic source said. This means Biden, a lifelong Catholic, should be sitting further back, with other VIPs.