Gunmen killed nine people during a funeral at a Greek Orthodox church in Karak, Jordan, on October 23, 2026. Christians are killed daily in Nigeria; 30 Christians were killed in Egypt in early November, and violence against Christians in Syria is rising. Photo courtesy of SyriacPress.

Gunmen in Syria are abducting Christians from their homes, shops and roads and holding them for ransom. In the latest case, the kidnappers of a Christian goldsmith have called their demand “jizya,” according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor. Jizya is the protection tax historically imposed on Christians and other non-Muslims living under Islamic rule.

The goldsmith, Maher Nours (Nawras) Sankari, was abducted at about 8 a.m. on October 19 outside his home in Suqaylabiyah (al-Suqaylabiyah), a predominantly Christian town in Hama province. Surveillance video shows a black Hyundai Avante striking Sankari as he sat on his motorcycle. Masked men then beat him and took him away while his wife tried to stop them.

On November 6, the kidnappers demanded 120 kilograms of gold, which SyriacPress estimated at about $15 million. SOHR put the demand at 125 kilograms. His family has appealed to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Greek Orthodox Patriarch John X Yazigi to intervene.

SOHR reported that a walkie-talkie fell at the scene of the abduction and that security personnel arrived and took it. Some people close to the case suspect a security agency may be involved, though SOHR noted that no independent evidence confirms the suspicion.

On August 2, 2026, gunmen wearing security-force uniforms seized Fadi Jamil Semaan (Samaan), a Christian gold merchant, near the historically Christian town of Saydnaya (Saidnaya), north of Damascus. His family later received voice messages in which Semaan begged them to pay a $5 million ransom.

Christian Solidarity International (CSI), a Swiss-based human rights group, documented more cases between July and September 2026. On July 8, Fadi al-Shaer, a Christian from Kafr Buhum in Hama province, was abducted at gunpoint with his daughter and later killed. On July 19, Samia al-Nasser, a 24-year-old Christian woman, went missing while traveling from Homs province to Damascus. On July 27, George Abu Nassar, a Christian, was kidnapped in Sweida in southern Syria.

CSI also cited reports of Christians in Saydnaya, Jaramana and Wadi al-Nasara (Valley of the Christians) being imprisoned by officials seeking payments from their families.

Protection demands have also led to killings. In July 2025, masked gunmen shot George Ishoh, a Syriac Christian goldsmith and father of two, outside his home in Homs after he refused to pay protection money to an armed gang.

SOHR obtained video recordings showing members of Syria’s military telling Christians to convert to Islam or pay jizya, and warning them against raising the cross in Damascus.

On June 22, 2025, a suicide bomber struck the Greek Orthodox Mar Elias Church in Damascus during the Divine Liturgy, killing 25 people. Saraya Ansar al-Sunna (Brigades of the Supporters of the Sunna), a Sunni extremist group, claimed the attack as a response to unspecified “provocations” by the Christians of Damascus.

Kidnapping Christians for ransom has a history in both Syria and Iraq. In 2008, gunmen in Mosul abducted Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho and demanded $3 million, later lowering the demand to $1 million. He was later found dead, and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad blamed al-Qaeda in Iraq.

In February 2015, ISIS abducted about 230 Assyrian Christians from villages along Syria’s Khabur River. SOHR’s director said businessmen and the Assyrian church paid $25 million to $30 million for their release. The Khabur region, once home to 30,000 Syriac Christians, now has only a few hundred, according to investigative journalist Nuri Kino.

The constitutional declaration al-Sharaa signed on March 13, 2025, requires that Syria’s president be Muslim and names Islamic jurisprudence as the main source of legislation. Every previous Syrian constitution except the short-lived 1920 charter under King Faisal described Islamic law as “a” source of legislation, if it mentioned religion at all, according to Al-Ahram Weekly.

Syria’s Christians have fled to other countries. Some have sought refuge in Ankawa, the Christian district of Erbil in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. When the Kurdistan Regional Government made Ankawa its own district in October 2021, Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said most of its residents had fled persecution in Nineveh, Baghdad and Syria.

Others have used Erbil as a stop while applying to the UN refugee agency for resettlement in Australia, according to North Press Agency, a Syrian news outlet. Few Syrian Christians were admitted to the United States as refugees in fiscal year 2016. Of the 12,587 Syrian refugees admitted that year, just 64 were Christians, about 0.5 percent, according to FactCheck.org, citing State Department refugee data.

The result has been a dramatic decline in Syria’s Christian population. Before the civil war began in 2011, Syria had between 1.5 million and 2 million Christians, roughly 7 to 10 percent of the population. At a 2025 hearing of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Kino testified that fewer than 300,000 remain, a decline of at least 80 percent.

Kino testified that Aleppo’s Christian population fell from about 100,000 to about 25,000. L’Œuvre d’Orient, a French Catholic charity, found that Deir Ezzor, once home to 7,000 Christians, now has only four, and that more than half of Syria’s remaining Christians are over 50.

In its 2026 Annual Report, USCIRF stated that religious freedom conditions in Syria “dramatically deteriorated” in 2025 and recommended that the State Department designate Syria a Country of Particular Concern, the category reserved for the worst violators.

When Congress repealed the Caesar Act sanctions on Syria in December 2025, it required the White House to report every 180 days for four years on whether Damascus is protecting the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.

Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is a former al-Qaeda commander who built the Nusra Front with support from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State of Iraq, the predecessor of ISIS, before breaking with both organizations. Since he took power, Syria has witnessed massacres of Alawites, deadly attacks on Druze communities and attacks on Christian churches. Christians continue to face kidnappings, extortion, and violence as their security deteriorates and more families consider leaving the country.

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