I like Brother Rachid. Back when I was a practicing Christian, I used to listen to him all the time- feels like ages ago now. Sometimes, his political analysis is sharp, especially when he brings on different guests to break down recent events. What I respect is that he challenges the way you think.
But when it comes to Israel, Palestine, and Syria, he’s nothing more than a Netanyahu propagandist. And honestly, that’s beneath him.
Throughout the Syrian civil war, I remained more or less neutral, and I’ve explained why time and time again. There were no good guys- only varying degrees of hell. Assad’s regime was the embodiment of pure evil, beyond any doubt. Then came ISIS, a close second. After that, the SDF, with its extensive record of human rights violations and war crimes. The SNA came in fourth, and then everyone else- if we’re ranking purely based on war crimes and human rights abuses.
Since 2023, I’ve made it clear that when it comes to human rights violations, HTS has shown the most progress in Syria. In recent years, their violations have been minimal. Idlib, under their governance, became so stable that it avoided the relentless militarization that consumed the rest of Syria- and that alone speaks volumes.
This is exactly why people with influence need to be extremely careful not to fall into the trap of indirectly- or worse, directly- supporting Assad. Giving him any level of legitimacy, whether out of ignorance or political bias, is not just morally bankrupt but historically blind.
Assad is not some misunderstood authoritarian trying to hold his country together. He is a war criminal who turned Syria into a slaughterhouse! He didn’t just crush an uprising- he unleashed chemical weapons on civilians, bombed entire cities into dust, and institutionalized torture and mass executions. His forces ran medieval-style starvation sieges against civilian populations, deliberately targeting hospitals, aid workers, and schools. The scale of his brutality surpasses even that of ISIS, simply because he had more firepower and the backing of Russia and Iran.
Supporting Assad, even indirectly, means aligning with a dictator who has displaced over 13 million people and murdered more than half a million. It means standing with a regime that turned Syria into a playground for Russian and Iranian expansionism. It means whitewashing genocide.
So before people like Brother Rachid, or anyone with a platform, casually leans toward Assad as the “lesser evil,” they need to ask themselves: Do they really want to be on the same side as a mass murderer? Because history won’t be kind to those who excused, justified, or ignored Assad’s crimes.
That’s not politics. That’s reality.
In Syria, they removed a dictator who portrayed himself as secular and replaced him with a terrorist who pretends to be moderate.