Must Syria Drink to be Free? #BBC

If your run-of-the-mill politicians have run their nations and economies into the ground—breeding a misery the so-called free world would rather drown in drink—then by all means, tip that bottle until the cows come home. But do not presume that Syrians, finally freed from their own grim dungeons, would trade real life for your escapism.

“Yes, you’re free and all that, but will you allow people to drink alcohol?”

The Syrian people reeled under authoritarian, Baathist rule for half a century. In the Hama uprising of 1982, Hafez al-Assad killed forty thousand Syrians, while 17,000 were forcibly disappeared.^{1 2} Following in his footsteps, his deposed son Bashar al-Assad slaughtered half a million more, uprooting an additional three million from their homes.

The regime created one of modern history’s worst refugee crises, leaving the battered Syrian people to brave the world’s shores. Many toppled over in flimsy dinghies and drowned at sea. Others froze to death outside European detention centres. Tens of thousands were summarily executed, and scores more have been discovered in mass graves,³ dug by a junta that ultimately fled the battlefield. How ready they were to kill for what they were so unwilling to die for.

Over two hundred thousand Syrians remain missing, their fate known only to Allah. When the doors of the notorious Sednaya prison were finally forced open, every horrifying prison tale fell short of describing even a single chapter of Sednaya—where at least 30,000 Syrians were killed, scores of those under torture.⁴

And yet, barely an eyebrow was raised in the West. Bashar was relisted at summits as ‘Head of State,’ and even lectured about Israeli crimes in Gaza—crimes that pale in their scale, design, and creativity compared to his own. As he threw people under iron human compressors⁵ and brandished his ‘axis of resistance’ lie, he guarded the borders with the Zionists with remarkable efficiency, firing not a single flare into the occupied Golan Heights.

Then the Syrians organised, trained, and planned, conducting one of the most impressive lightning offensives in modern history. Within a matter of two weeks, they liberated Syria, from their stronghold in Idlib to Daraa and Damascus.

There were no reprisals against the minority Alawite community—whose protégé had persecuted them for fifty years—nor did they demolish shrines or persecute the clergymen who had sworn allegiance to the Assads and endorsed them for decades. Despite this, panic swept the earth. Diplomats and journalists from across the globe flooded into Damascus, eager to see how these bearded men—designated ‘terrorists’ by the international community—led by al-Sharaa (nom de guerre: Abu Mohammad al-Julani) would run the country they had just liberated.

One such interview, by the BBC, was particularly revolting when Jeremy Bowen asked al-Sharaa many questions, two of which stood out for their audacity:

1. Will you allow women to receive an education?
2. Will you allow people to drink alcohol?

Besides the BBC’s sinister undertones—thinly veiled attempts to downplay this moment of freedom by pressuring al-Sharaa to admit there would be at least some impositions—we have the very same BBC that refused to broadcast live coverage of the South African case at the ICJ, which formally indicted the Zionist state for war crimes, and potentially genocide.

Instead, they live-streamed Israel’s feeble counterarguments. Meanwhile, the BBC has stayed silent on the systematic destruction of Gaza’s hospitals as part of the ‘Israeli Generals’ Plan’ to empty Northern Gaza by labelling all civilians as military targets and blocking food and medical supplies. This plan, devised by retired Major General Giora Eiland, explicitly calls for creating a “severe humanitarian crisis” to the point that “bodies pile up in hospitals.”⁶

This is the same BBC that never flinches at the systematic slaughter of women -who it professes to pity- and children. This is the BBC whose own journalists felt compelled to write a 2,300-word letter to Al Jazeera exposing the network’s bias, double standards, and refusal to humanise Palestinian victims—even after more than 75 years of Israeli oppression and a genocide that has taken the lives of at least 13,000 Gazan students,^{7 8} with practically all of Gaza’s universities left in ruins under its watchful silence. Now, this very BBC audaciously poses as a champion of women’s rights by proclaiming its concern for the education of Syrian women. Give us a break already.

For thirteen long years, nobody worried about Syrian women’s right to life, let alone education. For thirteen years of barrel bombs, chemical attacks, forced widowhood, and the murder of children, none of this gutter press batted an eyelid for Syria. No feminist conference convened on their behalf—no campaign promises, no headlines detailing their systematic rape, nothing. Yet the world frets over whether they will be “allowed” to study in a land that knew female scholars 1,200 years before the west was busy executing Frenchwoman Olympe de Gouges, for daring to suggest women be recognised as citizens, never mind get an education.

For half a century, the world abandoned Syrians to their tormentors, assembling only to bomb ISIS—until it transpired that only 10% of the coalition’s bombs actually hit ISIS targets, while the rest hit the very groups that later became today’s liberators of Syria.⁹ And when the people finally rose up, fleets were sent to crush them, while the U.S. deployed troops to guard Syria’s oil fields. Now come the condescending questions about women’s education and the legality of alcohol. The West, it seems, has no shame.

If Intoxication Is Your Freedom, It Isn’t Ours

One of the most glaring cultural fixations in many Western societies is the insistence that drinking alcohol is somehow integral to freedom, even when the propensity to be intoxicated is linked to escapism— escaping loneliness, anxiety, and depression. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), the highest per capita alcohol consumption occurs primarily in Europe and North America, regions that simultaneously report some of the world’s highest rates of depression and anxiety.¹⁰

How is intoxication branded a symbol of ‘liberty,’ when it so often signals social and emotional discontent? Surely, if your ‘freedom’ depends on numbing the mind, then let Syria embrace its freedom with clarity and alertness—not under a haze of intoxication. More audacious yet is to link education—an exercise of the mind—with “the right” to numb or lose that very faculty. You clearly don’t care about education.

If your run-of-the-mill politicians have run their nations and economies into the ground—breeding a misery the so-called free world would rather drown in drink—then by all means, tip that bottle until the cows come home. But do not presume that Syrians, finally freed from their own grim dungeons, would trade real life for your escapism.

If you need alcohol to feel free, then the issue isn’t that Islam forbids alcohol; it’s that you feel imprisoned the moment you are sober. Rather than advertising your inebriated club—which only appeals to the miserable—why not become a Muslim if you need genuine help? What kind of club requires its members to embrace intoxication, lewdness, and mental paralysis? The fact that Muslims cannot be part of the Western blotto club because they are sober mirrors the stance of the people of Lot, who banished his family precisely because they kept themselves pure:

“Expel the household of Lot from your township, for they (forsooth) are folk who would keep clean!”¹¹

“Will you allow people to drink and women to be educated?” What an absurd and contradictory line of questioning in this botched crusade for liberation, especially when there is ample evidence linking alcohol to alarming rates of domestic violence—invariably against women—along with homicide, road traffic deaths, and other crimes.

By lumping women’s education together with the supposed ‘right’ to drink, have you ever made it clearer how little you actually care about women? Studies indicate that up to 55% of domestic violence incidents in certain Western countries involve alcohol,¹² while alcohol-impaired driving accounts for nearly 30% of all U.S. traffic fatalities,¹³ and alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. top 95,000 annually.¹⁴ Is this the freedom Syria needs?

Where, then, is this fabled moral high ground? The West’s posture of moral superiority, sustained for far too long, has been exposed as an atrocious lie and the world is literally sick of it. If the Gaza genocide, abetted by these moral warriors has stripped the façade bare, Syria is covering its eyes from the appalling sight. You were never there when Syria needed you most. Today, Syria is free by the standards of Truth—liberated from the shackles of falsehood and injustice through the help of God and by the sacrifice of religious fighters and ordinary people who put their lives, blood, and resources on the line.

I pray to Allah that Syria completes its liberation, continues on the path of truth, and pursues the pleasure of God alone—paying no more heed to the moral crusaders than they ever paid the Syrians in their bleakest hour.

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Footnotes

1. Moss, Dana M. (2022). “2: Exit from Authoritarianism”. The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism against Authoritarian Regimes. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. p. 58. ↩︎
2. “The 40th Anniversary of the 1982 Hama Massacre Coincides with Rifaat al Assad’s Return to Bashar al Assad | Syrian Network for Human Rights.” Syrian Network for Human Rights, 28 Feb. 2022, web.archive.org/web/20220228121456/snhr.org/blog/2022/02/28/57397/. Accessed 6 Jan. 2025. ↩︎
3. Landay, Jonathan. “At Least 100,000 Bodies in Syrian Mass Grave, US Advocacy Group Head Says.” Reuters, 17 Dec. 2024, http://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/least-100000-bodies-syrian-mass-grave-us-advocacy-group-head-says-2024-12-17/. ↩︎
4. https://www.syriahr.com/en/199739/?doing_wp_cron=1735938003.6271219253540039062500 ↩︎
5. Newey, Sarah. “Iron Body Presses and Torture Rope: Horrors of Syria’s “Slaughterhouse” Prison Emerge.” Yahoo News, 9 Dec. 2024, http://www.yahoo.com/news/iron-body-presses-bed-clamps-151652903.html. Accessed 6 Jan. 2025. ↩︎
6. Whitman, Ariel. “Giora Eiland Outlines Plan to Get Hostages Back Alive.” Globes.co.il, Globes, 10 Aug. 2023, en.globes.co.il/en/article-giora-eiland-outlines-plan-to-get-hostages-back-alive-1001459631. Accessed 6 Jan. 2025. ↩︎
7. Safdar, Anealla. “As Israel Pounds Gaza, BBC Journalists Accuse Broadcaster of Bias.” Al Jazeera, 23 Nov. 2023, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/23/as-israel-pounds-gaza-bbc-journalists-accuse-broadcaster-of-bias. ↩︎
8. Middle East Monitor. “12,943 Palestinian Students Killed since October 2023.” Middle East Monitor, 31 Dec. 2024, http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241231-12943-palestinian-students-killed-since-october-2023/. Accessed 6 Jan. 2025. ↩︎
9. Hammuda, Ahmed. “Islam21c.” Islam21c, 15 Feb. 2016, http://www.islam21c.com/politics/understanding-syria-2016/. Accessed 6 Jan. 2025. ↩︎
10. WHO (2018). Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health. ↩︎
11. Qur’an 27:56 ↩︎
12. World Health Organization (2014). Global Status Report on Violence Prevention ↩︎
13. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2021). Impaired Driving Statistics ↩︎
14. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) (2020). Alcohol Facts and Statistics ↩︎