Syria has sacrificed the soul of the revolution by arresting Bilal Abdul Kareem

The Syrian revolution was fought to tear down a police state, not to replace it with a replica under a different banner. Today, Assad’s dungeons of Damascus may have been replaced by the security apparatus of Ahmed al-Sharaa (aka Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham – HTS), but the arrest of New York journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem proves that the transitional administration is replicating the very tyranny from which Syrians died in their thousands to escape. The social media firestorm that preceded Bilal’s arrest centered on his interview with an Egyptian sheikh regarding the citizenship rights of foreign fighters. The truth is that Sheikh Abu al-Yaqzan al-Masri, whose real name is Muhammad Naji, is a man of little importance […]