Should queer people in Syria take up arms?

A question like this may provoke some, confuse others, and enrage many more. Not to mention that some (at least based on the comments I read on social media) say that they must be killed to enter paradise. Or that “throwing them from great heights” should be reinstated.

The question of taking up arms—exaggerated as it may seem—stems from fear. The fear of leaving the house. The fear of being at work. The fear of simply existing. Especially in Syria, where many LGBTQ+ individuals live under the constant threat of being “discovered,” where some are killed without anyone speaking about it, or arrested, humiliated on camera, and threatened with knives.

Have you, dear reader, ever lived in constant fear? I imagine many of you have, so you don’t even need to imagine it—you have already experienced it. Maybe you felt it when Russian warplanes flew over your city. Maybe when barrel bombs fell just a few hundred meters away, destroying the neighborhood where your childhood love once lived.

Maybe you felt it when you were outside and heard that a mortar shell had landed in your street while your mother was home alone. You ran back in terror, only to find your street filled with dust, screams, and crying. Or maybe you felt it when you looked at your children shivering in a flimsy tent in the middle of a freezing refugee camp, the very camp that Assad’s regime had displaced you to.

Do you remember that fear, my friend? Do you remember the feeling that drove you—you, your brother, your childhood friend, your classmate—to take up arms, to fight and resist for your right to live?

Let me tell you, my friend, you were not alone in experiencing that fear. Your close friend, your queer friend—the one who never told you about their identity—carried that same fear. Fear before and after the bombings. A layered fear that is impossible to unravel. That same friend, the one you don’t know is queer, may have carried arms beside you, defending you, their family, and every terrified soul, despite carrying a different kind of fear you knew nothing about. That friend, the queer one, fought alongside you for the right for both of you to live in a country where you could exist safely.

I know that fear well, because I lived it in Syria. I hid my queerness out of fear—fear that surpassed my terror of being buried under the rubble of my collapsing home.

Syria After Liberation

Let me tell you a little about what’s happening in Syria after Assad’s fall. Many criminals still roam free; those who justified your killing, the destruction of your home, your displacement. The ones who slandered you with the vilest of insults and glorified your murderer, like Syria’s former Grand Mufti Ahmad Hassoun.

Still free are those who funded the systematic destruction of your city, like the war profiteers, high-ranking officers, and corrupt businessmen like Mohammad Hamsho. Those who robbed you for decades, stealing your money, your parents’ money, your children’s future—like the regime’s officials. Even the torturers who murdered your loved ones in detention centers, laughing at the scenes of Saydnaya prison while you searched for your friend who disappeared 14 years ago… all of them are free, untouched.

Meanwhile, the “General Security Apparatus” of the new government—the rebranded Syrian intelligence services—arrests LGBTQ+ individuals. Reports have surfaced about some being assassinated after going missing for several days. Among them are university students, medical, engineering, and economics students, who once dreamed of rebuilding a Syria for all.

Today, after the revolution in Syria has triumphed, by what right does anyone deny another the chance to live safely, especially when that person also fought for liberation? I ask this because many from the LGBTQ+ community have been excluded from celebrating this victory. And I don’t mean singing “Mandous’hom Mandous’hom,” but rather celebrating their identities and differences. Yet, some of those celebrating have raised a terrifying slogan: “Whoever liberates, decides!” So, should it be surprising if those whom you threaten because of their identity take up arms to defend themselves?

Some readers might think of their friends and say, “It’s impossible that my best friend, or any of my friends and family, could be one of them. They don’t fight. They are weak, effeminate, hiding in the shadows.” To that, I respond: How can you be so sure that no one among those who marched beside you on the road to victory was part of the LGBTQ+ community?

I know dozens of queer Syrians, myself included, and I can tell you with certainty that hundreds of us participated in the first protests of 2011. Many were killed, others suffered years of torture in detention centers, some fell in battle defending the Syrian people, fighting for dignity and liberation. Some perished in bombings and chemical massacres, while others fought to their last breath and lived to see victory.

Many were forced into exile because they could not live freely—neither in Assad’s Syria nor in the “liberated” Syria they helped free. Perhaps one of your friends was exiled simply because they were queer, outed by a cruel person who exposed them to the world.

Is it not their right to take up arms to defend themselves from death—nothing more—just as you did? If you want to hear some answers from someone who once asked himself these same questions and held a deep hatred for queer people, I encourage you to read “The Reflections of a Former Homophobe” by Kinan Kabbah. Perhaps you will see what he saw after years of revolution.

Do Queer Syrians Have the Right to Take Up Arms?

I am one of those you call “degenerates.” Let me tell you a little about myself. I am your queer friend, the one you don’t know is queer. Neither my appearance nor my mannerisms match the stereotypes you have been fed by the media and television.

I am simply a young man like you. I joined the Syrian revolution because it was a fight for justice, because—beyond my identity—I love my country and my people and dream of a bright future for Syria. I was a journalist covering the events, a political activist who participated in protests, sit-ins, and conferences. I spoke in your name and in the name of millions of Syrians, accusing Assad’s regime of its massacres. Perhaps you even cheered for me and took pride in our friendship. But what you didn’t know is that the person who was speaking on your behalf was someone many still call for killing.

Today, queer people in Syria live in fear, one they are all too familiar with. They take the same safety precautions that you and your friends once took while protesting against Assad’s regime. They delete messages, use coded language, and take every step necessary to avoid being exposed—just as you once did after every protest or sit-in, or when passing through one of Assad’s notorious flying checkpoints.

Precautions that no one in “new Syria” thinks about anymore. But for LGBTQ+ Syrians, these measures remain a matter of life or death.

Don’t worry, queer people will not take up arms. They will not form “armed gangs.” They will not seize territory and call them “liberated areas.” They will not march toward Damascus to storm the Presidential Palace. They will stay in the shadows, behind closed doors. They will not “spread vice,” as many claim.

Not because they are cowards. Not because they are incapable of fighting—many of them have fought before. But because they are kind. Because they are peaceful. And because your closest friend—the one who knows you would never accept him if you knew he was queer—loves you more than he should, even though you love him far less than he deserves.