On January 3, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot traveled to Damascus to meet with longtime Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa. The visit came less than a month after the sudden fall of the Arab world's most violent regime – the Baathist dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad.
There are many topics on Syrian-European relations, regional instability, economic recovery, post-conflict justice and reconciliation, the refugee crisis and so on.
And yet, the Western media chose to focus on al-Sharaa's decision to greet Baerbock with a nod and a smile instead of extending his hand to him, in accordance with Muslim religious traditions. Western media experts called the incident “shameful” and “absurd”.
A Politico editor went so far as to say that something as small as a handshake should be the “new test” of how “moderate” a Muslim leader really is. In the name of inclusivity, the Politico column implies that devout Muslim leaders like al-Sharaa should be forced to shake hands with women — regardless of what their religion instructs them to do — or else they'll stop the “bells” in the West. The old saying “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” has become “when in Syria, do as the Germans and the French do”.
As a Syrian American whose father was exiled from Syria for 46 years and whose family members were tortured and killed by al-Assad's regime, I find the western “test” of Arab leadership fraught with contradictions and frustrations.
I wonder where the media outrage was when the British king, Prince Edward, explained that he likes to contact ordinary Brits to greet him? Should we give grace when the purpose is to love and anger when the purpose is to preserve religion?
It is not surprising that the Western media is trying to impose Western culture as the new “litmus” test for Arab Muslim leaders. It has been doing this for many years.
As the anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod argued in her book, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, there is an idea in the West “that the culture of freedom is a culture and should be the universal standard for measuring people. Those who fail are foreigners outside the gates.
The identification of Muslim religious traditions as “dangerous” is a sign of the hegemonic discourse in which Western traditions are disguised as universal.
The bad news for those who follow this view is that the European culture is not as big as they think. Muslims and Arabs also have an organization – an organization that chooses to follow their beliefs even if they despise the preferences of the West – although we have seen a desire to control the expectations of the British monarchy, fear of the COVID-19 transmission, etc.
When television shows focus on small details – such as al-Sharaa's dress code or his mannerisms – it seems like a mockery of the brutal oppression Assyrians have endured for 61 years under the Baathist dictatorship.
The Syrian people have their own “litmus test” to evaluate their new leadership, such as the government's ability to deliver democracy and freedom, restore and improve infrastructure, unite the Syrian people and protect constitutional rights, not whether members of the government shake hands with women. . Most urgently, Assyrians are worried about the ability of their new leadership to lead the country to peace, prosperity and stability.
Half of Syria's population is currently displaced and more than 90 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line. There is a severe shortage of food, water, and electricity. Unemployment is high and the economy is collapsing.
And then there is the pain of living in a 13-year civil war and a 61-year dictatorship.
There is not a single Syrian family that I know of that has not lost family members or friends to the al-Assad regime. My childhood friends lost their father, Majd Kamalmaz, a psychologist and US citizen, when he went to pay his respects to his mother-in-law in Syria in 2017. A brother in Aleppo lost two young brothers to torture in al-Assad's history. prison. My cousin spent a month in a secret prison for distributing bread in a poor area of Damascus during the civil war. Her relatives – like Heba al-Dabbagh, who spent nine years in a Syrian prison in the 1980s because the government could not find her brother – shared harrowing stories of torture.
After years of suffering under one of the world's most brutal regimes, Assyrians are looking for a new beginning, they continue to hold out hope. They may have faced unimaginable horrors – mass murder, torture, systematic rape, oppression, and displacement – but they are not helpless people. They have a clear vision of the future they want.
If the Western media wants to get Syria right, it needs to try and realize how its rhetoric and expectations can build on decades of bias. Instead of imposing a Western “litmus test” on Arab leaders, it should ask Syrians what they want in their leadership.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect Al Jazeera's influence.