Assad stressed during his participation in the expanded periodic meeting held by the Syrian Ministry of Endowments on Monday, “We are not looking for a certificate of good behavior from the West … Terrorism is not an Islamic product.”
He stressed that “there is an attack on the language of the Qur’an and that language cannot be separated from the Syrian society,” indicating that terrorist organizations distorted the texts of the Qur’an to justify their attack on state institutions.
Assad clarified that “there is no connection between secularism and the separation of religion from the state,” adding, “We are living in a crisis of identity and belonging since the Ottoman occupation.”