Matt Bradley is a London-based foreign correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC.
DAMASCUS, Syria — It had been less than two days since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime when two Islamist fighters knocked on the door of Father Rafaat Abul Nasser’s Lady of Damascus Church, armed with assault rifles, pious beards and probing questions. “I’m telling you, I was not afraid,” the pastor told NBC News Wednesday. “Because St. Paul says to be strong in the Lord.
While about three-quarters of Syrians are HTS’s Sunni Muslim co-religionists, the rest of the population is a kaleidoscope of Shiite Muslims and the Alawite minority sect, of which Assad was a member, that theologians consider an offshoot of that branch of Islam. Christians and the Druze, a small Middle Eastern sect that derives its beliefs from Islam while placing heavy emphasis on philosophy and spiritual purity, make up much of the rest of the population.
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