The phrase "Tongueless Dead Men" traces back to classic American literature, specifically the third chapter of Joseph Heller’s dark, satirical novel “Catch-22”, in the context of depicting the absurd atmosphere preceding the Bologna bombing mission during World War II. This powerful phrase resists a literal translation, as doing so would kill its essence (dead men without tongues / mute dead), for it transcends mere description and is packed with profound significance and symbolism.

To further understand its meaning, we turn to classic English literature, to Shakespeare’s play “Henry VI, Part 2”, and the execution scene of “Lord Say”, who is known for his eloquence and his support of education and the law, by the order of “Jack Cade”. Cade represented the archetype of an ignorant, demagogic rebellion that takes violence as its tool and chaos as its method, without applying the slightest standard of justice. Moments before the execution, and within “Say's” hearing, “Cade” orders “Say” to be beheaded ten times:

"Well, he shall be beheaded for it ten times."

Here, the act of beheading a dead man ten times transcends the act of killing itself; it becomes the act of burying the dead man's ideas, values, true story, and past by force, and forever. It is a brutal and barbaric method that is not satisfied with the opponent's death, but aims at forgery, distortion, and the destruction of a human's most potent weapon: the "tongue," meaning the "word," as in “Heller's” phrase. The "head," meaning the "mind," as in Shakespeare's phrase. Ultimately, it is the assassination of "truth"; meaning "what will be told" and "what will become part of history."

Both Heller and Shakespeare presented profound images of political repression, the savagery a human being can reach in the struggle for power, and the policy of eternal silencing employed to maintain power. These two images can reflect the current Syrian reality, subjugated by the authority of political Islam, which deliberately muzzles voices, falsifies facts, distorts what will be recounted throughout history, and destroys many of the cultural values and societal traditions of Syrian components across their diverse environments.

Following the March 2025 massacres, which began on the sixth of the month and have continued through various methods, the Alawites are living the semantic and symbolic meaning of Heller's phrase, replacing the word "Men" with "Alawites," to become: "Tongueless Dead Alawites," as they are subjected to a policy of eternal silencing and being "beheaded ten times."

After the massacres, anyone wishing to issue a death certificate for a slain family member was required to state the cause of death as "killed by the remnants of the former regime," despite the fact that videos documented by the killers themselves provided irrefutable proof of the perpetrators' identities: security personnel and factions affiliated with the government led by Ahmed Al-Sharaa (Al-Jolani), in addition to civilians who participated in the violations motivated by sectarianism. This is what the report of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded in (August 14, 2025), confirming that the acts of violence sweeping the coast and western-central Syria amount to war crimes. These acts targeted Alawite communities, culminating in the March massacres, where the killing of more than 1,700 Alawites was documented, including 90 women and dozens of children. Corpses were left in the streets for days, families were prevented from burying them according to religious rites, others were buried in undocumented mass graves, and dozens of villages were looted and burned, leading to the displacement of thousands of civilians.

That was only the beginning. After the main days of violence ended, the transitional government's factions carried out systematic campaigns to forcibly displace the Alawites. In August 2025, security forces, heavily armed and carrying eviction orders, stormed the Al-Sumariyah neighborhood in Damascus. They then left a large black mark, either an "X" or an "O", on every house to determine who could stay and who had to leave, threatening death to anyone who objected or tried to raise their voice in appeal. Subsequently, they tore up and destroyed the property deeds presented by the neighborhood's residents, even though they were legal and officially authenticated in Damascus Governorate, refusing to recognize these documents under the pretext that they were issued during the era of the former regime.

The Homs countryside and Alawite-populated neighborhoods in the city of Homs also witnessed retaliatory killings and sectarian-motivated attacks in late November and early December, 2025. These were accompanied by the burning of shops and vehicles, and indiscriminate gunfire that led to the deaths and injuries of civilians, as well as mass displacement. Taken in its entirety, this is merely another embodiment of “Heller's” phrase, with a different shift: "Tongueless Displaced Alawites." And of “Cade's” order to behead ten times over.

One of the worst manifestations of the policy of eternal silencing is the transitional government’s denial of the systematic abduction of Alawite women, insisting that there is "only one case." This is despite the issuance of international reports by Amnesty International, the UN Fact-Finding Mission, and an investigation published by the New York Times, among others, which documented the abduction of dozens of Alawite women on a sectarian basis. These reports detailed their exposure to sexual violence (including individual and gang rape, some resulting in pregnancy, and forced marriages), in addition to beatings, verbal abuse, sectarian slurs, and forcing some to perform religious rituals or wear the Niqab. A few of them returned to their families following financial extortion, but the fate of the majority remains unknown. Fabricated stories were spun for some, which they were forced to recount to social media audiences and the public, speaking with tongues that are not their own, such as: Mai Salloum, Mira Thabet, and Batoul Alloush. This denial represents a psychological and moral assassination, akin to “Cade's” order to kill repeatedly, and also embodies “Heller's” phrase, with a fitting shift:

"Tongueless Abducted Alawite Women."

The policy of eternal silencing was not limited to the Alawites; the same occurred with the Druze in the As-Suwayda massacres on July 12, 2025, and thereafter. Hundreds of video clips featuring members of the transitional authority and its supporters document the killing of Druze civilians (elders, children, women, doctors, and nurses). Furthermore, the International Commission of Inquiry's report documented the killing of approximately 1,200 Druze, alongside widespread executions, torture, sexual violence, and house burnings. Amnesty International also documented the extrajudicial execution of dozens of people, and the abduction of at least 105 Druze women and girls by groups affiliated with the transitional authority. This included cases of rape against some women, the murder of a number of them after being raped, as well as the burning of more than thirty villages and the forced displacement of thousands of families. Despite all the above, the authority and its base justified the violations and denied the responsibility of its personnel, in a tragic extension of the very logic of violence: silencing the voice, falsifying facts, and stripping human beings of their identity before stripping them of their lives. Once again, the scene from Shakespeare's play is brutally embodied, with a shift in the original phrase to:

"Well, Druze shall be beheaded for it ten times."

And Heller's harsh phrase manifests, through appropriate linguistic shifts:

"Tongueless Dead Druze" - "Tongueless Displaced Druze" - "Tongueless Abducted Druze Women."

Thus, the year 2025 compounded the bloody oppression of Syria's Alawites and Druze: days-long massacres, the burning of villages, the displacement of populations, field executions of men, the abduction and rape of women, the burning and smashing of religious shrines, and the degradation of beliefs. All of this was met with the incitement and applause of the authority’s supporters, while the authority continued its denial and employed official media to entrench its narrative, forging an alternative narrative founded on eternal silencing. This is the very policy Shakespeare alluded to in the scene from his play concerning events from the fifteenth century, which preceded a civil war resulting from the disintegration of state authority and the fall of educated elites in the face of a rebellion led by a mob. He expressed this through the death of “Lord Say” at the hands of “Jack Cade's” men, by his order. It is a scene that resembles what Syria is experiencing in the twenty-first century: an absence of justice, civil violence, and the cutting out of tongues, as “Heller” described in his novel. And beyond that: the tearing out of hearts, as in the case of the young man Suleiman Saad, whose chest was slashed open by killers who ripped out his heart and placed it upon his corpse.

It is a mere time lapse between historical and contemporary violence; just six centuries, six hundred years after Europe's Middle Ages. When, then, will our Middle Ages end in Umayyad Syria?

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¹Umayyad Syria: Following the fall of the Assad regime, supporters of Al-Jolani (Ahmed Al-Sharaa) took to the streets chanting a slogan loaded with sectarian and political dimensions: "Damascus is Umayyad; Damascus is ours until the Day of Resurrection." With this, they evoke the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 CE), during which Damascus was a Sunni political and religious center, thereby excluding the rest of Syria's components (Christians, Alawites, Druze, Kurds, Ismailis, secularists, and others, including non-Umayyad Sunnis).