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A Noon Post report titled “Syria’s nationality law before the new parliament: Has the time come for amendment?” prompted widespread reactions, most of them rejecting any amendment that would allow Syrian mothers to pass on their nationality to children born to foreign husbands.
Readers’ comments on posts promoting the report across Noon Post’s digital platforms revealed a clear divide in how Syrians view the issue. Some considered nationality a right for the children of Syrian mothers, just as it is for the children of Syrian fathers. Others argued that a Syrian woman’s marriage to a foreigner should not entitle her children to Syrian nationality. Some linked their objections to fears of “altering lineage” or demographic change in the country.
Much of the discussion focused on marriages between Syrian women and foreign fighters who took part in the war, whether alongside the opposition or the former regime. Many commenters argued that allowing Syrian mothers to pass on their nationality could enable children born of such marriages to obtain Syrian nationality, with what they saw as potential demographic consequences.
Others opposed any amendment that might be understood as allowing Palestinians living in Syria to be naturalised, even though amending the law for the children of Syrian mothers does not necessarily mean naturalising these groups.
Some commenters called for strict conditions on granting nationality. Others proposed giving the children of Syrian mothers permanent residency, allowing them to regularise their legal status and making daily life easier without granting them full nationality.
But to what extent are these concerns grounded in reality? Could allowing Syrian mothers to pass on their nationality lead to demographic change, as some Syrians fear? And what does Islamic jurisprudence say about a mother’s right to pass on her nationality to her children, and about marriage to foreigners in this context?
These questions arise at a time when the constitutional declaration issued on 13 March 2025 stipulates equality for citizens before the law and prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. Article 21 also guarantees women’s social, economic and political rights and their protection from all forms of oppression, injustice and violence.
Following the debate prompted by its earlier report, Noon Post returns to the issue to examine commenters’ concerns, distinguish between granting nationality to the children of Syrian mothers and naturalising foreign spouses or fighters, and explore the position of Islamic jurisprudence on mothers passing on their nationality to their children.
Calls to give Syrian mothers this right are not new, but the debate has resurfaced during the transitional period. Since the current nationality law was issued in 1969, the right to pass on nationality has remained largely restricted to fathers. Rights groups and women’s organisations have repeatedly called for this provision to be reconsidered over the decades, without securing a legislative amendment.
Does granting nationality alter lineage?
Abida al-Muayyad al-Azm, a researcher in Islamic jurisprudence and family issues, told Noon Post that confusion between lineage and nationality underlies some of the fears surrounding an amendment to the law. She stressed that, under Islamic law, a child’s acquisition of their mother’s nationality does not affect the establishment of their lineage through their father.
Al-Azm explains that lineage and nationality are fundamentally different from a religious perspective. Lineage is the bond of blood and kinship that cannot be severed: a person’s origins and roots, which cannot be changed or escaped. This is why children belong to their families and are registered under their fathers’ names.
Nationality, by contrast, is a social arrangement that emerged in the modern world, al-Azm says. It documents a person’s legal and political affiliation with a particular state. Unlike lineage, which remains fixed, nationality can be changed or renounced, and a person can hold more than one nationality.
The debate over amending the nationality law does not, at its core, stem from a problem in Islamic jurisprudence, but from social and cultural considerations that invoke religion to justify prohibition.
On this basis, the researcher stresses that nationality has no bearing on lineage. A child’s acquisition of their mother’s nationality does not affect their lineage through their father, because nationality is simply a legal document that records personal data as it stands, without changing blood ties or family affiliation.
She adds that blood ties and inherited genes constitute an “identity” that cannot be replaced, whereas anyone can, at least in theory, hold the nationality of any state in the world and normalise relations with it.
Al-Azm cites historical examples to show that being identified through one’s mother does not conflict with Islamic law. She notes that Sheikh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah was famously identified through his grandmother, while the companion Abdullah ibn Umm Maktum was known by his mother’s name despite his established lineage through his father. In her view, these examples indicate that identification through a woman is religiously permissible and does not undermine the establishment of lineage.
She believes that a mother passing on her nationality to her child simply transfers the child’s legal affiliation from one state to another, rather than transferring the child from one father to another. This makes it easier for children to study, work, marry and travel, she says, and helps preserve family cohesion by enabling them to remain with their mother.
She adds that classical Islamic jurisprudence did not address nationality or multiple legal affiliations, as these are modern concepts associated with the rise of the nation-state. Some contemporary jurists, however, have examined the issue and permitted people to hold more than one nationality or acquire nationality when needed, including for a livelihood, residence or stability. She asks why, if such needs justify acquiring nationality in other cases, they should not apply to the children of Syrian mothers. She bases her argument on the jurisprudential principle: “The default state of things is permissibility”, maintaining that those who prohibit it must provide evidence.
Al-Azm argues that the debate over amending the nationality law stems, in essence, from social and cultural considerations that invoke religion to justify prohibition, rather than a problem in Islamic jurisprudence. She believes that fear of change, particularly concerning women’s rights, amplifies concerns and spreads perceptions that, in her view, have no basis in Islamic law.
She also points to what she sees as a contradiction: accepting some men’s acquisition of foreign nationalities through marriage while objecting to Syrian mothers passing on their nationality to their children, even though the aim, in her view, is to protect the family and make children’s lives easier.
The legacy of war overshadows the debate
Talal Mustafa, a researcher in sociology and the social effects of conflict, says the controversy over the proposed amendment to the nationality law did not centre on its substance. Instead, it shifted towards broader fears about demographic change and national identity — fears he believes were shaped more by years of war than by the proposed legal text.
Speaking to Noon Post, Mustafa says most comments did not address the amendment in terms of the rights of children born to Syrian mothers or the gap in the law that deprives them of nationality. Instead, they focused on the possibility that children born to Syrian women married to foreign fighters, or to men of particular nationalities, such as Chechens, Afghans or Iraqis, might obtain Syrian nationality. He says this reflects a shift away from legal questions towards anxieties about population balances and the future of Syrian identity.
Mustafa sees this fear as an extension of Syrians’ experience of more than a decade of war, including displacement, forced migration, the presence of foreign fighters and demographic shifts in different parts of the country, as well as the political polarisation that marked the conflict.
He adds that this experience has left a deep imprint on the collective consciousness. Any discussion of nationality or identity is now viewed through the legacy of war rather than its legal substance.
Raising the amendment during the transitional period also heightened these fears, he says, amid continuing security, political and economic instability and low trust in institutions. Had it been proposed in more stable circumstances, he says, the debate might have focused on its legal and rights implications rather than anxieties about foreign fighters or demographic change.
Mustafa says the comments also revealed economic concerns, with some readers linking an increase in the number of people obtaining nationality to the possibility of greater financial burdens. He says this kind of discourse recurs in many societies experiencing economic or political crises, where particular groups are blamed for existing crises, as happened in countries that received large numbers of refugees.
While he understands the experiences behind these fears, Mustafa stresses that, in his view, they reflect the effects of war, political division and the transitional period more than the substance of the amendment. He argues that the debate should focus on addressing discrimination between the children of Syrian mothers and those of Syrian fathers in their right to nationality, rather than conflating that right with issues such as the naturalisation of foreign fighters or demographic change.
Between a jurisprudential view that sees no religious impediment and a sociological reading that traces these fears to the war years, amending the nationality law remains an unresolved issue in Syria, as debate continues over Syrian mothers’ right to pass on their nationality to their children.