CWN - A Syrian prelate warned that “moderate” rebel factions wish to turn the nation into an Islamist state.

“Christians will be glad if the so-called revolution opens the path to democracy and freedom,” Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo, the Syrian Catholic archbishop of Hassaké-Nisibi, told the Fides news agency. “But now even opposition groups linked to the Free Syrian Army -- which are presented as moderate compared to jihadist formations -- have come together under the Islamist flag, and they say that in the new Syria the sharia law will have to be applied, because this is what the majority wants. This is a perspective that Christians cannot accept.”