Rick Warren's Words

"Syria's a place that has Muslims and Christians living together for 1,400 years. So it's a lot more peaceful, honestly, than a lot of other places because Christians were here first.

"In fact, you know Saul of Tarsus - Saul was a Syrian. St. Paul, on the road to Damascus, had his conversion experience and so Christians have been here the longest, and they get along with the Muslims and the Muslims get along with them. There's a lot less tension than in other places.

"It's a moderate country, and the official government rule and position is to not allow any extremism of any kind."

Glenn Penner has a good article on this on his blog Persecuted Church Weblog

Here is part of it:
First, Paul was not a Syrian and never was. Tarsus was never part of Syria but was a city in the neighboring Roman province of Cilicia (part of present day Turkey). This is not mere quibbling; this is part of his argument that Christians were in Syria first.