An Iraqi refugee critical of Islam was murdered in France during a live TikTok broadcast.
Ashur Sarnaya was a 45-year-old Iraqi Christian parishioner of the Church of Saint Ephrem (Lyon). He was murdered during one of his live streams in which he reflected on religion.
Image of Ashur Sarnaya made as a tribute by his friends.
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Ashur Sarnaya, a 45-year-old Iraqi man in a wheelchair, was murdered on the evening of Wednesday, 10 September 2025, at his home in Lyon, during a live broadcast on social media, according to reports Progress and other outlets. The news has spread across the internet, but the major French media have not picked it up.
During the live broadcast on TikTok, The audience saw a hooded figure dressed in black suddenly appear on the scene.. According to police sources, the individual attacked Ashur Sarnaya with a bladed weapon and inflicted a fatal stab wound to the carotid before fleeing on foot. One of the witnesses They managed to record a video showing the attacker leaving the scene., material which has already been delivered to the researchers.
Friends and acquaintances who were following the live broadcast alerted his sister when they saw that something was wrong. The woman said that her friends had called her to find out what was happening. When she arrived, he was already dead, lying on the ground, surrounded by people, police officers and firefighters..
Who was Ashur Sarnaya?
Ashur Sarnaya was born in Ankawa (Iraq) in 1979. It is a predominantly Christian neighbourhood located in Erbil, within the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. It belonged to the Assyrian Chaldean-Syriac community, traditionally Christian. He grew up in that faith and openly professed it. For security reasons and to escape the violence suffered by Christians in Iraq following the expansion of the Islamic State, he left the country and settled in France as a refugee.
She had been living in Lio since 2015 in humble conditions and depended on a wheelchair for getting around due to a disability. Despite the difficulties, he devoted much of his time to keeping in touch with his community through social media. On TikTok, where he had a loyal following, he spoke about his experience as an Assyrian Christian, denounced the situation of religious minorities in the Middle East and shared messages of faith. He was a regular at the Church of Saint Ephrem, where he had many friends.
Ashur Sarnaya had received several threats because of the religious content he streamed live on TikTok, where he spoke about his Christian faith and criticised certain Islamic groups. He received threats through online comments and anonymous phone calls. He was also subjected to online harassment, account blocks and suspensions by Muslim users who reported his content. In the face of these threats, he continued to go live, speaking openly about his faith, asserting his right to do so and denouncing the situation of Christian minorities, despite the tensions this generated.
Possible hate crime motivated by religious hatred
The threats reinforce the thesis of a crime motivated by religious hatred. For the investigators, the fact that the attack was live does not seem to be a coincidence. For the time being, The investigation remains open and not all the conclusions have been made public., but the main line of research points to the hostility generated by their criticisms and allegations against certain Islamic sectors as probable cause for the murder.
The police's main leads are two videos: one was filmed by two women walking their dog. The footage shows a man with his face covered boarding the Tube. The other is a rear-view recording made by another local resident. The police are not ruling anything out but are waiting for more evidence to decide whether it was an Islamic terrorist attack or a senseless murder.
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