Do you understand that Assad is a member of a Moslem minority sect in Syria? His rule has been secular, meaning that his Alawite sect, all Christians and Yezidis were treated equally. Under his rule, women  have Western-type freedoms from religious rule. There are members of the Sunni Majority in Syria (75% of the population) who want to overturn this secular rule and turn Syria into a Sunni Moslem theocracy like Iran and Saudi Arabia where Sharia law  is practiced. Majority rule is not optimum when the majority wishes to annihilate the "infidel" minorities. This is what Assad has had to deal with, sometimes brutally.