Religion Will Be Crucial As Post-Assad Syria Seeks Restoration
(ANALYSIS) Syria’s 54-year dictatorship under Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar, now exiled in Russia, was one of the world’s most despised regimes.
For good reason.
A Dec. 20 accounting from the Syrian Network for Human Rights, based in The Hague, said it has documented the following during a ruinous civil war that began in 2011:
“Some 202,000 civilians killed by Assad’s forces without judicial warrant of whom 15,102 died from torture, 96,321 cases of “disappearance,” 217 chemical weapons attacks that killed 1,514 civilians, and barrel and cluster bomb attacks that killed 11,922. An estimated 6.8 million persons in Syria have been forced from their homes, while another 7 million have left for refuge in other nations.”
The instant collapse of Assad’s rule last month will reshape the geopolitics of the Mideast for years to come. Within Syria itself, the challenge is how to replace the bloodthirsty past and current revolutionary turbulence with effective government capable of restoring and unifying a nation that currently copes with regional occupations by Turkey, Israel, Kurds backed by 2,000 American troops to control an Islamic State remnant, and a Druze enclave.
Religion will be central in that task.
Syria’s awkward faith landscape, with inherent potential for instability, is unique among the 57 member nations in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Three-quarters of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, adhering to the larger of the faith’s two main branches, alongside followers of the smaller Shi’a branch. But the Assads were Alawites, part of a sharply disputed ethno-religious breakaway from Shi’ism that claims roughly a tenth of Syria’s population.
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, meaning “Committee for the Liberation of the Levant”), led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, is an Islamist faction whose troops overthrew the Assad regime. It controls the capital of Damascus and other territory, and appears in position to exercise nationwide leadership. During the civil war it severed its alliances with al-Queda and the Islamic State, militant jihadist groups that persecuted those who did not match a harshly severe version of Islam.
The emerging “Salvation Government” professes commitment to tolerance. For instance, HTS did not oppress Christians in the enclave it formerly controlled. A spokesman says that future laws on women’s dress, LGBT treatment and alcohol sales are “open for discussion.”
The Alawite minority is understandably anxious about physical safety, as depicted in a recent New York Times dispatch from the Assads’ hometown of Al-Qardaha near the northwestern seacoast. In addition to the longstanding religious rivalry, the hated Assads made sure that fellow Alawites dominated their political and military leadership.
Thus far, however, harassment of Alawites has been limited, an encouraging note of optimism, though a divisive judicial reckoning for Assad loyalists looms.
The Alawites emerged out of historic Shi’a roots but are often considered to follow a separate religion. Mainstream Muslims have traditionally branded Alawites as ghulat (“extremists”). Due its esoteric and secretive nature, there’s some disagreement on how best to describe this faith, but according to “The Encyclopedia of Religion,” the mainstream Sunni and Shi’a consensus is that Alawites are kaffir (“unbelievers”) and idolators.
Here's why, as explained by scholars. Islam’s founding Prophet Muhammad was the guardian who raised his cousin and future son-in-law Ali ibn Abu Talib (circa 599-661). Upon his death, the Prophet left behind no universally agreed plan for naming future leaders. What became Shi’ism revered Ali as the first legitimate head because succession belonged to the Prophet’s holy family, whereas Sunnis reckoned Ali to be merely the fourth in the line of “rightly guided” caliphs chosen by consensus. ‘Ali’s assassination by a poisoned sword added to his mystique as a martyr.
“Alawite” means “follower of Ali,” which is true of all Shi’a segments. But with this sect, veneration of Ali is so intense that the orthodox believe it borders on or embraces shirk, the major heresy of ascribing to God a “partner” who is also worthy of worship, which is Islam’s fundamental objection to Christianity.
Standard reference works state that Alawites believe Ali was the last and most perfect of seven individuals in which God appeared in human form, somewhat like the belief in Jesus Christ’s incarnation at birth. (In fact, Alawites celebrate Christmas along with Muslim holy days).
The Alawite God is also said to have three personalities, somewhat resembling Christianity’s Trinity of the one God in three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Other unusual Alawite aspects include widespread belief in reincarnation, a concept from Hinduism and Buddhism.
The small and insular Druze community adheres to a similarly secretive and esoteric faith that operates its own military force in a small enclave in southwestern Syria. The faith emerged from Shi’a believers who held that Egypt’s 11th Century Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah was divine.
Syria also has a tiny population of Kurdish Yazidis, whose secretive faith blends elements of ancient Persian religion, Judaism, Christianity and Islam and is inaccurately branded as “devil worship.” Their 2014-2017 genocide under the Islamic State within Iraq sparked global outrage and Yazidi activist Nadia Murad won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Peace.
Yet another minority faction is the Christians, among whom the ancient Orthodox churches predominate. The faith’s very name originated in 1st Century Syria (see Book of Acts 11:26). During the civil war, Syria’s Christian population plummeted from a substantial 1.5 million to an estimated 300,000.
Mark Tooley, editor of Providence magazine, noted in a Dec. 11 piece that Syria under the Assads tolerated Christians more than some other Muslim countries — just so long as they did not threaten the dictatorship.
Though “it’s human nature to imagine the best of whatever person or force we see as a guard against more malevolent forces,” Bashar “was in fact a murderer, tyrant, and thief” and “in the end, the Assads were not good for Syria’s Christians.”
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.