In War-Torn Syria, Muslim Women Unite To Ease Tensions
Short gasps interrupt Wafaa Al-Khudari’s words, a reminder of the thyroid surgery she underwent many years ago. Remarkably, talking is her mission, she says, her purpose, a duty, a necessity, the core of why she exists in this world.
Al-Khudari, 53, is an Alawite preacher from the Muslim Ja’fari sect and a nurse in Homs, a major city in western Syria.
The country, which recently ousted a regime, regularly experiences violent conflicts among the political and religious sects, but Al-Khudari and other Syrian women are now meeting together to discuss religious issues and, hopefully, create lasting peace in their communities.
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When she began wearing the hijab, a practice uncommon among Alawite women, critics accused Al-Khudari of abandoning her sect. She denied the claims, even as she mourned her husband, a civil servant killed by an extremist Sunni militia in 2012.
Her husband had supported her decision to cover her hair shortly before his death, she says.
“I often asked him about the differences between our sect and the Sunnis and why there was so much secrecy around religious issues,” Al-Khudari said. “He answered some questions, but admitted he too was confused about many others.”
Wafaa recalled that when she was accused of changing her sect, she felt isolated, neglected and excluded even in family gatherings. “But soon, whenever any social, political, or religious topic came up, everyone would listen to me and admire what I said. My commitment to Hijab led me to educate in the Quran and its interpretations.”
Before the fall of Syria’s Assad regime in December last year, Al-Khudari had applied for a license to teach Quran memorization at a mosque in Al-Zahraa, her neighborhood in the city of Homs. To receive the license, she was required to recite five chapters of the Quran at the Directorate of Religious Endowments, but she had memorized only two at the time.
“They made an exception for me because the directorate wanted to introduce Quran memorization classes for girls in the neighborhood,” she said.
Al-Khudari said she visited Assad’s Presidential Palace three times to discuss the possibility of setting up a women’s religious group to discuss sect-related issues, but the very idea was off-limits.
“The group would have included Muslim and Christian women of all denominations, but the project never materialized due to conflicting visions and the difficulty of uniting under one roof,” she said.
For many Syrians enraged and depleted by the 13-year civil war, the fall of the Assad dynasty, which ruled the country for over 50 years, meant “liberation” from their “infidel” Alawite sect, seen as both oppressive and anti-religion. On the other hand, the Sunnis see themselves as more aligned with orthodox religious teachings and closer to the example of the Prophet Muhammad, the messenger of Islam.
“It was important to form the New Syrian Women Group,” said Al-Khudari, describing her recently-licensed pioneering initiative that brings Alawite women together to learn about their religious and social rights, while promoting tolerance and inter-sect understanding. The group’s core founding members are 17 women, including doctors, lawyers, university professors who study religion and discuss the sect’s jurisprudence, and present it accurately in a bid to dissociate it from the fallen regime.
“We pray, fast, worship God and honor His Messenger, we read and recite the Quran,” said Al-Khudari. “We were only accused of being infidels because we did not flaunt or exaggerate our religious rituals.”
One member, a lawyer named Shiraz Al-Mohammad, offers up her office for meetings.
“Hiding knowledge about different sects from women and limiting them to men is a historical phenomenon,” said Al-Mohammad.
She explains that when sectarian rifts began to form among the Muslims following the death of Prophet Muhammad, groups showing loyalty to Imam Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and the first child to embrace Islam, were persecuted.
“Believing that women could not bear the pressure, men hid these religious rivalries from their wives and children to protect them,” continued Al-Mohammad, “a practice perpetuated under the Ottomans and continues till today.” However, she says, the responsibility to learn and ask questions lies primarily on women, who must strive to know their faith and spread its teachings.
The group, says Al-Khudari, preferred not to name themselves after their sect, as one of their main goals is to integrate Alawites into the new mosaic of post-Assad civil society. With the official license in hand, the group operates fully, participating in local peace and reconciliation dialogues to calm sectarian tensions and resolve other societal issues.
Meanwhile, a coalition of Sunni female scholars and preachers also emerged publicly after five years of limited, hidden activity on social media. A psychiatrist who fled to Turkey five years ago has returned to bridge divides. She founded the Coalition of Sunni Female Scholars and Preachers, a network of women aged 25 to 55 who meet online and in person to revisit fatwas, challenge outdated interpretations, and advocate for women’s rights within Islamic law.
A trained psychiatrist, Al-Ahdab, also runs Mustashara (The Consultant) online therapy platform.
“When I left Syria, it was because I felt I had no personal or religious freedom and lost hope for reform,” said Al-Ahdab, noting that this was why she established her online practice and the scholars’ coalition.
The founding members include ten women who study and analyze fatwas (non-binding religious edicts) and share their knowledge with other religious activists.
Al-Ahdab compares the coalition to an on-demand research center.
“We receive religious and jurisprudential inquiries from women, our team of scholars analyze and study the relevant literature about the issue, and provide advisory opinions,” said Al-Ahdab, noting that the coalition’s primary goal is to help shape a balanced generation of spiritually upright women through deep understanding of religious principles and implementation.
“Before the fall of the regime, women’s religious activity was restricted and women who dared to publicly speak about religious issues were accused of extremism,” she explains.
Together, these women are dismantling decades of enforced silence. Their work signals a profound cultural shift: From sectarian mistrust to open dialogue, from state-controlled religion to grassroots pluralism.
Al-Ahdab said Syrian women face many social challenges. Despite being legally empowered, educated women have access to fewer job opportunities. According to the World Bank’s 2024 gender data, the labor force participation rate among females is 13.3% compared to 62.8% among males.
Because the civil war had severely disrupted data collection, making official statistics unreliable or unavailable for many years, and much of the local data is outdated.
So other reports conflict with the prevailing narrative with some showing women’s economic roles are now dramatically changed as many women became sole breadwinners due to male family members being killed, displaced, or conscripted. A recent U.N. report noted that women and girls continue to suffer from the impact of the ongoing hostilities and open front-lines in the north-east, and the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan and presence in parts of southern Syria. Women have continuously called for sanctions relief to allow them to better access employment opportunities.
“Women have the intellectual ability to understand and delve into religious jurisprudence,” Al-Ahdab said, “so in our meetings we focus on women’s social rights, emphasizing their huge influence on society.”
Al-Ahdab’s coalition openly discusses sectarian issues while rejecting sectarianism. Al-Ahdab says the ousted regime’s repression had nothing to do with sectarian differences.
“After the fall, we were on a mission to promote peace, coexistence, and humanity. Who better than women to do this? They carry it into their homes with full integrity,” said Al-Ahdab.
Hamza Qabalan, a religious figure and the Homs official supervising the New Syrian Women’s Group, said that when Al-Khudari discussed the idea with him.
“I encouraged it,” said Qabalan, “and helped them with licensing because they sought unity and rejected division. This is an opportunity to change the very notion of sectarian discrimination.”
“Even though Syrians generally coexist in workplaces, universities, and schools, hosting members of one sect in the home of another was rare and was done with extreme caution,” says Qabalan. He notes that negative preconceptions were always an obstacle to knowledge of the other.
“But once they study and learn, they realize that their foundational values are the same,” he added.
This aritcle is published in collaboration with Egab.
Areej Ali is a jouralist and content creator based in Pakistan.