Are Alawis Muslims?

You’ve got to love the Internet. At last modern technology allows one to bare all body and soul (provided of course you hide your face and real name) and suffer virtually no consequences. This is, by the way, sort of what I set about to do today. Please bear with me and my intentions would soon reveal themselves as I strip naked, metaphorically of course, piece by piece.


      Once upon a time, I was surfing the net. I felt bored and drifted to Youtube to run into what was at the time a new clip of Dominique Hourani with the cute name of “Khashooka” or something similar. Dominique is certainly no Fairuz, not by a long shot. She nevertheless has what it takes to attract a fairly wide audience in the Arab World thanks to her pleasing voice, playful antics, and youthful beauty. Like many of her peers, she can fluently sing in different accents: Lebanese, Egyptian, Khalijee, and perhaps more. Her clips are fun to watch, particularly after a long and tiresome day.

      Watching the girly dances of Dominique and listening to her singing, the last thing to come to mind, at least as far as I’m concerned, would be Religion and Politics. Yet, this is exactly what I got into that day as an added bonus to watching the clip. Let me elaborate.

      I don’t know about you, but I often look at the number of viewers of a particular clip and, very briefly, browse through the comments. With a young woman Dominique’s type, most of the comments are positively enthusiastic with some, inevitably, not that thrilled. By the way, I do not as of yet, have a Youtube account, and therefore do not post comments on that site. My comment on that particular clip, or rather my comment on some of its comments, I hereby confine to this blog. Sorry for the lengthy introduction. Lets proceed into the theme of this essay without further ado.

      For that particular clip, Khashooka, Dominique chose an accent that I was not able to identify. Irony of ironies! One Commentator, evidently smarter than I am, opined that she was singing with a Syrian accent (mind you Syria has a multitude of accents). A Second one, not to be outdone, objected that she was using not the Syrian, but the Nusayri accent! A Third one furiously retorted something very close to “So Alawis are not Syrians then? We will continue to rule over you for the rest of your lives, you -expletive-”.

      Now I found, and still do, this brief exchange fascinating. The Second Commentator, echoing not doubt quite few Sunnis (perhaps ultra- Sunnis Salafis and/or Wahhabis), NOT ONLY DID NOT CONSIDER ALAWIS MUSLIMS, HE EVEN RULED THEM OUT AS SYRIANS. Well, at least it sounded this way, to the Third Commentator as well as myself! Viewed through this prism, the outrage of the Third Commentator was fully justified. I might add that it should not take an Alawi to resent and abhor such a racist and bigoted attitude. It is sad but unfortunately that is the way it is.

      Let’s put this little story in its proper context. Back in 1973, a Syrian Constitution was proposed that failed to specify that the president should belong to the Muslim faith. There was enough restlessness in the Country that President Assad felt obliged to take two landmark steps: the first was to amend the constitution as to calm the Sunni opposition, and the second to get the late Imam Moussa Sadr of Lebanon to issue a Fatwa acknowledging the Alawis as Shia Muslims. Syria has been living with the consequences of those events ever since with no sign that the issue would be buried any time soon.

      So let’s resume from the very beginning. The Alawis are certainly Syrians in the full meaning of the word and, with all due respect to Commentator Number Two, to claim or even imply otherwise would be preposterous to put it very politely. But what about their Islamic identity?

      This may sound like a more relevant question and, excuse me gentle reader if I disappoint you, I will not provide an answer and here are my reasons as to why:

1. It is up to the Alawis, and only to the Alawis to define their own identity. If they choose to wave the flag of Islam, any sect of Islam, that would be enough for me to consider them Muslims. Should they state that they are Alawis and not Muslims, I would have no objection to that whatsoever. Were they to hide their faith altogether or to have no faith at all, I would not find it problematic in the least. I am a firm believer in liberal values and to me every one should be able to define who he or she is. I will go further and say that an Alawi should also be able to choose the way to be called. If he finds the label Nusayri offensive, for instance then it behooves me to abstain from using it.

2. It is a disgrace that the Syrian Constitution should address the President’s faith at all. OK so Alawis are Muslims, what about Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Ismailis, Atheists, Agnostics, Jews (hardly anyone of the latter group is left but that’s another story)? Are they second class citizens? Since Syria is mostly Muslim, it is unlikely that a non-Muslim would assume the presidency anytime soon but why does the Constitution have to specify it?

3. Syria is supposedly a modern secular state and is admittedly more tolerant of its minorities than most countries in the Near East. Wouldn’t the logical next step be to separate Church from State?

4. The Muslim Brotherhood and its likes resent being ruled by what they consider a heretical minority. This is the wrong way to oppose the Syrian Regime. There exists no shortage of legitimate objections to the way Syria is governed but its President’s faith (or the lack of it) is not one of them. The President owes Syria’s Sunni community respect, not more or less than he what would any other Syrian community. He should not have to bow and prostrate in the mosque if he does not want to. Many, if not most West European leaders are declared atheists and their peoples don’t seem to mind (to be sure this is not so in the USA, all US Presidents are at least officially devout Christians some, from all available evidence genuinely and deeply so but I digress)*.

      To conclude I would add that the Near East has not moved beyond the Religious State yet. We have a Jewish State (Israel), a Wahhabi State (Saudi Arabia), and a Shia State (Iran) to name but a few. Religion as a remedy is however bound to kill the patient in Syria, the mosaic of which is such that imposing conformity is bound to shatter the already fragile sectarian balance and quite likely lead to an Iraq or Lebanon-like scenario. A nightmare to contemplate let alone live through. I very much doubt that my arguments would impress Commentator Number Two or his ilk but I felt I had to add my two cents.






*It is told that Presidents George W. Bush of the USA and Jacques Chirac of France once had a discussion about Iraq when Mr. Bush told his French counterpart that a dream-like vision of Gog and Magog was one factor in his decision to invade/liberate Iraq. Monsieur Chirac had to confer with some theologians to understand what the American President was talking about.