On Islamic Tolerance

Bilāl the Abyssinian was a Companion of Prophet Muḥammad and Islam's first muezzin. His tomb—if we are to believe popular tradition—is located at Bāb aṣ-Ṣaġīr's ancient cemetery in Damascus, the alleged resting place of several holy men and women, including the first Umayyād Caliph Muʿāwīyā; Um Ḥabībā, daughter of Abu Sufīān and one of Muḥammad's numerous wives; Fāṭimā, the daughter of Imam Ḥusayn; etc. There exists, needless to say, no shortage of ancient mausoleums in and around Damascus; heck, I personally paid a visit to what passes for Abel's tomb many years ago.

Whether or not those graveyards host the remains they claim to, whether or not those men or women ever set foot in Damascus, and if they existed at all, is not the subject of this post. Various Muslim countries may dispute the honor of possessing the relics of this or that saint; the Wahhābis may reject necropolis wholesale and frown at tomb visitation; but the aura surrounding those people, their lives, and their achievements is seldom debated. Their biographies have meticulously been collected, “authenticated,” commented, and adopted by hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide from time immemorial.

Bilāl was one of Islam's first martyrs (so were ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir and his ilk, but that's another story). Every Muslim knows how he eagerly adopted the Mohammedan faith when the believers were a tiny minority and how much he suffered for it. Bilāl was a slave of the cruel ʾUmayyā ibn H̱alaf, who was, along with Abu Ǧahl and Abu Lahab, one of Islam's deadliest enemies and a member of a powerful Qurayšite clan. The ruthless ʾUmayyā was hellbent on reclaiming his renegade slave to the old pagan faith, and towards that purpose, he'd put steadfast Bilāl to all kinds of torture, such as having the martyr lie down on burning desert sand with a heavy stone placed on his chest as to bring him to the verge of suffocation. Bilāl adamantly refused to renounce the one-and-only true faith, of course, and somehow survived the greatest ordeal of his life to the great relief of the Community of the Faithful. He went on to become Islam's first muezzin, and his beautiful voice is the stuff of legends.

The Forces of Darkness met their first defeat at the hands of the Muslims in the Battle of Badr. It was a day of reckoning for ʾUmayyā ibn H̱alaf, who was captured by ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, a companion of the Prophet Muḥammad and one of the ten to whom Paradise was promised. Bilāl sighted his old nemesis "the enemy of Allah" in shackles, helpless and defeated, and lost no time slaying him despite the vociferous protestations of ibn ʿAwf, who had pledged to spare ʾUmayyā's life.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Bilāl and ʾUmayyā are indeed historical figures and that the above narrative is truthful—for the sake of this post, the veracity of the above narrative or the lack thereof is irrelevant since Muslims treat it as bona fide history of which they are proud—I find this anecdote particularly illuminating. The savage ʾUmayyā may have tortured Bilāl, but HE DID NOT KILL HIM when he could have easily done it with precisely zero accountability. On the contrary, it was Bilāl who needlessly butchered a captured ʾUmayyā who was no longer capable of hurting him or anyone; worse, he committed the deed despite the fact that his erstwhile tormentor was under the protection of another companion of the Prophet, just like himself.

To the Muslims, the martyr was Bilāl the executioner, not the victim he slew! This is almost as comical as the "martyrdom" of Basil al-ʾAsad, though in the latter case it was not about good versus evil, merely a tragic car accident transformed by obsequious media into an occasion to shed crocodile tears in order to curry favor with the ruler, just as their ancestors did under the French and before that the Ottomans.

Bilāl's was by no means a unique example. An even more egregious insult to common sense was the treatment the Muslims inflicted on the Jews of Medina, exiled, murdered, or enslaved to the last man and woman and yet perversely accused of “plotting” against the Muslim community in cahoots with “pagan” Qurayš. Even were this to be true, that is, that some of them did indeed conspire against Muḥammad, would that justify such a brutal and collective punishment? (Saʿd ibn Muʿāḏ notoriously advised Muhammad to kill Banū Qurayẓā's men and enslave the women and the children, and the Prophet concurred). Once again, one can't but marvel at the ease with which credulous Muslims have always accepted at face value that the Jews of Medina were the villains of the story and amply deserved their grim fate and much more.

There exists no shortage of such tales throughout history, of course, and they're by no means restricted to Christianity or Islam. There is one major difference, however: Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, and European powers may commit atrocities on a large—sometimes genocidal—scale, but criticizing them and denouncing their crimes is perfectly permissible. This is true particularly for events that are ancient history (many choose to refrain from condemning powerful nations or leaders who could silence and kill their opponents). It is legitimate to point to the massacres committed by, say, Alexander the Great in Tyre; exposing Genghis Khan for the mass murderer he was is perfectly alright; Hitler remains the ultimate impersonation of pure evil for many. 

Highlighting misdeeds of prophets and their companions, objectively pointing to the crimes committed by organized religion, and subjecting pious criminals to the same scrutiny one does secular leaders are an altogether different story. Do that at your own risk and blame no one but yourself for the consequences.

As George Orwell would say, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. At least as far as monotheism and its bogus martyrs go. 

On Christian Tolerance

Marcus Vinicius was a Roman patrician who fell in love with a beautiful Christian maiden named Ligia. Their romance is prominently featured in Henryk Sienkiewicz' historical novel Quo Vadis, subsequently adapted by Hollywood in 1951 in an epic movie.

Vinicius was young, dashing, handsome, and fabulously wealthy. He was also a pagan who knew next to nothing about the then-new Christian faith prior to meeting the love of his life. Ligia returned his affection but had to restrain her feelings until their union could be sanctioned by the Holy Church. The young lovers lived during the reign of Nero, the infamous Roman Caesar whose assistance was initially sought by Vinicius to help win Ligia's hand, and eventually her heart.

Vinicius spared no effort to woo Ligia. When he found out that she was Christian, he proposed to add Jesus to the gods of his household in order to please her; after all, what harm could result from one extra deity when there already existed so many who had somehow been getting along from time immemorial? The devout lass was horrified by this proposal, as would be expected given her fiercely monotheistic faith. Luckily for them, the conclusion of their passionate attachment was a happy one, and Vinicius ended up adopting the faith of his beloved but not before witnessing the genocidal massacre of her coreligionists by the monstrous Nero.

History is unkind to losers, and Nero was no exception. The bulk of what is known about him was transmitted by his enemies, from murdering his mother Agrippina all the way to “fiddling while Rome burns” then blaming the catastrophe on the Christians and sending them to be devoured by wild beasts in his circuses. While Nero most certainly was no saint—saints seldom if ever make successful emperors—he was very unlikely the ogre his biographers would have you think. As for the butchery to which he subjected the Christians, it is virtually certain that it was wildly exaggerated, if not altogether made up.

For Rome of the 1st century CE was unlikely to host significant numbers of Christians. Arguably the entire Roman Empire at the time had very few Christians, way too few to provide for a gory spectacle in the spacious Roman circuses for Rome's heathen spectators. In a nutshell, if Nero had heard about the Christian faith at all, he in all probability hardly gave it a thought. He had too many powerful foes to waste his time oppressing a harmless and obscure minority.

This is not to say that the Christians endured no persecution under the Romans. They suffered under Decius and Diocletian, but that was 200 years after Nero, by which time the new faith was firmly established and patiently anticipating its triumph with the Edict of Milan under Constantine the Great. Paganism was to make a final desperate reaction under Julian the Apostate in the second half of the fourth century CE, but that was essentially it. The old gods had to yield to Christ as pagans joined the new faith en masse, preferably of their own free will or—if necessary—by brutal force. Jupiter's temples were transformed into churches and cathedrals or demolished wholesale; old gods morphed into Christian saints; and Vestal Virgins became nuns. It is well established that by the time of Theodosius the Great, it was the turn of Paganism to be persecuted by the turn-the-other-cheek Christians! So thoroughly did the Christians hound the adherents of the old faith that they'd soon run out of them and turn their weapons against each other in a long and forlorn struggle to define orthodoxy and identify what each sect considered to be the authentic form of Christianity.

Back to Ligia and Vinicius. The young man was more than willing to accommodate Jesus in his pantheon, but the lovely young woman was too pure and too jealous of her God to tolerate any other deity, however much she loved her suitor. It does not take too much imagination to extend the comparison to polytheism versus monotheism, the first by definition far more tolerant than the second no matter what the followers of the latter proclaim.

And yet it's all about the suffering of the monotheists. No one cares for or talks about martyrs for Paganism. It is taken for granted that polytheism is bad and monotheism is good; the latter is logical and the former is not; faith in the old gods equals superstition, whereas faith in one God is somehow scientific. To add insult to injury is the presumptuous claim of the victimizer that he was tormented and persecuted by none other than his victim.

If indeed the early Christian communities were oppressed by ruthless heathens from Nero to Julian (spanning 300 years), wouldn't one expect the Christians to be exterminated rather than the other way round? Did Christianity employ purely peaceful means in its relentless conquest of the world? How exactly did Charlemagne convert the Saxons? The Europeans preached Jesus to the Native Americans and Africans? And let's not go into the Crusades.

A victor needs not apologize for his triumph; legions of scholars would happily justify his most unjustifiable excesses. Volumes would be written to whitewash every crime, rationalize every absurdity, make sense out of utter nonsense, smear each and every opponent, and brainwash one generation after another into docile obedience.

Some may proudly point out how tolerant modern “Christian” Europe and America are, but this is false: the West is tolerant because it is secular, because of its separation of church and state. The Christian West was never tolerant, not only of Jews and Muslims but also of “different” Christians. In Spain it was the Inquisition, in France the massacre of the Huguenots, in Britain the persecution of the Catholics and the Puritans, etc....

The notion of a “tolerant monotheistic faith” is an oxymoron.

From the Umayyad to the Alawites, on the History of Sectarianism in Syria

The advent of the internet opened a virtually limitless access to information for anyone who could read; the explosion of social media opened a worldwide forum to exchange thoughts, ideas, and data in the form of user-friendly links that magically pop up with a mere click, the way Aladdin used to summon his genie by rubbing his legendary lamp. Anyone could quote anybody and provide an immediately available reference to support his or her point of view.
More often than not, those links are misleading if not outright mendacious, and it takes a healthy dose of knowledge and skepticism to guard against abusing rather than using information technology. Wikipedia is nowadays one of the most cited—perhaps the most cited—references, and yet it is full of falsehoods and tendentious articles, at least when it comes to history and politics.

The year was about 2011 or 2012 when I had an online exchange with an anonymous English-speaking Internet user (most likely an American) regarding the composition of the Syrian Army. He posted an assertion that the majority of the men making up the Syrian Armed Forces belonged to the Alawite sect, and when I replied to the contrary, he promptly provided a link to Wikipedia corroborating his view, thus—in his mind at least—dealing me the proverbial coup de grâce. I was certainly not about to divulge my national origin to yet another know-it-all ignoramus, but I politely pointed out to him that what he was proposing was simply impossible: the Syrian Law prescribed mandatory universal military service for all men of all sects age 18 or older with few exemptions. Naturally, I provided a link to support my counterargument, but he deigned not to reply to my post or even acknowledge receiving it.

So much of this anecdote. Everyone who lives in Syria or has resided there long enough knows that the Syrian Army is made up of all Syrians, not just the Alawites, as many outsiders seem to think. That said, there is no question that the Alawites are overrepresented in the professional armed forces, and this is true for the officer corps, NCOs, and career soldiers in general. Certain key units are commanded by Alawites, and that has been the case for decades, no ifs, ands, or buts. Why is it so? Has there been a deliberate policy by the powers-that-be to construct a sectarian army? And if so, towards what purpose?

To understand the process by which the Alawites came to occupy such a position, one has to go back in time, all the way to the Ottomans, if not prior. For centuries, the Alawites were marginalized, impoverished, and discriminated against. They sought a safe haven in the mountain named after them, the way the Druze, Maronite, and Twelver Shiites have done in Greater Syria from time immemorial. So long as Syria belonged to one empire or another, the Alawites' ambitions were frustrated by the dictates of the imperial center, often located thousands of miles away; in this respect they shared the fate of all Syrians with the exception of those who identified or collaborated with the hegemon.

Syria gained its independence in 1946 and felt as such compelled to have its own national army, rather than depend on the “protection” of Paris or Constantinople. Joining the army was now open to all Syrians—Jews excepted, though I am not sure at what point this discrimination started—who wanted to embark on a military career, and there was, of course, the above-mentioned universal service. But who are usually the ones who choose such a career? This is a question that could be posed in any country, not just Syria.

Serving in the army in Syria is most certainly not a free ride. Military life is difficult for the vast majority of soldiers even in peaceful times. It is true that some may end up achieving wealth and glory, but this is the exception, not the rule. Many more lose life and limb, and the majority endure a Spartan existence. Conclusion: if you or your parents have the means, chances are you would not opt for a military career; this is true of everyone regardless of color or creed. Joining the army affords some a chance, a way out of a precarious life. The army is a vehicle of social mobility all over the planet. If the Alawites joined the Syrian Armed Forces in disproportionate numbers, it is because they'd been disproportionately poor, not because they harbored some ominous designs to dominate the country. An excellent study about the rise of the Baath Party and its relation to Syria's peasantry and minorities was done by the late Hanna Batatu. Patrick Seale's Asad is also an essential read for those interested in Syrian politics.

But is this phenomenon, that of minorities assuming leadership, a new one? Was it a product of the 20th century? Of decolonization? Let's take a free ride in a time machine to the Middle Ages, and let's start with the 7th century AD. Admittedly, this would be an arbitrary departure point for a country as ancient as Syria.

When the Arabs thundered out of their peninsula under the banner of Islam to evict the Byzantines out of Syria and North Africa and humble the Sassanian Empire beyond redemption—in what could arguably be described as the blitzkrieg of the Dark Ages—the Levant was still largely Christian in creed (with a multitude of denominations at each other's throats, to be sure) and Aramaic and/or Greek in speech. The triumphant Arabs were a minority in language as well as religion, and that was to be the case throughout the reign of the Umayyad. They even discouraged the conversion of the natives, preferring instead to maintain their privileges as an elite caste, taxing the “Dhimmis” to support a parasitic (excuse my language, but I prefer to call a spade a spade) Arab soldiery and its dependents. Tolerant of others faith they were, but this tolerance varied with the temperament of the ruler. Perhaps the most tolerant of them all was the founder, Muawiya, understandably so as the state was still young and vulnerable, whereas the least tolerant was the pious Umar ibn Abdul Aziz.
The Umayyad reign came to an end when—in a bloodbath—their White Banner succumbed to the Abbasid Black Banner. In reality it was a resurgence of the Persian Empire and a reassertion of age-old Iranian dominance in Mesopotamia. Syria was marginalized under the Abbasids as the empire's center of gravity shifted to the east. It is not my intention to narrate a page that does not properly belong to the history of Syria. Suffice it to say that the Abbasid Empire was dominated by Persians or Turks practically since its inception all the way to its collapse and ultimate destruction under the onslaught of the Mongol Hordes.

Syria subsequently fell under the Tulunid, Hamdanid, Fatimid, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders.... It was to experience an Indian Summer under the Zengid and the Ayyubid. It is interesting to note that not only were those “minoritarian” rulers (for by then the Arabic-speaking people constituted a decisive majority) of a different ethnicity, but they also hardly spoke Arabic. They bore different, foreign-sounding names, as could easily be verified by paying a visit to some of the countless mosques and mausoleums they left throughout Syria. Saladin was not an Arab, no matter what the pseudo-history taught in Syria's schools tells us. The same goes for Nureddin, al-Adil, all the way to the fall of the Ayyubid in the middle of the 13th century.

From 1250 to 1516, Syria fell under the dominance of the Mameluke, yet another alien race with alien manners and a foreign tongue. Next came the Ottomans, who regularly appointed governors from all over their vast empire to Syria, then one of their fairest provinces.
It should by now be evident that Syria has been governed by one minority or another since at least the Muslim Arab invasion. Those pesky “sectarians,” however, eventually managed to blend in with the rest of the population, adopt its “native” Arabic tongue, and contribute to the country'’s rich heritage.

One cannot overemphasize the importance of those inconvenient yet straightforward facts: pretty much every single religious, ethnic, or linguistic group in Syria was—at one point or another—a sect or a minority. The same ignorant and derogatory stereotypes heaped indiscriminately against the Alawites today were in all likelihood used and abused against “Pagans,” Umayyad, Persians, Turks, Fatimid, Kurds, Jews, Samaritans, Christians (Monophysite, Nestorian, Greek Orthodox), Muslims (Sunni, Shiite, Ismaili, Druze), you name it.

Bigotry does not target individuals but rather whole groups. It is not about what you do but who you are. It goes without saying that no one should be immune to criticism, and any leader or politician should be fair game. President Obama is a case in point: serious criticism targets his domestic and foreign policy, while bigots choose to focus on irrelevant issues such as his faith (or the lack thereof), skin color, parents, and birthplace.