After a millennium of deeply insular and secretive life in the Alawite Mountains along the coast of [what now is] Syria, their clan leaders and emerging urban classes responded to the developing pan Arab nationalism of the 19/20th Centuries first by efforts to establish their own nation state and then by efforts to present themselves as indistinguishable from Sunni Arabs who make-up the majority of Syria’s population.
The first tactic is reputed to have been attempted by Grandpa Assad in a speculative letter to Leon Blum from 1936, in which he appealed to Blum’s Jewishness and spoke favourably of the Zionist project next door:
[…]
The Alawites refuse to be annexed to Muslim Syria because, in Syria, the official religion of the state is Islam, and according to Islam, the Alawites are considered infidels.
The spirit of hatred and fanaticism imbedded in the hearts of the Arab Muslims against everything that is non Muslim has been perpetually nurtured by the Islamic religion. There is no hope that the situation will ever change. Therefore, the abolition of the mandate will expose the minorities in Syria to the dangers of death and annihilation, irrespective of the fact that such abolition will annihilate the freedom of thought and belief.
The condition of the Jews in Palestine is the strongest and most explicit evidence of the militancy of the Islamic issue vis a vis those who do not belong to Islam.
We assure you that treaties have no value in relation to the Islamic mentality in Syria. We have previously seen this situation in the Anglo Iraqi treaty, which did not prevent the Iraqis from slaughtering the Assyrians and the Yezidis.
[…]
I am assured that this letter is authentic, although the online trail appears to end on the departmental website of Joshua Landis; who has received negative write-ups on HP because of his credulity towards the Assad regieme. That said, although he is married to the daughter of a senior Alawite Admiral, he strikes me as much more reliable a source than, say, Neil Clark.
From the letter, it can be seen that despite contemporary assertions that the Alawite religion is an iteration of Shi’a Twelverism, the grandparents of the current generation certainly did not have consider themselves to be Muslim.
Indeed, just as the Quran permits the consumption of extinct mermaids (if they ever existed), it also considers followers of the extinct religion of Sabianism to be Children of the Book whilst Alawites are not.
Along with emphatically non-Islamic groups such as the Yezhidi, and arguably para-Islamic groups such as the Alevi, I have seen sources which suggests Alawites are linked Kurdish lineages possibly to Kartvelian/Georgian origins. Despite what George Galloway might say about blonde hair and blue-eyes marking regional inhabitants as non-native, these physical characteristics are present amongst many Alawites and Kurds.
Writing last year in New Republic, Theo Panos describes a pantheist and highly esoteric religion which worship(ped) the air and sun and moon and considered all humans to be descended stars awaiting return to the Milky Way and where initiates are sought through sons. As such, transmission of knowledge and traditions were not conducted through written sources or attending mosques, and reconstructing Alawite religious practices could be caught-up in vituperative descriptions by Sunni writers and marginally less antagonistic descriptions by Twelver writers.
Following the massacres of Levantine Christians in 1860/1, and the French-led intervention in Greater Syria as response, French missionaries began to take an interest in this odd religious sect believing it to be lost or proto-Christians through their observance of, amongst other non-Islamic festivals, Christmas.
This prompted the Ottoman rulers and dominant Sunni leaders to initiate the first Sunnification or de-Alawitification process of the Modern Era, leading to Grandpa Assad’s appeal some three quarters of a century later. Not only was the Alawite State not granted independent governance, but it was not incorporated into Lebanon which may have buffered the Alawites from overwhelming Sunni Muslim majority.
The Assad family’s sympathies towards Zionism was, of course, short-lived with the infiltration of escaped European Nazis and rise of a domestic Nazi Party the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.
When Hafez Assad and his fellow Alawite officers assumed power in 1970, acceptances of the Alawite minority was by no means guaranteed, and he accelerated the Sunnification process. Mosques appeared in Alawite villages, and through clan loyalty or totalitarian force, any remaining practitioners of Alawism were instructed to become Sunnier than thou.
One feature of Alawism which does seem to have survived is the veneration of patron saints and earthly authorities. Starting with the greatest Alawites of them all, the Assad family.
When Bassel Assad wrapped himself around a lamp-post in 1994, the grief amongst ultra-loyal Alawites was immense. According to Panos, a group broke into a cemetery on Baghdad Street in Damascus, and proceeded to desecrate the graves of designated martyrs from the 1973 War with Israel. Such was their quasi-religious loyalty to the venerated Bassel, they could not tolerate the thought of his sharing the same order of heaven with lesser mortals: be they Sunni or Alawite.
Although, this video purporting to show Government soldiers forcing a prisoner to express loyalty to Bashar Assad before Allah is now accepted as forged, the fact remains that Government sources put out a parody of the Shahadah (and this equally distressing video does appear to be authentic).
The damage which almost certainly been done inter alia to Alawites in the eyes of revanchist Sunni extremists will be of terrifying scope; as this interview with fleeing Alawites suggests.
Although DaveM discussed Panos’ piece last year – when he included the accompanying photograph of an icon-like portrait of Hafez and Bashar with Bassel hovering behind as if an angelic visitation – the question remains in my mind, who and what are the Alawites?
