One Syrian source maintained that there was an uprising of anti-Assad Alawites in Latakia, and that HTS rebels had not entered the city. Other reports suggested that Alawites who had for years been oppressed and bilked by Alawite Baath officers were staging reprisals on them. Informed Comment cannot independently verify these allegations.

The fall of Latakia is significant for several reasons. Latakia is Syria’s major port and the new government cannot hope to run Syria without it. It is near to Tartus, the site of a Russian naval base. Apparently several thousand Russian troops are still stuck in Syria and will have to negotiate safe passage out.

Latakia’s naval and military significance led Israel to bomb some of its facilities on Monday, as well as to damage some of the war ships in the harbor. These strikes on Latakia came as part of a flurry of 250 such air attacks by Israel on Syrian military storehouses and facilities, in an attempt by the Netanyahu government to cripple the new government’s military capabilities during this transitional phase, when it is weak.

Then, the majority of the region’s inhabitants are Alawite Shiites, whereas the HTS is hard line Sunni fundamentalists. The heads of the Baath Party in Syria from 1970 had been the al-Assads, who hailed from an Alawite background, and they engaged in a great deal of nepotism. The best jobs went to Alawites, even though they were only 14% of the population. During the civil war in the past nearly 14 years, Alawite officers, infantry and militias (the Shabiha) put down the rebellion, with great loss of life.

In short, there are all the ingredients for sectarian reprisals and massacres. On Arabic social media, there are many calls for revenge on the Alawites now that the al-Assad regime has fallen. We saw this phenomenon in Iraq, which was a mirror image of Syria demographically and politically. There, the Shiites are a majority but were repressed by a Sunni-led Baath Party. When George W. Bush invaded and occupied Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein, the Shiites came to power in elections that they forced on Bush. In 2006-2007, and again in 2014-2018, there were numerous Sunni-Shiite sectarian clashes. The ISIL terrorist group, from which elements of the Syrian HTS hived off, committed numerous massacres of Shiites.

I can only imagine that the Alawite officers in the now-defunct Syrian Arab Army have disguised themselves and are trying to get out of the country any way they can. Some reports suggest they have fled to Lebanon.

On the other hand, I wonder if the threat of Israeli aggression will cause Syrians to pull together?

Al-Quds al-`Arabi reports that the elders (sheikhs) of the Alawite community called for “turning over a new page.” They met with representatives of the HTS at the former provincial residence of al-Assad, in a town called Qardaha in the hills overlooking Latakia. The elders issued a statement in which they called for a “general amnesty” and the safe return of everyone who had fled their homes “in the recent period,” and for an end to the carrying of guns except in accordance with the law.

The Alawite branch of Shiite Islam is an esoteric folk religion in which many of the verities are cultivated by the sheikhs, and the laity may not be steeped in them. They do not have formal seminary-trained clergymen or mosque worship. They are very different from the Twelver Shiites in Iraq and Iran.

After the meeting, the military operations HQ of the HTS issued a “general amnesty” for all conscripted troops of the former Syrian Arab Army, granting them security of property and person and forbidding attacks on them.

Since most people in the army had been conscripts, this amnesty would affect a lot of people. But it excludes those who volunteered for the military or who entered the officer corps through a military academy.

HTS-controlled state television broadcast images of captured Syrian soldiers in Damascus, Homs and Hama being pardoned. Of the 300,000 men in the Syrian Arab Army, probably 200,000 or more had gone AWOL or defected during the civil war. The remaining 50,000 to 100,000 were disproportionately drawn from the Alawite population. So, implicitly, this pardon of the grunts in the army has a sectarian dimension, and is an attempt to avoid sectarian tensions.

On the other hand, the military operations HQ said that military figures guilty of atrocities against civilians in recent years would be tried in the courts. If they can get hold of the officer corps, it appears that the HTS will execute large numbers of them.

—–

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Israel Conducts Air and Ground Offensive In Syria As Assad Regime Falls | India Today

Pew Research has released a report saying that

“As a whole, the region continued to have the highest levels of religious hostilities in the world. In 2014, the median level of religious hostilities in the Middle East and North Africa reached a level four times that of the global median.”

But is there another way to look at this data? Is it really all about religion?

Pew does excellent polling and I’ve used their work a great deal, e.g. in my Engaging the Muslim World . And the good thing about their polling is that they are very up front about their assumptions and methodology.

This is what they mean by “religion”:

“For the purposes of this study, religion-related terrorism includes acts carried out by subnational groups that use religion as a justification or motivation for their actions.”

So a “subnational” group might well be driven primarily by nationalism, but if its members commit terrorism that is “religion-related,” then it gets counted under the sign of religion.

Social scientists talk about people having “markers” of identity. Language and religion can be such markers, as can constructions like “race.”

In the context of Protestant Britain, Irish immigrants in the 18th century were coded as Catholics or “papists.” Where there were mob attacks on them, however, it would be difficult to prove that the fine points of theology were always the main drivers of the violence. Some of it was social class, some of it was “race.”

So it isn’t easy to disentangle religious motivations from nationalist ones.

Pew adds

“Religion-related terrorism also includes terrorist acts carried out by individuals or groups with a nonreligious identity that deliberately target religious groups or individuals, such as clergy. ”

So what Pew is really measuring is not religious fanaticism at all, but the prevalence of symbolic targets that are religious in nature.

So if two secular groups fought and a religious symbol was harmed, the incident in this study would be classified as religious violence.

In social science, you have wide latitude in making your definitions, as long as you clarify your terms to begin with.

What Pew is actually saying is that in the Middle East and North Africa, people are four times as likely to act out their ethnic violence by attacking religious symbols as in the rest of the world. It isn’t saying they are four times as likely to be religious fanatics.

My guess is that the Middle East is unusually religiously pluralistic, and this is especially true of the Levant to the Gulf. Whereas Poland is almost entirely Catholic, Iraq is 60 percent Shiite and 37 percent Sunni (counting Arabs and Kurds).

There are also relatively high rates of religious belief in the region. If you wanted to hurt a member of another ethnicity, you’d know that striking their religious edifices or clergy, etc., would hit them hard. Thus, al-Qaeda’s destruction of the Shiite Golden Dome shrine of the eleventh Imam in Samarra in 2006 set off an Iraqi civil war. You couldn’t hurt the feelings of very many French by taking a sledge hammer to a gargoyle.

A lot of the violence that gets coded in the US press as religious is actually about nationalism. This principle holds especially true in Palestine-Israel.

But take Syria. Some observers suggest that the Lebanese militia, Hizbullah, which is Shiite, intervened in Syria to help the Alawites, also Shiites. But they don’t belong to the same branch of Shiism. Most Lebanese Shiites belong to the orthodox Twelver school, with mosques, collective Friday prayers, clergymen, etc. Alawites are heterodox– lacking mosques and having wise men rather than seminary-trained clergymen. Most Sunni and Shiite Muslims don’t consider the Alawites to be Muslims. Moreover, many Syrian Alawites are members of the Baath Party, which is highly secular and socialist. So Hizbullah did not come into Syria for reasons of religious sympathy. They came in because the Baath, secular government of Syria is a vital supply route for Hizbullah.

So if a Sunni mosque was shelled by Baath Party members because even relatively secular Sunni opposition groups were hiding behind it, Pew would count that as religious violence in this study.

That outcome is legitimate, since they defined their terms to begin with. But as consumers of such studies, we should be careful about how we use the findings. They aren’t saying what we might at first assume they are. In polls as in consumer purchases, always read the fine print.

—–

Related video added by Juan Cole:

U Chicago Social Sciences: “PANEL 2: Religious Minorities in Syria’s Civil War | Keith Watenpaugh”

The leftist Beirut daily al-Safir reports that security in Syria broke down dramatically on Monday, as seven bombs timed to go off simultaneously hit soft targets in the Syrian Mediterranean cities of Jebleh and Tartus, killing some 150 persons and wounding 225
, the vast majority of them innocent noncombatants. Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), took responsibility for the carnage. The cities that were struck are vital transportation hubs.

Al-Safir says that the bombs were timed to hit commuters and students going to their exams. The Daesh claim of responsibility explicitly mentioned that the victims were hit because they were `Alawite Shiites. (Daesh, a hard line Salafi group, poses as a champion of Sunni Muslims).

The attacks were carried out, it said, by ten suicide bombers, two of them driving car bombs. They split into two teams of five each to target the two cities.

It is worth mentioning that Russia has naval docking rights at Tartus, and used an airport near the city to bring in the heavy military equipment it used to attack al-Qaeda, Daesh and other groups. It is thus a highly symbolic target.

It is near to the port of Latakia, the lifeline of the capital of Damascus.

Jebleh is in Latakia Province, a regime stronghold.

Some had attributed the attacks to the Freemen of Syria (Ahrar al-Sham), which on its twitter feed expressed satisfaction at the killing of Shiites. And, there were questions about the Daesh claim of responsibility, since it used a vocabulary different from its usual one.

Al-Safir says that the attacks were likely intended by Daesh to send the message that despite its losses in other provinces (it was expelled from Palmyra, e.g.), it is still relevant. Tartus, the capital of the province of the same name, and Jebleh in Latakia are Alawite Shiite population centers that oppose Daesh and other Sunni fundamentalists and are bedrocks of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. On the other hand, al-Safir points out that Tartus has doubled in size because of an influx of Sunni refugees, so that the numbers of Sunnis and Shiites in the city may just about be even. That is, many of the victims were likely displaced Sunnis.

That point brings up another theory, evident on social media from Tartus, in which locals speculated that the refugee population contained covert Daesh cells who carried out the attacks.

The hard line Salafi fundamentalists, including al-Qaeda, took neighboring Idlib province to the east and seemed poised to conquer Latakia and expel its Alawites when, in fall of 2015, Russia intervened and pushed the Salafis out of Latakia.

The proximity of al-Qaeda and the Freemen of Syria to these cities on the face of it makes it more likely that they are behind the bombings, though the tactics used are those of Daesh. Daesh’s population center is very distant, in eastern al-Raqqa Province.

The attacks put the lie to rumors that Tartus was relatively safe because of a secret international agreement.

In Jebleh the bombs went off at 9 am, 2 at a civil transportation garage and a third at the municipal electricity offices. A fourth was set off a the entrance of a hospital emergency room, killing and wounding medical personnel.

In Tartus, the gate of the city was closed for a while. The hospitals are calling for blood donations.

About a year ago, an attempt to set off a car bomb in Tartus was foiled.

—-

Related video:

Euronews: “ISIL claims responsibility for multiple deadly attacks in Syria”

Writing in al-Hayat [Life] this week, columnist Walid Choucair outlined the successes he sees Russia to have had in its Syria campaign, and the goals for which it is reaching. Choucair is the Lebanese affairs bureau chief of this pan-Arab, Saudi-owned London daily, which has a generally liberal outlook and many of the staff of which are like Choucair actually Lebanese.

He says one objective of Russia was to make impossible a US-Turkey brokered safe zone in the north of the country. There had even been talk of Turkey bringing back Syrian refugees to the hinterlands of Aleppo and creating a military-defended safe zone for them. These plans did not pan out. He says Russia feared that this safe zone would be a conduit for ever more medium weaponry to rebel groups, including extremists, especially ground to air weapons. These might have been provided for deployment against Syrian fighter jets, he says, but the nations supporting the rebels would not dare supply them for use against Russia.

The second objective, he says, is the use of Russian bombardment and shelling to paralyze the forces of the Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups.

The third goal is to reorganize and rebuild the Syrian Arab Army, which has shown its inability to defend strategic sites such as Idlib Province’s capital city Idlib, a city of 80,000, which fell to the al-Qaeda-led Army of Conquest in late March this year.

In turn, Choucair says, Russia hoped that achieving these three objectives would allow it put forward a formula for a political resolution of the conflict. Russia is now more eager than ever, he suggests, for a political solution because it does not want a long drawn-out engagement in that country.

Meanwhile, Al Monitor argues that the regime’s Syrian Arab Army has in fact taken a line of villages northeast of Hama, what it calls the Umm Haratain-Atshan-Sukayk line, with Russian air support.

Via Google Maps

These advances put the SAA in striking distance of Tamaneh and Khan Shaykhun in the northwest of Hama. It says Khan Shaykhun has symbolic importance for al-Qaeda (the Support Front) in Syria. But this region north of Hama is also the gateway to a regime riposte in Idlib Province itself, which it has lost entirely since last spring to the al-Qaeda-led Army of Conquest. The Army of Conquest coalition’s strong position in Idlib allows it to threaten regime supply lines from Hama up to Aleppo to the northeast, and allows it to menace the province of Latakia, an Alawite Shiite stronghold and the site of Syria’s major port city, to the west.

One thing is sure– Russia comes into Friday’s Vienna talks on Syria in a much strengthened position and cannot be very easily dismissed by the US and Saudi Arabia. It has also been able to arrange for Iran to join the talks, a previously unthinkable step for the US and Saudi Arabia, and one that Riyadh is warning could cause the conference to fail.

—

Related video:

RT: “Syria: Syrian Army secures Morek as ground offensive continues”

The leader of al-Qaeda in Syria, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, has called for an escalation in attacks on the population centers of the Alawite Shiite minority.

The president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and other leading members of the ruling Baath Party belong to this folk sect of Islam. Alawites constitute 10-14 percent of Syrians, or 2 to 3 million persons, and predominate in the northwestern area of Latakia.

While it would be unfair to blame all Alawites for it, the al-Assad regime has used tanks and aerial bombardment against Syrian dissidents, turning what had been a peaceful protest movement into a vicious civil war, killing tens of thousands, and displacing millions. The regime also kidnapped large numbers of dissidents and tortured an estimated 10,000 to death.

Al-Qaeda leader Al-Julani said in a speech broadcast via YouTube that the Russian intervention aims at saving the government of al-Assad from collapse, but that it would fail, just as the military support of Iran and Hizbullah had failed. He added that “there is no choice but to escalate the battle and to target Alawite villages and townships in Latakia.” He called on all the elements of al-Qaeda to “bombard all these villages with hundreds of rockets daily, just as Russia is targeting Sunni villages and towns.”

Complete Battle Map of #Syria: Mid-October Update http://t.co/fetHuJ1QyH pic.twitter.com/bubqOXpv4o

— Al-Masdar News (@TheArabSource) October 14, 2015

The Support Front or Jabhat al-Nusra has a direct reporting line to core al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, a mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Some of its fighters, like the recently deceased Abu al-Hassan al-Tunisi, a right hand man of Usama Bin Laden, are core al-Qaeda going back to Afghanistan days. It holds substantial territory in northern Syria, directly controlling areas of Idlib Province, and forming a coalition called the Army of Conquest with hard line Salafi groups such as the Freemen of Syria (Ahrar al-Sham). The Army of Conquest is thought to receive substantial financial and weapons support from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, despite the leading position within it of al-Qaeda. The US CIA provides munitions such as TOW anti-tank weapons to Saudi Arabia, which shares it with Salafi groups such as the Army of Conquest and the Army of Islam. The Freemen of Syria is less extreme than al-Qaeda but declines to commit to support for pluralist democracy. When, in December of 2012, the US designated al-Qaeda in Syria or the Support Front a terrorist organization, 29 rebel groups denounced this designation and declared “we are all al-Nusra.”

Al-Julani, whose family is from the Golan Heights, fought US troops in Iraq alongside Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia there. He was captured and spent time at the American prison camp in Iraq, Camp Bucca. He became close to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq, the successor to al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. But al-Julani has since broken with al-Baghdadi, now the leader of Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), on orders of core al-Qaeda leader al-Zawahiri.

Al-Julani said that the Russian intervention is “an eastern Crusader campaign” doomed to failure. He said the Russians had intervened after the jihadis had inflicted on the al-Assad regime a series of defeats and had reduced the Syrian Arab Army essentially to a militia among other militias.

Al-Julani had also called on Muslim extremists in the Caucasus to launch attacks on Russia in retaliation for its Syrian intervention. Al-Qaeda in Syria has North Caucasus volunteers. On Oct. 12, Russian intelligence, the FSB, said that a major attack in Moscow by extremists had been foiled, and three men were remanded to custody.

Al-Julani also put a $5 million price on the heads of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the leader of Lebanon’s Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah.

Meanwhile, Greek Melkite Catholic Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart of Aleppo, speaking in the UK, warned British politicians against supporting Muslim extremists [such as the Army of Conquest and its key component, al-Qaeda in Syria] in Syria. Jeanbart characterized the Baath regime as modern and tolerant of religious minorities, in contrast to the hard line Salafi jihadist groups being supported by the West. Jeanbart said that most Syrian Christians support the Russian intervention.

Of the Salafi Muslim extremists he said,

““They don’t accept anyone who is different,” Archbishop Jeanbart added. “Anyone who is not a fundamentalist Muslim has no rights — no right to live, no right to be in society, no right to be a citizen . . . [they] have destroyed everything — our economy, our industry, our churches, everything. . . The most important thing we are suffering from is that they are destroying man. They are taking away our right to choose what we want to be.”

It is an index of how dire the situation is for Syria’s roughly one million Christians, most of them Eastern Orthodox, that one of their leaders should cling to the illusion that the virtually genocidal al-Assad regime is “tolerant.” That Christians were better off under the Baath than they would be under al-Julani, however, is not in doubt. In Syrian politics there is very little middle ground.

—-

Related video:

Wochit News: “Largest Syrian Al-Qaida Group Calls for Terror Attacks in Russia”

In recent months, prospects for applying the principles of federation and constitutional protection for minorities as a basic political solution for the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have dramatically improved. On the foundation of state restructuring, coordination of military force to degrade ISIS and the Nusra Front (henceforth “jihadism) is possible and the only way to prevent its rebirth is the guaranty of non- sectarian decentralized state structures.

In Syria a strategy of “freeze zones” which would halt military action between the government and the non -Jihadist opposition and allow each side to maintain control of any territory captured from Jihadists had been brokered by U.N. representative, Staffan De Mastura. It enjoyed some localized success in 2013-14 but over time these agreements fell apart. In Iraq, Sunni tribal sheikhs offered to join the fight against ISIS also with the provision of holding captured territory. To date there has been no acceptance. With the absence of common political goals and mutual suspicion, no substantive agreements will hold.

Principles of federation would include constitutional guarantees for a high degree of autonomy for delimited Sunni and Kurdish provinces in Iraq and for Alawite and Kurdish provinces in Syria. This would be in addition to constitutional rights for Christians, Aziris and other minorities who lack sufficient population concentration for a provincial unit, as well as members of all ethnic and religious groups living in mixed communities.

This would preserve the existing states albeit now federalized. Each federated unit would be able to exercise substantial control of its economy including taxes and revenues generated in the region, as well as cultural rights and external economic and cultural connections with neighboring countries.

Both Sunnis in Iraq and Alawites and Christians in Syria would support a federated state in their respective countries regarding it as the foundation for their security and the most promising arrangement for political participation. For the Kurds the PKK leans towards federal autonomy as a general principle though many political personalities in the Iraqi Kurdish regional government favor an independent state.

For the Iraqi political class it may be the only alternative to a split off of the Kurdish province. The strong form of federation is necessary because of the mass deaths, displacements and denial of political rights primarily affecting the Sunni population and the fear of Alawites, Christians, Kurds and secular forces of a state totally dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Changing circumstances have created movement towards strategic shifts by the U.S., Russia, Iran and Turkey that can achieve the political and military goals just described. Most dramatic is the agreement on Iran’s civilian use of nuclear energy. This can be the catalyst for much greater flexibility in U.S relations with Iran and Russia. President Obama, to avoid the use of U.S. ground troops, is already relying on Iranian units in Iraq and Iranian led Shiite militias which together with the Kurds have been the only effective fighting force against ISIS in Iraq He recognizes that coordination with U.S air strikes will make these forces more effective just as U.S. military collaboration with the PKK’s affiliate in Syria has been successful. Iranian political influence in Iraq and Syria can also be effective but only if it accepts non- sectarian state structures in those nations. The understanding that Sunni autonomy is the price that must be paid to defeat Jihadism in Iraq on a long- term basis is a strong motivating force.

Support for regional autonomy for Alawite and associated forces would be vital to Iran especially if they believed that the military forces of the Syrian state, together with Iranian and Hezbollah military forces could no longer sustain the Assad regime. It could also expand Iran’s regional influence broadly on the Sunni population; not on the hostile Saudi regime, but in fact to counter the latter.

Iranian and Hezbollah military units have now withdrawn to the defense of the Mediterranean coast and the Syrian- Lebanese border. The Syrian army and its partners are in retreat from assaults of the Jihadists and the Syrian regime is in danger of becoming a rump state.
The increased precariousness of the Syrian regime led Russia earlier this month to summon General Qasam Soleimani, who leads Iran’s military forces in both Syria and Iraq, to Moscow to most likely to give his estimate of the survivability of the Syrian army and state. Shortly thereafter, the Syrian government sent a high level delegation to Oman, a recognized broker of negotiations in regional conflicts, which hints at a willingness to discuss with opposition forces a realistic political approach to end the conflict- either with supervised elections and/or a time limit on Assad’s hold on power.

Also this month Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov invited major Syrian opposition groups to Moscow to find a negotiable strategy for reconciliation and contrary to prior rejections, he received a positive response. High- level Russian officials in Turkey through that government’s cooperation had previously met with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a major component of the Syrian opposition, over which the Turkish government exercises strong influence.

The Turkish role reflects the strengthening of ties with Russia. Defying U.S. and EU trade sanctions it has vastly increased trade with Russia that is now its second largest trade partner. Also as a reverberation from the Ukrainian conflict, Russia, to bypass Ukraine, will be installing a major gas line through Turkey to supply Europe.

All the currents described above offer hope of movement towards a decisive partnership against the Jihadists which to succeed will require political decentralization in the region.

To be sure, deeper political economic issues in the Middle East concerning class domination, and integration into the neo liberal global economy that arguably underlay the 2011-12 Arab Spring will continue. And the major powers that would benefit from the political settlements and military collaboration discussed above would attempt to counteract a new Arab Spring. However the absence of sectarian conflict and of strong Jihadist forces would weigh in favor of future challenges to the existing socio-economic order, and end the devastation experienced by the civilian populations.

Jerome Joffe is a retired professor of social science at St. John’s University in Queens, New York.

—–

Related video added by Juan Cole:

Euronews: ” Syria: Ceasefire breaks down in three strategic towns”

The Shia government in Teheran and the Alawi regime in Damascus have had warm relations since Iran’s Islamic Revolution, and many attribute that to a common affinity for Shia Islam. While Alawis have embraced their relatively recent inclusion in the Muslim world, for the vast majority of their history Alawite doctrine and practice were considered beyond the boundaries of Islam. In fact, the claim that the Damascus-Teheran alliance is a product of a shared religious tradition connecting the Shia and Alawis has it backwards: political alliances were not made for religious reasons, religious alliances were made for political reasons.  

Shia and Sunnis had both denounced Alawis prior to the 20th century.  In fact, Shia religious leaders cursed and excommunicated the founder of the Alawites, Muhammad ibn Nusayr. Similarly, Sunni religious authorities had authored fatwas denouncing the Alawis as heretics in the 14th, 16th, and 19th centuries.  The Sunni religious opinions highlighted the fact that the Alawis held heretical beliefs so it was permissible to fight against them and enslave their women and children.  Because of the sectarian dimension of the conflict in Syria today, Sunni radicals often refer to the seven hundred year old  fatwas of Ibn Taymiyya to rationalize their brutality towards Alawis.

Insight into actual Alawi belief and doctrine is severely limited because of the practice of taqiyya/kitman, disguising or concealing one’s religious beliefs in order to avoid persecution. Thus, even the most basic tenets of the Alawi religion remain in dispute: it is unclear whether they deify Muhammad’s nephew, Ali ibn Abi Talib, after whom they are named. This question is extremely significant because deification of Ali would mean a stark departure from both Sunni and Shia Islam and the key Muslim principle of God’s unity, tawhid.

Sheikh Ali ‘Asi, the Head of the Alawi Islamic Council in Tripoli, Lebanon categorically denies the charge that Alawis ascribe a divine status to Ali.  However, some scholars are skeptical of what Alawis say to the public and have been more interested in using their religious texts to determine what Alawis believe.  One piece of evidence that supports the idea that they deify Ali is that their shahada, or profession of faith, recorded in the one thousand year old Alawi canonical text Kitab al-Majmu, includes the phrase “There is no God but Ali.” Another proof can be found in a 19th century text that curses anyone who attributes human rather than divine qualities to Ali, as cited in Yaron Friedman’s The Nusayri-Alawis.

Yet despite these seemingly clear cut pieces of textual evidence, studying writings that are centuries old has its own set of limitations.  After all, how much could one understand about what modern Catholics think from looking at Vatican document on theology from one thousand years ago? Also, it is important to recognize that the majority of the modern voices claiming that Alawis deify Ali do not emanate from Alawis themselves.

In the past century, there have been some efforts to bridge the Muslim-Alawi divide.

First, in 1936 the Sunni Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, declared the Alawis to be Muslim in order to advance his pan-Arab agenda and counter the “divide and rule”strategy of the colonial powers. Despite Husayni’s efforts to promote Arab unity, however, his fatwa failed to address the charges of heresy due to religious differences mentioned by earlier authorities. Nevertheless, after Husayni’s fatwa, Alawis declared that they were indeed Shia Muslims, though they had yet to be acknowledged as such by Shia authorities.

Second, in 1972 Shia cleric Ayatollah Hasan Mahdi al-Shirazi declared “ the Alawis and the Shia are two synonymous words.” President Hafez al-Assad of Syria needed this sense of Islamic legitimacy to pacify the Sunni majority in Syria which questioned the government’s religious credentials. In exchange, Shirazi enjoyed the protection of the Syrian government during his exile in Syria and Lebanon.

Third, Assad’s religious identity was again called into question when the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria expressed outrage that he did not include “Islam is the religion of the state” in the constitution.  Assad tried to pacify the Brotherhood by amending the document to guarantee that the president of Syria would be a Muslim, but it was not enough to quiet them.  In response to the growing unrest, renowned Shia cleric Musa al-Sadr reaffirmed the Assad regime’s Muslim credentials in 1973.  al-Sadr  delivered a speech claiming the two sects were “partners in distress, since they [Alawis] were persecuted like Shia.”  The cleric was rewarded with a position as Assad’s confidant and political ally.

The religious decrees of the 20th century including Alawis within the Islamic tradition were clearly motivated by the self-interest of the religious figures who issued them.  Yet, they have failed to address the accusations of heresy that have plagued the Alawite minority for most of their history and formed the basis of all pre-1900 fatwas. Indeed, the later fatwas can hardly make invisible the gaps on important ritualistic issues dividing Shia and Alawis, like the mandates to abstain from alcohol and for women to veil.   

However, even if Alawis and mainstream Shia had managed to bridge the religious gaps between them, that would hardly translate into a natural alliance. After all, would one assume that Jews and Muslims would be fighting on the same side in any conflict with non-Abrahamic religions simply because the two largely share a religious tradition?

If anything, regimes based on similar ideologies in the Middle East have often seen each other as competitors.  As Mohammad Attaie noted, though the regimes in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Hafez al-Assad’s Syria shared secular Baathist underpinnings they were arch-nemeses. In fact, it was this sense competition for the mantle of leadership that caused Syria to support Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.  Likewise, the Alawi self-referencing as Shiat al-haqq or “the true Shia” would likely irritate the mainstream Shia in Teheran.

Recognizing that there is limited theological affinity between Alawis and Shia, and that such similarities could be the cause of tension rather than the basis for an alliance, the question of why Iran has so strongly identified with the Alawi Assad regime requires an answer beyond “sectarianism.” Rather, it is shared strategic aims have sustained the relationship for 35 years, including mutual interests in seeing Saddam Hussein’s Iraq weakened, thwarting American influence in the region, fighting against Sunni radicalism, and strengthening Hezbollah.  After pouring in billions of dollars and establishing a military presence in Syria, it is clear Teheran’s strong positioning in Damascus rather than its religious affiliation with the regime guarantee close ties between the countries for years to come.

Ari Heistein is a Research Associate in the Middle East Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

—-

Related video added by Juan Cole:

PressTV: ” Ali Akbar Velayati: Iran-Syria ties very strategic”