Ithna’ashari or Twelver Shi’a Muslims are the largest group of Shi’a Muslims worldwide. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Syrian Shi’a Muslims were marginalized among the pan-Arab nationalists, despite their involvement in the establishment of the Ba’ath Party and the political importance of the Alawis. Sunni opposition to the Ba’ath Party in Syria has emphasized sectarian differences, and views Syria as a Sunni nation where Shi’a Muslims are distrusted outsiders. While the Ba’ath government has largely appealed to Sunni political consciousness within Syria and provides state funds to politically quiescent Sunni ‘ulama, at the same time, Hafez al-Assad shrewdly forged alliances with Shi’a Muslims within the region, both by securing religious legitimacy from Shi’a leaders and by supporting Shi’a groups in Lebanon.
While there has been a longstanding Shi’a presence in Syria, it became an increasingly important center for Shi’a thought over the course of the 20th century. During the 1950s, Najafi scholars established the Jafari Society, a learning center based in Latakia, with the intention of educating the Alawi population there as well as lobbying for official government recognition of Twelver Shi’ism, achieved in 1952. In the 1970s, an influx of Shi’a students who had been expelled from the city of Nafaj, Iraq, settled in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zaynab, the location of a shrine to the sister of Imam Hussein, a revered figure in Shi’ism. There they developed a thriving community and established numerous educational foundations. With Sunni opposition to the Ba’ath government and a 1973 fatwa from respected Shi’a cleric Musa al-Sadr claiming the Alawis as Shi’a Muslims, Syria’s growing Shi’a population formed a natural alliance with Hafez al-Assad. As a result, Sayyida Zaynab became an important educational and pilgrimage site, the latter particularly as a result of Iranian influence and funding.
In the current Syrian conflict, these alliances have manifested as Shi’a support for the Assad regime. Shi’a fears of a Sunni Islamist opposition have mobilized support in Syria and within the region, including combat support from Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Sources
M. Kramer, “Syria’s Alawis and Shiism,” in Shiism, Resistance and Revolution, ed. M. Kramer (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), pp. 237–54.
Laurence Louer. Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
Nasr, Vali. The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Shape the Future (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2007).