Ahmad Badr al-Din Hassoun (b. 1949) is the current Grand Mufti of Syria and has held the government-appointed position since 2005 following the death of Ahmed al-Kuftaro. He was previously the Mufti of Aleppo. In his role he has been a close political adviser and ally to Bashar al-Assad.

Akram al-Hawrani (1912-1996) was a Syrian politician and Arab nationalist. He held the joint vice-presidency of the United Arab Republic (1958-1959) and was founder of the Arab Socialist Party, which merged with the Ba’ath Party in 1952.

The Arab Socialist Party was founded by Akram al-Hawrani, who championed anti-feudal agrarian reform and land redistribution in his home province of Hama. It merged with the Ba’ath Party in 1952 to form the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party.

Sunni Arabs arrived in Syria in the 7th century with the wave of early Islamic expansion from the Arabian peninsula, and established the Umayyad Dynasty centered in Damascus. They form the dominant ethnic majority in contemporary Syria.

The Armenian Apostolic Church is an Eastern Orthodox Church and the second largest Orthodox tradition in Syria. The Church was founded in Armenia where Christianity was established as the state religion in the year 301 CE. With the fall of the Armenian kingdoms in the 11th century and the rise of the Safavids in Iran in the 16th century, Armenians immigrated to cities throughout Anatolia and the Levant. In 1742, Rome officially recognized a separate Armenian Catholic Church and over the next two centuries, Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries proselytized among members of the Armenian Apostolic Church. This led to the official recognition of separate categories for Armenian Apostolic, Armenian Catholic, and Armenian Protestant Christians in the Ottoman millet system. The Armenian Apostolic Church remains the national church of Armenia.

Armenians have had a long presence in Syria; the community was concentrated in Aleppo where Armenians excelled in arts, crafts, and trade. The 1915 Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey brought around 100,000 refugees into Syria, mostly to Aleppo, and shifted the Catholicosate to Aleppo and then to Lebanon (a second Catholicosate is based in Etchmiadzin, Armenia). The rise of the Ba’ath party in Syria undermined traditional hierarchies within the Syrian Armenian community, which was part of a wider transnational community closely linked to Armenians in Lebanon. With the recent Syrian conflict, thousands of Syrian-born Armenians have fled to Armenia.

Sources

Theo Maarten van Lint, "Armenian Apostolic Church," The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, Vol. I, ed. George T. Kurian, (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 114-120.

Alia Malek, "Syrian Armenians Seek Shelter in Armenia," The New York Times, December 11, 2012, accessed June 6, 2013.

Nicolas Migliorino, (Re)Constructing Armenia in in Lebanon and Syria: Ethno-Cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008).

The al-Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party is a political party founded upon the Arab political philosophy known as Ba’athism, which promotes secular Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, pan-Arabism, and militarism. Ba’athism developed in resistance to European colonialism in the Arab world, and understood colonialism as the root cause of problems in the Arab world. The Ba’athist movement gained prominence in Syria in the 1940s, championed by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din Bitar. The Ba’ath Party was officially founded in Damascus in 1947. A 1963 Ba’athist coup established the Ba’ath Party as the only legal political party in Syria. Ba’athist General Hafez al-Assad seized power in a military coup in 1970.

In the early years of Hafez al-Assad’s rule he declared that the Ba’ath party has unique status as “…the leader of state and society” which has served to virtually outlaw all other political parties. The slogan of the Ba’ath party is “unity, freedom and socialism” and represents well its early aspirations to shape an explicitly secular pan-Arab movement that is independent from the West. Diverse religious and ethnic communities found the secular emphasis compelling, particularly after their experience of sociopolitical marginalization under the Ottoman Empire, and economically vulnerable groups were hopeful that the socialist platform would lead to a more equitable distribution of wealth, goods and services. Hafez al-Assad initially embraced dimensions of the socialist platform but following the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent diminishment of the credibility of Marxism, he adopted economic liberalization in a piecemeal fashion through the 1980s and 1990s. When Bashar al-Assad rose to power in 2000 he promoted full-scale neoliberal reform without any welfare balances which led to an increase in poverty, unemployment, and income disparity. Protestors of the regime are calling for both economic and political reform.

The secular platform of the party has also been compromised. In the early years of his presidency, Hafez al-Assad successfully resisted pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunnis to declare Syria an Islamic Republic. He did, however, include a constitutional requirement that the president be a Muslim. (Some Islamists challenged his legitimacy as a “heretical” Muslim but a fatwa declaring that Alawis are Shi’a issued by influential Shi’a cleric Musa al-Sadr in 1973 settled that controversy). Religion was only marginally invoked during most of Hafez al-Assad’s leadership but this, too, changed significantly under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad. Following the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent portrayal in the region of the West as waging a war against Islam, the Syrian government promoted an increase in pious Muslim religious expression and representation. In spite of the “secular” definition of the government as formalized in the Constitution, Assad increased public assertions representing Syria as a Muslim nation with slogans such as “Syrians Bow Only to God” and “Oh Syria, God Protects You” plastered on billboards and pronounced in public ceremonies. In a similar vein, pictures of Bashar al-Assad kissing the Qur’an were widely publicized and disseminated.

In a distinct but related effort, the government sponsored the ubiquitous promotion (and eventual containment) of Shi’a Twelver religious expression in public as a way to strengthen ties with Iran and to promote pluralist conceptions of Islam within Syria that could simultaneously challenge the hegemony of Sunni portrayals. In one dramatic example, the reenactment of the Taz’iyeh rituals commemorating the battle of Karbala were permitted to be performed in the courtyard of the (Sunni) Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. When sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shi’is in Iraq escalated in the mid 2000s, the Syrian government reversed its policy of promoting Shi’a representations and, instead, sought to contain them.

The future of the Ba’ath party in Syria is questionable given its strong association with the Assads and its evolution away from many of its core principles and values.

Sources

Richard Edwards, “Baathism,” The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History, ed. Spencer Tucker (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2008), pp. 184-185.

Paulo Pinto, “’Oh Syria, God Protects You’: Islam as Cultural Idiom under Bashar al-Assad, Middle East Critique, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2011), pp. 189-205.

Andrew Lee Butters, “Clerical Era: Syria gets Religion,” The New Republic (October 2, 2006), pp. 16-18.

The Baha’i Faith was founded in 19th century Iran by Mirza Hosayn-Ali Nuri Baha’ullah (d. 1892) and developed from Babism, an Iranian messianic movement, and Shi’a Shaikhism. Baha’is acknowledge numerous prophets, including Muhammad, Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, and most recently Baha’ullah. The Baha’i Faith is monotheistic and universalist, recognizing the truth claims of other religious traditions. Followers believe in progressive revelation, such that each age has its prophet and revelations specific to that time. Both Sunni and Shi’a Muslims consider Baha’is to be heretical, and in Iran they face sometimes severe oppression. It is an international faith, with small communities in most countries.

Baha’i missionaries arrived in Syria in 1892 but failed to gain significant numbers of followers. Overall, the Syrian Baha’i community was largely made up of Iranian expatriates who had fled persecution in their native country. As of 2008, the Syrian Baha’i community numbered around 430 adherents.

Sources

J. Gordon Melton, “Syria,” Religions of the World, Second Edition: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010), pp. 2788-2793.

M. Warburg, “Baha’i Faith,” The World’s Religions: Continuities and Transformations, eds. Peter Clarke and Peter Beyer (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), pp. 39-54.

Bashar al-Assad (b. 1965) has been the President of Syria since the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000. He serves as the regional secretary of the Syrian Branch of the Ba’ath Party.

Christians make up approximately 8% of the Syrian population, and include the Eastern Catholic Churches (Melkite/Greek Catholic, Armenian, Syrian, Maronite, Latin and Chaldean), Orthodox Churches (Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, the ), and Protestants.

The Druze are an ethnoreligious group concentrated in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel with around one million adherents worldwide. The Druze follow a millenarian offshoot of Isma’ili Shi'ism. Followers emphasize Abrahamic monotheism but consider the religion as separate from Islam.

The Druze are named for Muhammad al-Darazi, an Isma’ili missionary from Persia who lived in Fatimid Cairo, and was propagated by Hamza ibn Ali. The Druze believe in the imamate of al-Hakim ibn Amr Allah (d. 1021), the sixth caliph of Egypt's Isma’ili Fatimid Dynasty. Though the Fatimids (909-1171) were Isma’ili Shi'a, al-Hakim established a new faith in which he was the incarnation of God. Druze believe that al-Hakim, who disappeared in 1021, will reappear to establish justice and global peace. They believe in five divine messengers, in Abrahamic prophets including Jesus and Muhammad, and minor prophets including Ali Ibn Abi Talib, Plato, and Socrates. In addition to belief in core principles such as rejection of other religions and maintenance of Druze secrets, the Druze believe in reincarnation. The community has historically been closed to outsiders—including converts—for both social and political reasons and which has resulted in strong community solidarity. 

In the 12th century a Druze principality took form in Lebanon, though the Druze did not become politically influential until they allied with the Ottoman Turks against the Egyptian Mamluks in the 16th century. The Druze expansion that followed led to conflict with the Ottomans and the Druze fled to smaller areas within the Levant, including to Syria's Hawran region, known as the Jabal al-Duruz or Druze Mountain. While the Druze of Lebanon and Syria maintained communal and transregional ties, each developed a distinct character with Syria's Druze more isolated than their Lebanese coreligionists.

Political manipulations by European and Ottoman powers led to sometimes violent tensions between the Druze and their Christian neighbors, including the 1860 war between Druze and Christians during which dispossessed Druze farmers rose against their French-supported Maronite landlords. This led to the deaths of an estimated 12,000 Christians and to French intervention under Napoleon III, a presence that would continue through to Syrian independence. The Ottomans, and later the Ba'ath Party, viewed the Druze as a potential separatist minority, a factor that was used to the advantage of the French, British, and later Israeli powers.

The Druze were not active participants in Arab nationalist movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, nor did they support French rule in the Levant on account of French alliances with the Maronites. Overall, they preferred an alliance with the British. Druze uprisings against the French in the 1920's were widely successful and received the support and admiration of regional Arab nationalists.

Following independence, the Druze were wary of participation in what was ultimately a Sunni Muslim government. Likewise, the government was wary of the Druze due to the perception that they supported Israel during the 1948 Israeli-Palestinian war. Israeli Druze have been strong supporters of the state and many have served in the Israeli Defense Force. Syrian Druze officers were active in the military coup leading to the ascendancy of the Ba'ath Party in the 1960s and the Druze subsequently enjoyed economic development in their region in the years following.

Druze families have been prominent in Lebanese politics in the 20th century. Lebanese Druze leader Walid Junblat, son of prominent Druze political activist Kamal Junblat, has been a key figure in the Lebanese anti-Syria movement, accusing the Syrian government of assassinating his father in 1977. Walid Junblat has allied himself with Syrian opposition figures and has called for a United States occupation of Syria.

In the current Syrian conflict the Druze have largely remained neutral. Fears of persecution from Islamist Sunni rebels (who view the Druze as heretical) and from a potential Sunni-dominated opposition government have discouraged widespread participation in the opposition movement. However, Druze have participated on both sides of the struggle, including armed combat alongside rebels against the Syrian government.

Sources

Babak Dehghanpisheh, "Syria's Druze minority is shifting its support to the opposition," The Washington Post, February 8, 2013, accessed June 6, 2013,

Edmund Ghareeb, "Druze," The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007), pp. 252-254.

"Druze," The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, ed. John Esposito (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 70.

There are six Christian Eastern Catholic churches in Syria, in order of size: Melkite (Greek Catholic), Armenian, Syrian, Maronite, Latin and Chaldean. The Syrian Uniate and Roman Catholic Churches were favored by the French, themselves Catholic.

Demographically, Syrian Catholics were concentrated in areas where the French were also located, facilitating regular communication between the two groups. Syrian Catholics benefited economically and educationally from the French occupation, which bred tensions between Syrian Catholic and Orthodox Christian communities. As a result, Syrian Catholics, who for many generations attempted to distinguish themselves ethnically from Arabs, were more likely to identify with the French colonial powers and tended to favor limited nationalism under the leadership of European sponsorship, while the Syrian Orthodox communities preferred full secular nationalism independent of France. Syrian Christians are divided in the current Syrian conflict. Some support Assad in fear that an opposition government will be Islamist in nature, while others strongly oppose the Assad regime.

Sources

Phillip Allen, "Early Arab Nationalism and the Orthodox of Syria: A Comparative Approach to the Sectarian Environment," The Arab Studies Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Fall 1993), pp. 43-45.

World Christian Encyclopedia, 2nd. Ed., Vol. I, eds. David Barrett et. al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 719-722.

The Greek Orthodox Church consists of four patriarchates; Syrian Greek Orthodox Christians are under the episcopal jurisdiction of the See of Antioch. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch has been based in Damascus since the 14^th century, though membership is concentrated in Aleppo, Homs, and Latakia. Its membership is majority Arab and the liturgy is in Arabic. The current Patriarch of the Church is John Yazigi, elected in 2012.

The economic policies of the French colonial powers in Syria disproportionately favored middle and upper class Christian—especially Catholic—and Jewish populations, which stirred resentment between religious groups and between Christian sects. In 1923, the Turkish government was engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Greeks and Syriac Orthodox Christians from Turkey, many of whom fled into Syria. The French and Greek Orthodox Church settled refugees in the Homs-Hama area, deepening the economic strain on the Sunni Muslim community there. Violence between Christians and Muslims erupted in 1924 and exacerbated their already tense relations.

Like other Syrian Christians exposed to western nationalism in the missionary schools, members of the Greek Orthodox Church were inspired by nationalist thought and actively supported Arab nationalist movements. Syrian Christians were drawn to the idea of secular Arab nationalism in part as a means of ending institutionalized preference for Sunni Islam, and to resist colonialism. While Catholic Uniate Christians, such as the Maronites, were a majority in some urban areas of Syria and Lebanon, Orthodox Christians were dispersed across the region and represented a small minority in each city. Colonial and post-colonial governments favored the Uniate churches (for example, in Lebanon the position of President was reserved for a Maronite) while Orthodox Christians expected to continue to hold minority status, making secular nationalism a more appealing political framework.

Sources

N.E. Bou-Nacklie, "Tumult in Syria's Hama in 1925: The Failure of a Revolt," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 33, No. 2 (April, 1998), pp. 273-289.

David D. Commins, Historical Dictionary of Syria, (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2004).

"Syria," World Christian Encyclopedia, 2nd. Ed., Vol. I, eds. David Barrett et. al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). pp. 719-722.

Hafez al-Assad (1930-2000) served as President of Syria from 1971-2000, and leader of the Syrian Ba'ath Party. An Alawi, Assad supported secularism, Arab nationalism, and Arab socialism.

Imam Musa al-Sadr (1928-1978) was an Iranian-Lebanese Shi’a religious leader. As head of the Supreme Islamic Shi’ite Council in 1973, he issued a highly influential fatwa recognizing Syria’s Alawis as Shi’a Muslims.

Muslims make up about 90% of the Syrian population, including Sunnis and Shi’a Muslims, and encompass a wide variety of beliefs and practices, including varieties of Sufism. The Syrian Constitution requires that the President be Muslim, although there is no official religion of the Syrian state. As of 2004, Sunni Muslims made up about 74%, while Shi’a groups constituted about 16%. The Syrian government recognizes the Yezidi religious minority as Islamic.

Jabhat al-Nusra is a Sunni Islamist jihadist militia with affiliations to al-Qaeda currently active in the armed opposition to the Syrian government. The United Nations and the United States have designated Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist organization. Its leader is Abu Mohammed al-Jawani.

Syria has had well-established Jewish communities since at least the Roman period. These have included a community of Arab Jews, referred to as Musta’arabi or Mizrahi, from the Roman period, Sephardic Jews who settled in Syria following their forced migration from Spain in 1492, and Jewish merchants from Europe. The largest centers of Jewish life were in Aleppo, Damascus, and in the largely Kurdish town of Qamishli. The Aleppo Codex, the oldest manuscript of the Bible completed in in the year 920, was housed in Aleppo from the 15^th century until 1947. A portion of the codex survives today in Jerusalem in the Israel Museum. Jews came to Syria for different reasons at different points in history, including for Syria’s proximity to Jerusalem, for economic opportunity, and for the largely peaceful relations between Syria’s diverse religious and ethnic groups.

In the late 19^th century, European business interests disproportionately favored Christian and Jewish merchants while disfavoring the Muslim middle class. Ottoman "Tanzimat" reforms during the same period contributed to Muslim-Christian tensions which triggered Christian immigration. The construction of the Suez Canal resulted in the disintegration of overland trade routes, and especially those from Persia which some Jewish businesses were heavily invested in. With increasing import of European goods during the industrial revolution, local crafts production was also severely undermined. These economic changes led to a wave of Jewish emigration to Egypt and Lebanon and further contributed to ethnic and religious tension.            

During the interwar period which saw the early years of markedly anti-Zionist Arab nationalist movements, many Jews emigrated to the United States, Latin America, and Israel. Anti-Jewish sentiment increased in the years leading to complete Syrian independence from France in 1946, erupting in 1947 over the UN proposal to partition Israel into separate Arab and Jewish states. Riots in the Jewish quarters of Aleppo resulted in the destruction of Jewish homes and businesses, including Aleppo's Great Synagogue where the Aleppo Codex was stored. During this period the Syrian government enacted numerous discriminatory laws including a 1948 ban on the sale of Jewish property, the freezing of Jewish bank accounts in 1953, and a 1964 ban on Jewish travel and emigration. The travel ban was lifted by Hafez Al-Assad in 1992 during his "re-election" campaign, permitting families to reunite outside of Syria. In 1947, the Syrian Jewish population numbered around 15,000, declining to 5,300 in 1957, to 1,400 in the late 1980's, to around 250 in 2005. The small community of about 100 Jews remaining in Damascus has recently fled on account of the ongoing crisis.The largest contemporary Syrian Jewish community is in Brooklyn, New York. 

Sources

Steven L. Meyers, “Syrian Jews Find Haven in Brooklyn,” The New York Times, May 23, 1992, accessed June 6, 2013.

Judy F. Carr and Moshe Ma'oz, "Syria," Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd. Ed., Vol. 19, eds. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (Farmington Hills: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006), pp. 388-397.

Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider, The Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2010).

United States Department of State, “2012 Report on International Religious Freedom - Syria,” May 20, 2013, accessed June 14, 2013.

Image Credits:

"Jewish Family in Damascus, 1910," www.SyrianHistory.com, from Wikimedia Commons.

Syrian Kurds are part of a regional transnational Kurdish population located in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, 160,000 of which are located in Syria. The Kurdish population is predominantly Sunni Muslim with a Yezidi minority.

The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic Church, or Uniate Church, that follows the Roman Catholic Church. It was founded by the 4th century Syriac monk St. Maron (d. 410 CE) and grew out of the Monastery of Bait Maron in the 5th century, spreading throughout the Levant. Mass is held in Syriac-Aramaic and in Arabic. As a result of Maronite ties to Rome, the Maronite community has traditionally been isolated from the Eastern Orthodox churches and among Arabs. However, Maronite resistance to the Latinized mass has isolated Maronites among other Catholic churches as well. The Maronite population in Syria is far smaller than in Lebanon, where Maronites have exerted considerable political influence from as early as the 16th century.

Sources

Christopher George Dekki, "Maronites." The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, Vol. III, ed. George T. Kurian (Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2011).

Contributed by Carleigh Beriont, Harvard Divinity School

Michel Aflaq (1910-1989) was a Syrian philosopher and Arab nationalist whose ideas provided the foundation for Ba’athist political thought. With Salah al-Din Bitar, he cofounded the Syrian Ba’ath Party. Aflaq was a Greek Orthodox Christian, educated first in Greek Orthodox Schools and later in Paris at the Sorbonne. He became a secondary school history teacher upon returning to Syria. Although early on he was influenced by communist ideology, he later rejected it because of its association with Europe and colonialism. Instead he believed that nationalism should be the primary unifying agent within a state. Aflaq belonged to a generation of intellectuals whose ideas were deeply impacted by happenings in post-WWII Europe and the Middle East, such as the Syrian uprising against the French that took place in 1925.

Critical of colonialism and subsequent “radical nationalism” that purported Arab superiority, Aflaq championed an ideology that combined Arab nationalism and socialism. Wary of the divisive potential of Islam within a country, Aflaq believed that Islam should be subordinate to secular Arab nationalism. While he acknowledged the importance of Islam to Arab culture, he believed that Arab nationalism should take precedence over Islam.

Aflaq espoused three fundamental beliefs: unity, freedom, and socialism, which became the focus of the Ba’ath movement. According to Aflaq, these three objectives were inextricable and imperative to achieve pan-Arab unity, the ultimate goal of the Ba’ath movement. Aflaq believed that freedom, beyond overcoming poverty and political repression, required the social, political, and economic unification of the Arab people.

In order for this liberation to take place, however, the Arabs needed to free themselves from the power of the political, religious, and economic elites and restructure the entire society around the ideas of Arab nationalism and socialism. This structural transformation, or inqilab, that Aflaq believed was necessary for unity, freedom, and socialism to prevail in Syria and the Arab world had three prerequisites: first, people had to accept that the present reality in Syria and the Arab world needed to be radically changed; second, this feeling of responsibility had to have a strong moral foundation; and third, there had to exist a real conviction that this transformation was possible at this time in history. Aflaq acknowledged that establishing unity, freedom, and socialism within a society would be a long struggle, especially without the aid of military force.

Although Aflaq and Bitar saw themselves at the forefront of the Arab nationalist movement, initially they focused on disseminating their ideas and educating people using pamphlets and essays rather than engaging in politics. Although, Bitar convinced Aflaq that they should form a political party in order to engage a wider audience, it wasn’t until Akram al-Hawrani and the Arab Socialist Party merged with the Ba’ath Party in 1952 that the ideology promoted by Aflaq became a true political force.

Aflaq was known as the philosopher of the Ba’ath Party. For over two decades, The Road to Renaissance (Fi Sabil al-Ba’ath), a collection of essays written by Michel Aflaq in 1940, remained the Ba’ath Party’s central doctrinal text. Among Aflaq’s other important works are The Battle for One Destiny (Ma’rakat al-Masir al-Wahid), published in 1958, and The Struggle Against Distorting the Movement of Arab Revolution (Al-Nidal did Tashweeh Harakat al-Thawra al-Arabiyya), published in 1975.

Sources

Devlin, John F. "The Baath Party: rise and metamorphosis." The American Historical Review, (1991): 1396-1407.

Kaylani, Nabil M. "The Rise of the Syrian Ba ‘th, 1940–1958: Political Success, Party Failure." International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 3, No. 1 (1972): 3-23.

Mozaffari, Mehdi, and Michel Vale. "Authority in Islam." International Journal of Politics, Vol. 16, No. 4 (1986): i-127.

Perlmutter, Amos. "From Obscurity to Rule: The Syrian Army and the Ba'th Party." The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 4 (1969): 827-845.

Torrey, Gordon H. "The Ba'th: Ideology and Practice." Middle East Journal, Vol. 23, No. 4 (1969): 445-470.

Image Credits:

"Baath Party founder Michel Aflaq in the late 1930s," The Online Museum of Syrian History, from Wikimedia Commons.

The Millet System refers to the Ottoman administration of separate religious communities that acknowledged each community’s authority in overseeing its own communal affairs, primarily through independent religious court systems and schools.

Muhammad Amin al-Husayni (1895-1974) was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (1921-1948) and a Palestinian nationalist leader who worked to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Al-Husayni attended the 1919 Pan-Syrian Congress in Damascus, where he supported the creation of a nationalist Syrian Arab state that would encompass Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine, then later went on to support an individual Palestinian state.

Sources

Michael Hall, “Haj Amin al-Husseini,” The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History, ed. Spencer Tucker (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2008), pp. 463-464.

Mustafa al-Siba’i (1915-1964) was a prominent Syrian politician who founded the Islamic Socialist Front in 1949, a political organization modeled after the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Educated at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, Siba’i served as Dean of the Faculty of Theology at Damascus University in 1940 and served in the Syrian Parliament from 1949-1951.

Sources

Sami Moubayed. Steel and Silk: Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900-2000 (Seattle: Cune Press, 2006).

American Protestant missionaries arrived in Syria in 1848 drawn to the Levant by the emotional resonance of the Holy Land, which figured prominently in American Protestant thought, and by a belief that the spread of American ideals could contribute to social progress in other nations. The early 19th century saw the Great Awakening, a Protestant American revivalist movement that spurred missionary work under the aegis of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM).

Protestant missionaries in Syria were met with hostility from other Christians. The Ottoman government did not formally recognize Protestantism, and early missionaries often found themselves without institutional support. Missionaries themselves added to tensions within the wider Christian community by being unwilling to accept the legitimacy of other Christian rites, whether Orthodox or Catholic. The Maronite Patriarch successfully requested that the Ottoman Sultan prohibit the distribution of Protestant materials and threatened to excommunicate any member of the Maronite church who offered shelter to Protestant missionaries; the other Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches then did the same. The Ottoman ban on proselytizing to Muslims shifted missionary focus to non-Muslim communities, which, under Ottoman law, included Alawis, Druze, and Shi’a minorities within Syria.

The ABCFM was joined by the North American Reformed Presbyterian Mission and the Danish Mission to the Orient, and the three combined to form the National Evangelical Synod of Syria. Overall, the Protestant missionaries met with little success despite resolute efforts among the Druze. Following the Druze-Maronite conflict in 1860, disillusioned American Protestant missionaries invested in secular education over proselytization. The Protestant Syrian College was founded in 1863 and was renamed the American University in Beirut in 1920. The American University in Beirut originally offered classes in Arabic, and provided an environment in which students explored their Arab identity, fostering an emergent pan-Arab nationalism.

All foreign missionaries were expelled following the 1963 Syrian coup d’état but they regained footholds in the following decades. Since 2000, the Syrian government, at the behest of Syrian Orthodox and Catholic leaders, has cracked down on unregistered Protestant churches and proselytization, largely performed by Christian relief organizations working among Iraqi and Sudanese refugees.

Sources

Necati Alkan, "Fighting for the Nuṣayrī Soul: State, Protestant Missionaries and the ʿAlawīs in the Late Ottoman Empire," Die Welt des Islam, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2012), pp. 23-50.

Caesar Farah, "Protestantism and British Diplomacy in Syria," International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (July 1976), pp. 321-344.

Ussama Makdisi, "Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity," The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 3 (June 1997), pp. 680-713.

"Syria," World Christian Encyclopedia, 2nd. Ed., Vol. I, eds. David Barrett et. al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). pp. 719-722.

"Syria's Evangelical Christians: Don't try too Hard," The Economist, November 18, 2010, accessed June 6, 2013.

Image Credits:

"A Syrian Christian Mission School, 1936," courtesy of Mike Leavenworth.

Contributed by Rachel Foran, MTS Student, Harvard Divinity School

Salafism (al-Salafiyya) is a global purist movement of Islamic reform, which seeks to regenerate Islam by a return to the doctrine of the salaf (pious forefathers; companions of the Prophet). Salafism is not a monolithic, homogenous movement. Although most Salafis share a consensus on what constitutes Islamic theology and Islamic law, within the movement exists a spectrum of views on how best to politically engage with society. Salafi political engagement is typically understood as having any of four manifestations: (1) Salafi Jihadis, who demand violent action against the existing political order; (2) harakis, who advocate non-violent political activism; (3) scholastic Salafis, who embody a quietist posture and focus on minor issues of Islamic law, as well as purification and education; and (4) evangelizing Salafis (al-salafiyya al-da`wiyya), who actively call individuals, Muslim and non-Muslim, to the “true” and “pure” Islam.

Salafism emerged in Syria in the late 19th century among a group of reformist-minded ‘ulama, under the leadership of Amir ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri. These reformist scholars were responding to the recent introduction of Western-style reforms in the country, as well as reacting to the widespread growth of a popular form of Sufism and the harnessing of religious orthodoxy by certain Sufi sheikhs in the service of Sultan Abdulhamid II’s regime. The scholars believed that a doctrinally pure Islam, achieved by re-examining Islamic sources (Qur’an and Sunna) through ijtihad (independent exercise of legal judgment and interpretation), would address the Western rationalist challenge.

In their call for a return to the “pious forefathers,” Salafis in Syria discredited and criticized the increasingly popular Sufi tradition, mainly for the tradition’s more mystical, spiritual, and quietist elements. However, the split between a state-coopted Sufism and a state-suppressed Salafism in Syria is not as simple as it is sometimes portrayed. In fact, many of the early Salafis from Syrian cities hailed from an orthodox Sufi background, and they remained loyal to elements of the tradition. The contemporary Salafi-Sufi dynamic also suggests that the two movements are not separable, but instead exist within an interconnected dialogue that has elements of both antagonism and cooperation.

In Syria, extremist Salafi Jihadis procure the most attention in today’s popular media, however, they represent a minor strand within the Syrian Salafi movement. The Assad regime has officially banned any sort of Salafi group in Syria, which is often one of the reasons why Salafis as a whole are understood as being part of the anti-regime extremist opposition. In actually, the reality of the Salafiyya movement, particularly in its many manifestations of political engagement, is much too complex for this simplistic characterization.

Sources

"Salafiyya," Encyclopedia of Islam, s.v Brill Online (2013), accessed October 3, 2013.

Bernard Haykel, “On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action,” Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, ed. Roel Meijer (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 42.

Noah Salomon, “The Salafi Critique of Islamism: Doctrine, Difference and the Problem of Islamic Political Action in Contemporary Sudan,” Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, ed. Roel Meijer (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 147.

Itzchak Weismann, “Between Sufi Reformism and Modernist Rationalism: A Reappraisal of the Origins of the Salafiyya from the Damascene Angle,” Die Welt des Islams, Vol. 41, No. 2 (July 2001), p. 208.

Itzchak Weismann, “The Politics of Popular Religion: Sufis, Salafis, and Muslim Brothers in 20th Century Hamah,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 37, No.1 (Feb 2005), p. 42.

Salah al-Din Bitar (1912-1980) was a Sunni Muslim Syrian politician who supported Arab nationalism. With Michel Aflaq, Bitar cofounded the Syrian Ba’ath Party.

Ithna’ashari or Twelver Shi’a Muslims are the largest group of Shi’a Muslims worldwide. In the 19^th and 20^th 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 20^th 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).

Sufism (tasawwuf) is an Islamic modality that emphasizes self-purification and the attainment of spiritually advanced states through the assumption of specific practices and disciplines, typically through affiliation with a particular brotherhood and its leader, a sheikh. Sufi practices, whether one is officially bound to a brotherhood or not, are widespread in Syria and include visiting the tombs of saints, members of the family of the Prophet Muhammad, or other revered figures and the recitation of litanies (dhikr).

The Naqshbandiyyah

The Naqshbandiyyah is a global Sufi movement named for the 14th century mystic Baha al-Din Naqshband, though adherents trace their lineage back to the successor of the Prophet Muhammad, the Caliph Abu Bakr. It is distinguished from other Sufi movements by adherents’ silent recitation of invocations, referred to as dhikr. The tradition was strongly influenced by Sheikh Diya al-Din Khalid (d. 1827), whose followers are referred to as the Khalidiyyah. Sheikh Khalid sought to reform Sunni Islam by balancing strict adherence to Islamic law with mysticism, while resisting the encroachment of Salafism. As a result, the Naqshbandiyyah were widely popular throughout the Ottoman Empire and enjoyed support from the Ottoman Sultanate.

With the rise of the Ba’ath party, Syrian Naqshbandi leadership split on the question of whether to lend support or to join the Islamist opposition. Khalidi Naqshbandi leader and Syrian Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmed Kuftaro (d. 2004) supported Hafez al-Assad and the Ba’ath regime. Subsequently, the Kuftariyyah Naqshbandis emerged as Syria's most influential Sufi brotherhood. Ahmed Kuftaro established a network of schools throughout Syria, including the Abu Nour Institute in Damascus, and forged relationships with Muslim leaders worldwide. The Abu Nour Institute drew foreign students to Syria who sought a traditional Islamic education, including African American Muslims who received scholarships as a result of a relationship Sheikh Kuftaro cultivated with African American Muslim leader Warith Deen Muhammad. Upon his death, the lineage was passed to his son Ahmed al-Din al-Kuftaro. The success of the Naqshbandiyyah-Khalidiyyah-Kuftariyyah order has been in large part on account of its relationship with the state, and the order has seen significant expansion while other Syrian Sufi orders, including the Qadiriyyah, Shadhiliyyah, Mawlawiyyah, and Rifa'iyyah have either maintained membership or have declined.

The Qadiriyyah

The Qadiriyyah order was founded in 14^th century Damascus, and named posthumously for Baghdadi scholar Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166). It spread across North Africa and the Middle East by the end of the 14^th century, and to West Africa and Southeast Asia by the 19^th century. It is notable for being the first Sufi order to distinctly organize itself around a particular founder; earlier orders linked themselves directly to the Prophet Muhammad. Practices include recitation of invocations and supplications (dhikr), as well as gathering for a weekly hadra, during which adherents collectively and animatedly perform dhikr. Qadiris including Usman Dan Fodio (d. 1819) in Nigeria and Abd al-Qadir al-Jiza’iri (d. 1883) in Algeria were prominent figures in anti-colonial resistance movements.

In Syria, the Qadiriyyah was largely urban and associated with notable families in Damascus and Hama. As with other Sufi brotherhoods in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the Qadiriyyah found itself under increasing pressure by the growing Salafi movement, which considers Sufism heretical, as well as from Western ideologies. The Ba'ath regime has been generally hostile towards Sufi activities, particularly after the 1982 Islamic uprising in Hama, where many members of the leading Qadiri Kaylani family were killed and the brotherhood's lodge destroyed. Overall, the Syrian Qadiriyya has seen a decline in the 20th century while the Naqshbandiyyah, particularly its Kuftariyyah branch, has gained prominence for its orthodox Islamic teachings and sociopolitically advantageous relationship with the Syrian government.

Sources

Cyril Glasse, "Qadirirriyah," in The New Encyclopedia of Islam (New York: Altamira Press, 2001), p. 367.

Bruce Masters, "Naqshbandiyya Order," in Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, eds. Gabor Agoston and Bruce Masters, (New York: Facts on File Inc, 2009), pp. 410-419.

Itzchak Weismann, The Naqshbandiyya: Orthodoxy and Activism in a Worldwide Sufi Tradition, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007).

Itzchak Weismann, “Sufi Brotherhoods in Syria and Israel: A Contemporary Overview,” History of Religions, Vol. 42, No. 4 (May 2004), pp. 303-318.

The Syriac Orthodox Church, sometimes referred to as the Jacobite Church after the 6th century Monophysite Bishop Jacob Baradeus, traces its history to St. Peter’s establishment of his Holy See in Antioch, the capitol of the Roman province of Syria. The Church is presided over by the Patriarch of Antioch, located in Damascus. The majority of the community of Syriac Orthodox Christians exists today in Kerala, India, as an autocephalous Oriental Orthodox church. The Syriac Orthodox Church maintains two major seminaries, one in Syria and one in India. Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, is the liturgical language.

During the Armenian Genocide in 1915, members of the Syriac Orthodox Church inside Turkey were violently displaced. In recent years, Syriac Christians concentrated in northern Syria have found themselves caught between pro-Assad forces, rebel fighters, and Kurdish fighters; many have fled to neighboring Turkey and to the Syriac monasteries of Mardin and Midyat in Tur Abdin, a region in Turkey with historically high numbers of Syriac Orthodox Christians. Syriac authorities have discouraged emigration outside of the region, fearing that already dwindling numbers significantly weaken their connection to the Syriac homeland.

Sources

Betty J. Bailey and Martin J. Bailey, Who Are the Christians in the Middle East? (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2003).

Peter Day, "Syrian Orthodox Church," A Dictionary of Christian Denominations (London: Continuum, 2003), pp. 457-458.

Metropolitan A. Geevargis, "Universal Syriac Orthodox Church," The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity, ed. David Patte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 914-915.

Suzanne Gusten. "Christians Squeezed Out by Violent Struggle in North Syria," The New York Times, February 13, 2013, accessed June 5, 2013.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) was established in 1945-46 by Mustafa al-Sibai, who had studied in Egypt in the 1930s where he grew close to Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and had participated in Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood political activities. The SMB was an active political party following independence and favored Syria becoming an Islamic state. Members were elected to government positions until the secular Ba’ath Party came to power in 1963. In 1964 the SMB was outlawed and its leader Isam al-Attar was exiled.

When Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970, the tensions erupted into violence that was sanctioned, in part, by Sunni SMB members challenging the legitimacy of the Alawi Assad regime. In 1979, SMB members killed over eighty unarmed Alawi cadets at a military training compound in Aleppo, and in 1980 the Assad regime issued Law Number 49 that declared membership in or association with the SMB a capital crime. The SMB continued to function underground but in 1982 the Assad regime launched a major attack on Hama, a SMB stronghold. Tens of thousands of people were killed and SMB members fled the country.

Following exile, Syrian Muslim Brotherhood members forged alliances with secular dissidents who were calling for the establishment of a multiparty democracy based on Islamic law. The National Alliance for the Liberation of Syria was formed in 1982 and in 1990 the National Front for the Salvation of Syria was formed with similar objectives.

In 1996 Ali Sadr al-Din al-Bayanouni was elected as the leader of the SMB and shifted tactics by engaging in secret negotiations with the Syrian government in an attempt to have Law Number 49 rescinded, SMB political prisoners freed, and the right for those in exile to return. When Bashar al-Assad came to power in 2000, he granted some of these requests (freeing hundreds of prisoners and allowing some to return from exile) in keeping with his desire to align with the anti-western movements that were growing in the region.

As a result, the SMB publicly promoted a new political platform that was outlined in the 2004 publication entitled “The Political Project for the Future Syria.” In that document, the SMB supported political reform through the rule of law by promoting nonviolence, democracy, and human rights. They continued to promote enshrining Islam as the official religion of the state, but with a decidedly pluralist focus. In a similar vein, in 2005 the SMB joined other opposition forces to sign the Damascus Declaration, calling for peaceful transformation to democratic rule in concert with the regime.

In 2006, Ali Sadr al-Din al-Bayanouni made a controversial decision to join with the recently defected (2005) vice president Abd al-Halim Khaddam to form the National Salvation Front that called explicitly for regime change. Signers of the Damascus Declaration felt betrayed by the decision to align with such a controversial figure as Khaddam and the SMB responded by asserting that they were aligning with all groups focused on reform. The SMB angered Khaddam and other NSF members three years later, however, when it withdrew from the coalition citing support for Bashar al-Assad given his sponsorship of Hamas in the wake of Israel’s military campaign to occupy the Gaza strip.

In 2010, the SMB elected Riad al-Shaqfa to succeed Bayanouni and many assumed he would take a more militant stance against the regime given that he was active in the resistance movement in the late 1970s. Shaqfa continued to support the regime, however, in an attempt to have the restrictions against the SMB eased. He called upon Turkey’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) to intervene in support of easing restrictions that were still enforced.

The SMB continued to support the regime until the recent uprisings. In the wake of escalating tension, Assad accused the SMB of spearheading the protests. SMB leadership denied this accusation, but acknowledged supporting the opposition in light of the regime’s consistent refusal to overturn Law Number 49 and to allow those in exile to return.

Sources

Ruth Roded, “Lessons by a Syrian Islamist from the life of the Prophet Muhammad,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 42, No. 6 (2007), pp. 855-872.

Yvette Talhamy, “The Muslim Brotherhood Reborn,” Middle East Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring 2012), pp. 33-40.