Alawites in Syria and Alevis in Turkey: Crucial Differences

It's getting horribly dirty in Syria son. Very complicated. Syrian history, in some ways, is even more complicated than say Jerusalem and Israel. For a supposedly holy land, the land has been drenched with blood far too much. 

Anyway, one particular view on the two of many sects in Syria. 

Love

Baba

Alawites in Syria and Alevis in Turkey: Crucial Differences :: Center for Islamic Pluralism
http://www.islamicpluralism.org/2084/alawites-in-syria-and-alevis-in-turkey-crucial

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by Stephen Schwartz
Gatestone Institute
August 17, 2012http://www.islamicpluralism.org/2084/alawites-in-syria-and-alevis-in-turkey-crucial

Prophet Muhammad names Imam Ali as his successor, according to Shia tradition, depicted in a 14th c. CE manuscript -- Image Via Wikimedia Commons.

Sectarian differences, threatening to ensnare Muslims outside Syria's borders, have emerged as a key aspect of the horrific bloodshed there. Since February 2011 the Syrian protestors, mainly following Sunni Islam, have mobilized against the Baathist government of Bashar Al-Assad, as a further chapter in the "Arab Spring." As of the end of July 2012, fatalities in the Syrian fighting are estimated at more than 20,000.

In Syria, Al-Assad's state, military, and irregular militias draw significantly on a small – and, to the world, mysterious – variant of Shia Islam known as Alawites. Of Syria's population of 22 million, at least two million are Alawites; it is common to see them credited with 12 percent of the country's inhabitants. They mostly reside in the Syrian province of Latakia, from the northwest border with Turkey along the Mediterranean coast, and in southern Syria. Alawites are also found in Lebanon, and among Syrians and Lebanese abroad.

In Turkey, northward beyond the uneasy Syrian-Turkish frontier, and concentrated in eastern Anatolia, another Shia sect, the Alevis, comprise, according to many estimates, a quarter of the Turkish census, or 20 million out of 80 million. They include, in addition, a million in the Turkish diaspora in Germany, and still more in the ranks of emigrants from Turkey to the Netherlands and other Western European lands.

It is easy to conflate the Alawites and Alevis. Superficially the Alawites and the Alevis may seem related closely or even identical, especially because of their corresponding names; moreover, about a half million Arab Alawites also live on the Turkish side of the border with Syria.

The Shiite Murders: Pakistan's Army of Jhangvi

That's where it goes off Son. The radicalisation of society. If society stands up and keeps on saying no, then these militants cannot survive. Same thing happens in India. We saw what happened in Northern Ireland where a vicious tit for tat terrorist campaign went on for decades. Still going on a bit. It's a question of hearts and minds but when religion gets inside minds, then the mind rots. So be careful of organised religion kannu. Stay away from the Hindu Christian Muslim organisations or people who profess an undying love for their religion. Or who are proud of their religion. There is only one religion. Be good. Do good. Rest is mere detail. And mostly, the religious idiots aren't good and don't do good. 

Love

Baba

The Shiite Murders: Pakistan's Army of Jhangvi : The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/03/the-shiite-murders-pakistans-army-of-jhangvi.html

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On the morning of February 18th, Dr. Syed Ali Haider, a forty-six-year-old eye surgeon in Lahore, was driving with his eleven-year-old son, Mustafa Haider from their home in upper-middle class Gulberg, a quiet area of mansions on tree-lined avenues, to Aitcheson College, a high school established by the British, which has groomed a few generations of Lahore élite. As Dr. Haider stopped at a traffic light, armed militants on motorbikes surrounded his car, opened fire, and sped away. His driver, who was in the back seat, escaped unhurt and called the police. The doctor had been shot six times in the head and was dead when help arrived; his son, who had been shot once in the head, died later in a hospital.

Dr. Haider came from a much-regarded Lahore family; his relatives were renowned doctors and members of the judiciary. Nobody claimed responsibility for his killing, but everyone in Lahore suspected the Sunni extremist militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has been involved in numerous attacks on Pakistan’s Shia minority. “This is a sectarian killing. Ali had no personal enmity,” Justice Syed Fazal Haider, his uncle and a retired High Court Judge, told the Pakistani press.

A few days after the murders, I met Professor Osama Siddique, who had returned to teach at Lahore University of Management Sciences after getting his doctorate at Harvard Law School. Siddique’s son goes to the same school as the slain boy, and told him, “I knew Mustafa. I used to teach him how to play cricket at school.” Lahore had largely been unaffected by the frequent violence in Pakistan, but the new wave of attacks on the Shia minority, which constitutes around twenty per cent of Pakistan’s population of a hundred and eighty million, had left the city stunned.

A Shi’i laments

I grew up in a Shia town, my wife is from a Shia town and I studied near another Shia town. So have some connections there. And now I am reading Persian. The Shia Sunni split is a deep deep one and instead of improving like the Protestant / Catholic one, its getting deeper and more dangerous. And yes, its primarily due to the Sunni intelligentsia on TV, the various madrassahs and more crucially, the common Sunni who generally seems to have this visceral hatred towards his brothers. You keep on hearing about Shia shrines and Sufi shrines being blown up and being vituperated against. (dont get me wrong, the Shia are no less in their discrimination, think about how they treat the Bahai, plus they do have a strong streak of victimisation and moaning but that’s not an excuse). I know, i know broad generalisation but what the heck.

One of my interests is Islamic Law (mainly in the Islamic Finance area) so I follow this chap. He is a very smart fellow, very erudite and writes powerfully but when I read this, I was taken aback. This was some powerful stuff. I quote:

It could be that I’m just too tired and jet lagged.  Or it could be the sheer exhaustion of having to deal, yet again, with the same exclusionary and alienating anti-Shiism that seems to flow almost naturally from the lips of all too many of my Arab brethren. Or it could be that I have to listen to all of it during our holiest times, when you’d think there would be an extra effort made at mutual respect and tolerance, rather than the reverse. But whatever it is, I’ve had it.  As an “other” in the Arab world (a Shi’i Arab) married to a different other (a Kurdish Iraqi) in that same world, I feel alienated and abandoned, and I have decided to give my frustrations voice.  There remains to us no place for the “others”, with or without an Arab spring. ….

You just have to assume for these purposes that Israel is horrible because it is a Jewish state that discriminates against Arabs, which is different than an Arab state that regards vast numbers of its own citizens as Persians and Persians as unfit for equal citizenship in their societies.  Make sense?  Of course not, so let’s move on.) …..

I suppose it is too much to expect much help from religious leaders when the general trends among educated and poorly educated, native and abroad alike, are so depressingly similarly bigoted.  But in any case it isn’t there.  Yusuf Qaradawi is more than happy to fan the flames of sectarian hatred for more television time, perfectly happy to abandon Bahrain’s Shi’a and talk seriously of democracy in Syria or Egypt.  He lies unchallenged, Yusuf says what the masses want to hear, and it’s pretty clear they want to hear this.  I used to regard his pronouncements with some detached bemusement, one day it’s okay to kill American soldiers in Iraq, the next it’s okay to be a Muslim American soldier in Afghanistan.  What day of the week is it?  I can tell you if it’s okay to kill Jewish children according to the Great Shaykh. It was a mistake to be so accommodating to Yusuf the shameless demagogue, his complete lack of scruples even as to human life deserved more criticism than I delivered.  A prostitute exercises more discrimination than Yusuf Qaradawi, with due apologies to the prostitutes for comparing them to such a detestable man…..

and then the closure was just straight.

But today is the day of Ashura, our sacred holy day, the day of the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson, and after all that has occurred, and in great physical and psychic exhaustion, I wish to give license to my heart and not my head, for just this day, just this once, so you know how we,the others in the Arab midst, feel.  Here’s what I think today, or feel rather, straight from the heart.

Tyranny or democracy, it’s always the same in the Arab world.  You won’t accept us, you won’t even make an effort to see the world through our eyes.  You demand loyalty and offer no tolerance. You ask for support, and abandon us or are silent when our children our killed.  When you come to accept the others, and all the others, Jew and Christian, Shi’i and Druze, black and Berber, when you hear an insult as against a Shi’i on his holy day you take it as an insult to you, when you see a church bombed, you take it as a mosque bombed, when some modicum of mutual respect, honor and tolerance reaches or even just perceptibly registers somehow in civil discourse, penetrates even one tenth of a millimeter, give us all a call, we’d love to join in. Until then, go fuck yourselves.

Your faithful Persian,

I guess he wont be sending Christmas Cards to the Sunni Arabs then . Happy Ashura…

Saudi Mufti: Execute Ahmadinejad

My sister forwarded this to me. This is just bizarre. And there is some irony as well as poetic justice in here. The people who gave the fatwa on Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Versus are themselves accused of blasphemy and have a death fatwa put on them. I quote:

Saudi Mufti: Execute Ahmadinejad

Yousef bin Abdallah Al-Ahmad, a mufti from Al-Imam University in Riyadh, said in a fatwa that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be executed, following his June 14 accusation that several of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad were heretics.

Source: Islamlight.net, June 17, 2009

I can well see a nice little fight brewing up again, lol. How amusing. Just shows how frankly silly these religious nuts cases can be…I wonder if we can put them all into a stadium to beat each other up with various fatwas?? And I can sell tickets…and hot dogs…and non-alcoholic beer, and fajitas…goes off in a trance

And why does the KSA need to know the religion and sect of its citizens?

See, this is what happens when the state gets involved in the religious affairs of its citizens. So, as this blog post says, why is the state asking for the religion and sect of the applicant? One thing which the Saudi blogger forgot was the non muslim citizens and guests of Saudi Arabia.

Quite understandable, non muslims are non saudi's. People from other faith's are in their hundreds and thousands in that country but they will never get their recognition, but anyway, here's why the Saudi's will always face a problem. Who defines what a Muslim is? The 3rd comment was brilliant and I am taking the liberty to quote it here:

“I would like to think that there no such thing as institutionalized
discrimination here”
Isn’t that very naive? How many Shi’ite army officers
are there in Saudi-Arabia? How about Shi’ite ambassadors, governors or
mayors?And how about Saudis who convert to other religions like Christianity?
There’s plenty of institutionalized discrimination in Saudi Arabia. Ask anyone
who has a red iqama in his pocket.

Also see my previous essays which touch upon this topic here, here, here and here.
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Turkish forces poised to enter Northern Iraq

The Turkish Government is going to ask for Parliamentary approval to carry out punitive counter terrorism actions against Kurdish rebels in Northern Iraq. Hot Pursuit. Invasion. Call it what you may, but this will involve thousands of soldiers, an air campaign, armoured thrusts, the whole shebang. This is not going to be a good step for Turkey to take. Turkey is not going to listen to the USA (which certainly doesn't want Turkey to attack Iraq) because of the Armenian Genocide. But instead of me trying to explain why, here are some made up news-stories which may or may not reflect the future.

Dateline: 20 January 2008

More than 40 Turkish soldiers were killed when a Peshmerga suicide bomber blew himself up next to the Turkish military convoy which was on the way to Kirkuk. The Turkish military made a lightening campaign with armoured support thrusts into Northern Iraq in early November. The Kurdish forces, more typically known as a police force or at best a para-military force faded in front of the Turkish forces and are now in a full fledged guerrilla campaign against the Turkish forces. Previously, the PKK was rather isolated from the main Kurdish political parties but with the invasion, the PKK is now backed by all the Kurds. To further complicate matters, the Shia groups are providing support to the Kurds and more indirect support is being seen by Iranian based groups.

Dateline 15 March 2008.

A massive tanker bomb killed 200 civilians in a market place in northern Iraq. Al Queda in Iraq has announced that they were responsible and they will support the Sunni Turkish forces and target the Kurds. The Kurds are asking for support from their Shia allies and rogue elements of the al-Sadr army have released a statement promising retribution against Sunni's. More bodies discovered in Baghdad. In a separate report released today by UNHCR claimed that Baghdad is now almost completely ethnically divided. The Belfast solution of having tall long strong walls separating the communities is now being proposed. For all practical purposes, the walls already exist with local community check points in place with no sign of coalition forces or Iraqi forces.

Dateline 30 March 2008:

It was a bloody day in Turkey today with bombs in Ankara which blew up one of the Ataturk memorials, a bomb in south eastern Turkey town marketplace which killed 30 civilians, a series of bombs in Istanbul which targeted the American Library, HSBC Bank, European PR Office and other western targets.
There were confused reports of groups claiming responsibility ranging from Islamists upset with the European Human Rights Court ruling on Sunni Islam teaching, a group allied to Al Queda claiming responsibility for the bombs against HSBC bank and American Library, and Kurdish separatist groups claiming responsibility for attacks on the Turkish civilians. A Turkish hardline judge was assassinated as he drove to his office by a suicide car bomb. At a Turkish army briefing, Chief of Army Staff General Otaz promised bloody retribution against the Kurds, Iranian backed rebels and other terrorist groups. He also blamed the weakness of the mildly islamist Turkish government for allowing all these bombings to happen. When asked about the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Northern Iraq, he said that withdrawal will only happen when the PKK unilaterally agrees to put down their arms and ask for a ceasefire. More troops are promised to be deployed and the first Army Gunship forces will now be deployed in front line positions with a looser rules of engagement framework. Analysts are predicting a coup to happen any time.

Dateline 05 April 2008

The Internet was full of chatter on the islamist websites about a video launched by a previously unknown group called as Mujahideen for the Caliphate promising help to the Turkish forces who are fighting the Shia infidels. Syria has reported a movement of Saudi jihadi's into northern Iraq and Turkey. In the meantime, the British Prime Minister announced an accelerated withdrawal of British forces from Southern Iraq claiming that Iraqi forces were trained and only advisory forces will be present in Iraq.

President George Bush is under severe pressure for withdrawal domestically after the American killed count exceeded 6000 for the first time. In the meantime, it is now the second month that the Iraqi Parliament has not met, citing irreconcilable differences between the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish groups. Hillary Clinton, the most probable new president announced last week that she has changed her mind and is now asking for withdrawal of US forces latest by end of the year 2008. In the interim, she has asked for an international conference on Iraq with parties drawn from all sides.

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