Syrian Watch

[Centurion40]

Brutal dictator and enemy of the west he certainly is, but at least he doesn't make his wife wear a burkha.

[Centurion40]

"Bashar's problem is that he listens to everything but denies and forgets quickly. You discuss an issue with him in the morning and another person comes along and changes his mind.

"Politically, Bashar does not have a consistent ideology; he changes his opinion according to his interests and that of the regime's."

And the regime is a family affair. Al-Assad's younger brother Maher commands an elite division of the army, and is accused of widespread human rights abuses. His cousin Rami Makhlouf is the richest man in Syria.
The Assads belong to Syria's Alawite minority, who according to the president's uncle Rifaat, are driven by fears they could be overwhelmed. "There is no doubt that the Alawites are a minority who are in fear of the outcome and they are driven by that fear factor," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/31/world/meast/syria-assad-profile/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

[Centurion40]

Interesting that the Alawites are an off-shoot of Shi'ite Islam, with Iran being the theological center of the Shi'ite.  We often view the theocracy of Iran as 'abnormal' (to say the least).

But these Assads look like people the west should be able to deal with.

From wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawite

The origin of the Alawis is disputed. The Alawis themselves trace their origins to the followers of the eleventh Imām, Hassan al-'Askarī (d. 873), and his pupil ibn Nuṣayr (d. 868).[17]

The sect seems to have been organised by a follower of Muḥammad ibn Nuṣayr known as al-Khasibi, who died in Aleppo about 969. In 1032 Al-Khaṣībī's grandson and pupil al-Tabarani moved to Latakia, which was then controlled by the Byzantine Empire. Al-Tabarani became the perfector of the Alawi faith through his numerous writings. He and his pupils converted the rural population of the Syrian Coastal Mountain Range and the plain of Cilicia to the Alawi faith.[18] Samuel Lyde believed the population was of ancient Canaanite origins, but that parts had come from where the sect originated.[page needed][19] Professor Felix von Luschan (1911), according to his conclusions from anthropometric measurements, made the Alawites and other Near Eastern religious minorities the modern representatives of the ancient Hittites.[20]

Under the Ottoman Empire they were ill treated,[21] and they resisted an attempt to convert them to Sunni Islam.[22] They revolted against the Ottomans on several occasions, and maintained virtual autonomy in their mountains.[23] T. E. Lawrence wrote: "The sect, vital in itself, was clannish in feeling and politics. One Nosairi would not betray another, and would hardly not betray an unbeliever."[24] In the early part of the 20th century, the Sunnis sat on the wealth and dominated politics, while Alawites lived as poor peasants.[25][26]

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Syria and Lebanon came under a French mandate. The French, when they occupied Syria in 1920, recognized the term "Alawi", gave autonomy to them and other minority groups, and accepted them into their colonial troops.[27] Under the mandate, many Alawi chieftains supported the notion of a separate Alawi nation and tried to convert their autonomy into independence. A territory of "Alaouites" was created in 1925. In May 1930, the Government of Latakia was created; it lasted until February 28, 1937, when it was incorporated into Syria.[28]

In 1939 a portion of northwest Syria, the Sanjak of Alexandretta, now Hatay, that contained a large number of Alawis, was given to Turkey by the French following a plebiscite carried out in the province under the guidance of League of Nations which favored joining Turkey. However, this development greatly angered the Alawi community and Syrians in general. In 1938, the Turkish military had gone into Alexandretta and expelled most of its Arab and Armenian inhabitants[neutrality is disputed].[29] Before this, Alawi Arabs and Armenians were the majority of the province's population[neutrality is disputed][29] Zaki al-Arsuzi, the young Alawi leader from Iskandarun province in the Sanjak of Alexandretta, who led the resistance to the annexation of his province to the Turks, later became a founder of the Ba'ath Party along with the Eastern Orthodox Christian schoolteacher Michel Aflaq. After World War II, Salman Al Murshid played a major role in uniting the Alawi province with Syria. He was executed by the newly independent Syrian government in Damascus on December 12, 1946 only three days after a hasty political trial.

Following Syrian independence

Syria became independent on April 17, 1946. Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Syria endured a succession of military coups in 1949, the rise of the Ba'ath Party, and unification of the country with Egypt in the United Arab Republic in 1958. The UAR lasted for three years and broke apart in 1961, when a group of army officers seized power and declared Syria independent again. A further succession of coups ensued until a secretive military committee, which included a number of disgruntled Alawi officers, including Hafez al-Assad and Salah Jadid, helped the Ba'ath Party take power in 1963. In 1966, Alawi-oriented military officers successfully rebelled and expelled the old Ba'ath that had looked to the Christian Michel Aflaq and the Sunni Muslim Salah al-Din al-Bitar for leadership. They promoted Zaki al-Arsuzi as the "Socrates" of their reconstituted Ba'ath Party.

In 1970, then-Air Force General Hafez al-Assad, an Alawite, took power and instigated a "Correctionist Movement" in the Ba'ath Party.[30] His coming to power has been compared to "an untouchable becoming maharajah in India or a Jew becoming tsar in Russia—an unprecedented development shocking to the majority population which had monopolized power for so many centuries."[27]

In 1971 al-Assad became president of Syria, a function that the Constitution allows only a Sunni Muslim to hold. In 1973 a new constitution was published that omitted the old requirement that the religion of the state is Islam and replaced it with the statement that the religion of the republic's president is Islam. Protests erupted when the statement was altered,[31] and to satisfy this requirement in 1974, Musa Sadr, a leader of the Twelvers of Lebanon and founder of the Amal Movement who had earlier sought to unite Lebanese Alawis and Shias under the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council without success,[3] issued a fatwa stating that Alawis were a community of Twelver Shia Muslims.[32][33] Under the authoritarian but secular Assad government, religious minorities were tolerated, political dissent was not.

After the death of Hafez al-Assad in 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad maintained the outlines of his father's governance.[citation needed] Although the Alawis comprise the entirety of the top military and intelligence offices, government employees from lower bureaucratic ranks are largely from the majority Sunni Muslim faith, who represent about 74% of Syria's population. Today the Alawis exist as a minority, but are the most politically powerful sect in Syria and the only one with direct government control.

[Centurion40]

In the grand scheme of things, the Alawites don't seem so bad, even tolerant, religiously speaking:

Sunni scholars such as Ibn Kathir, on the other hand, have historically categorized Alawis as pagans in their religious works and documents.[21] At least one source has compared them to Baha'is, Babis, Bektashis, Ahmadis, and "similar groups that have arisen within the Muslim community", and declared that "it has always been the consensus of the Muslim Ulama, both Sunni and Shi'i, that the Nusayri Alawi are kuffar unbelievers and mushrikun polytheists."[13] However the prominent Sunni Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, issued a fatwah recognizing them as part of the Muslim community in the interest of Arab nationalism.[34]

According to Yaron Friedman, distinct Alawi beliefs include the belief that prayers are not necessary, they don't fast, nor perform pilgrimage, nor have specific places of worship.[35] The most obvious difference between Alawites and Shi'ite Muslims, is that Alawis believe the Sunni Caliph and Shi'ite Imam Ali is an incarnation of one of the persons of God and wholly divine, along with Jesus Christ, The Prophet Muhammad and many other eastern holy men. Many of the tenets of the faith are secret and known only to a select few Alawi.[21] In the 19th century, however, an Alawite named Sulaiman al-Adni converted to Christianity and in 1863, compiled a book called Al-Bakurah as-Suliamaniya fi Kashf Asrar ad-Diyanah an-Nusairiyah (The First Fruits of Sulaiman in Revealing the Secrets of the Nusairi Religion). Orientalists like Louis Massignon gained access to a number of Nusairi manuscripts.[13]

According to some sources, Alawis have integrated doctrines from other religions (Syncretism), in particular from Ismaili Islam and Christianity.[8][21][33] According to scholar Cyril Glasse, it is thought that "as a small, historically beleaguered ethnic group", the Alawi "absorbed elements" from the different religions that influenced their area from Hellenistic times onward,[33] while maintaining their own beliefs, and "pretended to adhere to the dominant religion of the age."[33] Alawites are reported to celebrate certain Christian festivals, "in their own way",[33] including Christmas, Easter, and Palm Sunday, and their religious ceremonies make use of bread and wine.[27] According to Matti Moosa, a "leading scholar of the Nusayris",
The Christian elements in the Alawite sect are unmistakable. They include the concept of trinity; the celebration of Christmas, the consecration of the Qurban, that is, the sacrament of the flesh and blood which Christ offered to his disciples, and, most important, the celebration of the Quddas (although Shia scholars dispute these allegations) (a lengthy prayer proclaiming the divine attributes of Ali and the personification of all the biblical patriarchs from Adam to Simon Peter, who preached the gospel sermon originating the Church (Matthew 16:18, Acts 2), who is perceived as the embodiment of true Islam).[36]

And maybe this is part of the problem.  The Sunni majority population doesn't like 'em.

[Centurion40]

But will change in Syria be a good thing, overall, for us?

"Democracy" in Syria might equate Alawite extermination and the instalment of a Sunni theocracy in the guise of the Islamic Brotherhood.

[Bison]

Well one of the consequences that was plain as day once the Arab spring uprising began was that the secular governments would be replaced with a much heavier handed theocratic government.  So you go from no manditory hajib to manditory hajib wearing not to mention the greater strain in Middle Eastern politics concerning Isreal.   I also do not believe that the new governments will be any less heavy handed with law and opposition than the one's they replaced. 

[Centurion40]

My only hope is that this "Arab Spring" (as in the rise of a fundamentalist drive for increased freedom to be more "fundamentalist", Islamic-ally speaking) is nothing more than a phase that will last less than 50 years.  That once they get this out of their system, their religion will moderate- as the other Abrahamic religions have (generally speaking).

[LongBlade]

I don't know how that happens when they indoctrinate their children with hate from birth.

This won't end well for them.

[Bison]

The pendulum always swings back the other direction.  It's just a matter of time.

[LongBlade]

I hope so. But I'm not optimistic.

[Bison]

Remember there was a time that the middle east was enlightened and the west was not.  However at this point I think you are talking several generations before the shift begins in earnest.

[LongBlade]

Remember there was a time that the middle east was enlightened and the west was not.  However at this point I think you are talking several generations before the shift begins in earnest.

My concern is one of those radicals will eventually do something that was draw our attention in a way that will leave their homeland with a glassy finish.

Given enough centuries, they probably might pull through this. I'm just not sure they won't qualify for a mass Darwin Award before then.

[Bison]

Oh don't get me wrong they have many years of killing each other ahead for themselves.  Hopefully it stays contained mostly to the region.  Although I doubt it will be completely.

[Centurion40]

My hope is that the easy access to information, via the internet and telecommunications, will dramatically cut-down on the timeline to moderate enlightenment.

[Bison]

My hope is that the easy access to information, via the internet and telecommunications, will dramatically cut-down on the timeline to moderate enlightenment.

In the war of propaganda it works in both directions.