Syria's President Bashar al-Assad (3nd R )attends Eid Al Fitr prayers at al-Hamad mosque in Damascus August 19, 2012.
The guerrilla war against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is on the verge of becoming a sectarian war waged primarily against the secretive sect to which Assad’s family belongs. The Alawites form only about 12% of Syria’s population but they have ruled the country since 1960, when they ascended to the highest ranks of the country’s Ba’ath Party. Before that, they had been an underserved minority — albeit with a strong martial tradition — mistreated by the country’s Sunni Arab majority, which today accounts for about 70% of the population. Assad and the former president, his father Hafez, have pursued a Sunni-fication of the Alawites, whose faith derives from a strain of Shi’a Islam that is predominant in Iran. There are strong, heterodox strains in Alawite identity: its traditions date back to the most ancient times in the region and also borrow from Christian rites, including, allegedly, the sanctification of wine—unheard of in mainstream Islam. The details of Alawite beliefs are almost impossible to confirm—divulging them to a nonbeliever is punishable by death. According to Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, the main tenets are passed on only to males born of two Alawite parents. While both Shi’a and Sunni authorities have declared contemporary Alawites to be part of the Islamic fold, they continue to be viewed by suspicion by many Muslims, perhaps due to a history of dissembling about the true nature of their faith. In any case, as the civil war drags on in Syria, the mostly Sunni rebels are focusing their ire on the Alawites and their culture—and the Alawites are hanging together and digging in.