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Moving Beyond the Syrian Identity-Based Conflict

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Moving Beyond the Syrian Identity-Based Conflict Moving Beyond the Syrian Identity-Based Conflict Religion, Politics, Conflict and Peacebuilding The Changing Alawite Identity from the Ninth Century till 2016 Student name: Patrick Landwehr Student number: 2405768 University: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Course: Master Thesis Assistant professor: Dr. Joram Tarusarira Date: 26-01-2018 Total words: 30960 Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 Chapter 1 Theoretical Framework: Social Identity and Conflict ............................................. 17 1.1 Social Identity Theory: Self- and Collective Identity ..................................................... 17 1.2 Bonding: Identity-, Open identity-, and Resource-sharing Groups ................................ 20 1.3 Intergroup Conflict: Identity Effects on the Intractability of a Conflict ......................... 21 1.4 Identity-based Conflict: Primordialism, Instrumentalism and Constructivism .............. 23 Chapter 2 Alawite Identity Issues and Conflict ....................................................................... 30 2.1 The “Genesis” and “Religious Precepts” of the Nusayri Community ............................ 30 2.2 The Changing Religious Status and Identity of the Nusayris/Alawites 1317-2016 ....... 34 2.2.1 Nusayris, Fatwas, Ibn Taymiyyah, Enmity and Ongoing Strife .............................. 34 2.2.2 The Fatwas of Ibn Taymiyyah: the Beginning of the Historical Nusayri/Alawi Persecution ........................................................................................................................ 37 2.2.3 The Nusayri Persecution Syndrome: the Fatwas of Shaykh Nuh al-Hanafi al- Dimashqi and Shaykh Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Mugrabi ........................................... 42 2.2.4 A Critical Historical Juncture: from Nusayris to Alawites from Apostates to Shiites 1920-1973 ......................................................................................................................... 49 2.2.4.1 The 1936 Fatwa of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini ............... 49 2.2.4.2 From Muslims to Twelver Shiism ..................................................................... 58 2.2.4.3 The 2016 Alawite Declaration: a New Identity? ............................................... 64 Chapter 3 Moving Beyond the Syrian Identity-Based Conflict ............................................... 73 3.1 The Concept of Peacebuilding ........................................................................................ 73 3.2 Addressing the Root Causes of the Syrian Conflict: Social Structural Change ............. 75 3.3 The 2012 TDA Report: how to achieve Sustainable Peace ............................................ 80 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 92 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 100 Websites ................................................................................................................................. 111 Appendix I: 2016 Declaration of an Identity Reform ............................................................ 115 1 On the picture of the front page one can see Alawites supporting Bashar al-Assad. Source: Nir Rosen, “Assad's Alawites: An entrenched community,” Al Jazeera, October 12, 2011, accessed January 21, 2018, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/10/20111011154631737692.h 2 Introduction “The Nusayris are more disbelieving than the Jews and the Christians, as Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah said about them. We see them today killing people like mice and cats, by the thousands and tens of thousands. Asad has come to rule by his own authority and with him his Nusayri sect.”1 On the 31st of May 2013, these words of the most prominent religious authority in Sunni Islam, the Egyptian Hanafi scholar Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, were spoken at Doha, the capital of Qatar. The sermon was delivered in solidarity with the Syrian people. Al-Qaradawi incriminated the Iranian regime and the Shia militia Hezbollah of helping Assad’s Alawite regime’s war against ordinary Syrians by providing military assistance and sending Shiites from all across the world.2 By using the fatwa of Ibn Taymiyyah, a fourteenth century Hanbali scholar, al-Qaradawi calls on Muslims to wage jihad to help their fellow Syrian brothers against the disbelieving Shiites and Nusayris. Until the establishment of the Alawite state in 1920, the Alawis were known as Nusayris named after Abu Shu’ayb Mohammed Ibn Nusayr who is the assumed founder of the sect in the ninth century.3 Alawites, which means followers of Ali, are often considered as a Twelver branch of Shia Islam and “Nusayris” is an antiquated and derogatory name. Al-Qaradawi’s inflammatory rhetoric and remarks “are part of a pattern of escalating Sunni rhetoric -from politicians, clerics, and the media - towards Shi’ite Muslims.”4 The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center argues that this “escalation can be considered part of a broader, region-wide conflict between the Shi’ites and the Sunnis”, as the various conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrein, and Yemen exemplify how Shia Iran is vying with Sunni Saudi Arabia for the leadership of Islam and the Middle East.5 The Syrian Civil War is an important locus of study as the “Western” approach of conflict transformation to the Syrian Conflict was from the beginning since the 2011 outbreak of the Syrian Revolution “dominated by an overdose of wishful thinking, because precedence 1 Aslam Farouk-Alli, “Sectarianism in Alawi Syria: Exploring the Paradoxes of Politics and Religion”, in Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 207. 2 “Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most prominent religious authority in Sunni Islam, lashed out against Iran and Hezbollah and called on Muslims to support the rebels in Syria.,” The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, June 16, 2013, accessed October 19, 2017, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/20527/. 3 Yaron Friedman, The Nuṣayrī-ʻAlawīs: An Introduction to the Religion, History, and Identity of the Leading Minority in Syria (Leiden: Brill. 2010), 5-17. 4 “Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most prominent religious authority,” The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. 5 Ibidem. 3 was given to supposedly democratic and moralistic ideals over realpolitik.”6 Initially, many Western politicians thought that the Assad-regime would quickly fall by the summer of 2012 and they became fixated by the idea that the conflict could only be resolved with the removal of Assad.7 Nikolaos van Dam rightly argues that Western politicians completely underestimated the strength of the regime, “partly out of ignorance and the lack of knowledge of the Syrian regime.”8 This “ignorance” and this “lack of knowledge” have contributed to the severe Syrian humanitarian crisis: the Syrian Network For Human Rights (SNHR) reports that more than 480,000 deaths were counted for the first half of 2017 and “a total of 5381 civilians have been killed from January 2017 to June 2017.”9 The 2017 Human Rights Reports adds that because of the targeting of civilians and chemical weapons, the ongoing Syrian Civil War is “a dire humanitarian crisis, with 6.1 million internally displaced people and 4.8 million seeking refuge abroad.”10 The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states about the crisis that “as of August 2017, there are 540,000 civilians living in 11 besieged locations in need of humanitarian assistance” and continues by saying that “frequent denial of entry of humanitarian assistance into these areas and blockage of urgent medical evacuations result in civilian deaths and suffering.”11 The Syrian conflict and the humanitarian consequences make it clear that a real political solution based on realpolitik is of the utmost importance to get a negative peace – the absence of direct violence such as war- before a positive peace - the integration of society - can be achieved.12 Moreover, the Syrian Civil War has been often viewed as “an intensely sectarian conflict” in which “the minority rule of Alawites over a majority Sunni population has created ethnoreligious grievances, adding a lot of fuel to the conflict.”13 6 Nikolaos van Dam, Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria, (London: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2017), 119. 7 Van Dam, Destroying a Nation, 119 8 Van Dam, 119. 9 “Including 1159 children and 742 women and 93 from torture.“ Total Death Count in Syria: 480,000+ 2017 Death Count: 7, 203,” I AM SYRIA, accessed October 19, 2017, http://www.iamsyria.org/death-tolls.html. 10 “Syria Events of 2016,” Human Rights Watch, 2017, accessed October 19, 2017, https://www.hrw.org/world- report/2017/country-chapters/syria. 11 The indiscriminate attacks, the abuses by Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIS and other non-state armed groups, the torture and deaths in custody, and the the use of incendiary weapons, cluster munitions are also mentioned. About the Crisis,” The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), accessed October 19, 2017, http://www.unocha.org/syrian-arab-republic/syria-country-profile/about-crisis. 12 According to Johan Galtung, the term positive peace means the absence of all forms of violence and the restoration of communal relationships, the creation of viable social systems that provide
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