Religion in Syria
Historically, the region has been a mosaic of diverse faiths with a range of different sects within each of these religious communities.
The majority of Syrians are Muslims, of which the Sunnis are the most numerous (formed mostly of Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, and Circassians), followed by the Alawites and other Shia groups (particularly Isma'ilis and Twelver Shi’ism), and Druze.
[8] Sunnis follow nearly all occupations, belong to all social groups and nearly every political party, and live in all parts of the country.
Civil codes have greatly modified the authority of Islamic laws, and before the recent upsurge in Islamism during the Syrian civil war, the educational role of Muslim religious leaders had been declining with the gradual disappearance of kuttabs, the traditional mosque-affiliated schools.
[4] More recently, Dr. Pierre Beckouche also said that the Arab Sunni Muslims formed 60% of the population, including 500,000 Palestinian refugees.
[10] Moreover, there are also some members of the larger communities, particularly within the Kurdish and Turkmen/Turkoman minorities, who no longer speak their mother tongue and have become Arabized.
[11] In 1979, Dr. Nikolaos van Dam said that the Syrian Kurds formed 8.5% of the population and were almost exclusively Sunni Muslims.
[4] More recently, Dr. Pierre Beckouche said that before 2011 the Sunni Muslim Kurds formed 9–10% of the country's total population.
[11] In 1979, Dr. Nikolaos van Dam claimed that the Syrian Turkmen/Turkoman (forming 3% of the population) were almost exclusively Sunni Muslims.
In addition, Ismailis also live in the Tartus Governorate, particularly in the town of Qadmus and its surrounding countryside and in the district and villages of Nahr al-Khawabi.
The Ja’afari Shi’ites are found mainly in Qadmus, in the Tartous Governorate.
Thousands of Turkmen Alevis were living in Aleppo, and a significant portion of these fled to Turkey.
[15] The Syrian Druze community constitute the third largest Islamic sects in the country, forming approximately 3% of the population of Syria.
A primary distinguishing feature is acceptance or otherwise of the 3rd and 4th Ecumenical Councils of 431 and 451, which concerned the precise relationship of the human and divine natures of Christ.
The Assyrians accept only the First and Second and deny being Nestorian in doctrine (two natures in a personal non-essential union).
Because Protestantism was introduced by missionaries, a small number of Syrians are members of these Western denominations.
Even though each group forms a separate community, Christians nevertheless cooperate increasingly, largely because of their fear of the Muslim majority.
Syrian Christians participate higher proportionally speaking in political and administrative affairs than do Muslims.
For example, Syrian Christians are more highly urbanized than Muslims; many live either in or around Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, or Latakia, and there are relatively fewer of them in the lower income groups.
Most Jews now living in the Arab World belong to communities dating back to Biblical times or originating as colonies of refugees fleeing the Spanish Inquisition.
[6] The Golan Heights, which is mostly internationally recognized as part of Syria, has been occupied and governed by Israel since the Six-Day War.
[29][30] During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Yazidis, whose religion dates back to pre-Islamic times, migrated from southern Turkey and settled in their present mountainous stronghold – Jabal Sinjar in northeastern Syria and Iraq.
Although some are scattered in Iran, Turkey, and the Caucasus, Iraq is the center of their religious life, the home of their amir, and the site (north of Mosul) of the tomb of their most revered saint, Shaykh Adi.
[32] In addition to the beliefs taught by the organized religions, many people believe strongly in powers of good and evil and in the efficacy of local saints.
Most villages contain a saint's shrine, often the grave of a local person considered to have led a particularly exemplary life.
[citation needed] Unorthodox religious beliefs of this kind are probably more common among women than men.
[37][38][39] In matters of personal status, such as birth, marriage, and inheritance, the Christian, Jewish, and Druze minorities follow their own legal systems.
However, in 2016 the de facto autonomous Federation of Northern Syria - Rojava for the first time in Syrian history introduced and started to promote civil marriage as a move towards a secular open society and intermarriage between people of different religious backgrounds.
[41] Although the faiths theoretically enjoy equal legal status, to some extent Islam is favored.
Despite guarantees of religious freedom, some observers maintain that the conditions of the non-Muslim minorities have been steadily deteriorating, especially since the June 1967 war.
