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ISIS terror attack kills hundreds of Druze in southern Syria


Mourners carry a coffin of one of Wednesday’s victims (SANA)

A series of gruesome terror attacks on Wednesday by the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) in the Druze-majority province of Sweida in southern Syria has killed at least 250 people.

At least 56 militants carried out the attack. The militants went from home to home, stabbing civilians, killing families as they slept, before launching several suicide bombings. ISIS claimed credit for the attacks on its web site.

The attacks targeted the community of 800,000 Druze in Sweida. The Druze religion is a splinter variant off of Shia Islam, and the Druze are considered apostates by extremist jihadists.

The total Druze community in the region consists about one million living in Syria and Lebanon, 104,000 living in Israel, and 40,000 living in Jordan. They’re an important political force in both Israel and Lebanon. In Syria, they’ve stayed neutral in the civil war. They’ve lived peaceful among the Sunni and Shia Arabs in Syria and Lebanon for over a millennium.

However, ISIS consists mostly of foreign fighters who came to Syria from over 80 countries to fight Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, after al-Assad began committing genocide and ethnic cleansing among innocent Sunni women and children who opposed him politically. The foreign fighters in ISIS have no historic relationship with the Druze, so they were an easy target.

In the early years of Syria’s civil war, al-Assad’s army provided protection to the Druze. Some Druze are now accusing al-Assad of having withdrawn that protection because the neutral Druze refused to join al-Assad’s army.

ISIS has lost a great deal of territory in Syria in the last year. They were driven out of their Caliphate in Raqqa by the Kurdish YPG, backed by the United States. And they were driven out of the region near Damascus by the Syrian army. There are still ISIS pockets in southern and eastern Syria. Some pundits had declared that ISIS had been completely defeated, but Wednesday’s massive attack shows that’s far from the truth, and additional attacks can be expected. AFP and CNN and Irish Times and Syria Direct and Sana (Damascus)

History of the Druze religion

The Druze came into existence as a secret society, and only announced itself to the world in the early 1000s (11th century). There was a brief period of proselytizing that ended in 1050. Since then it has been impossible to convert to Druze from any other religion. Druze marry inside their religion, with less than 1% marrying people of other religions.

Within Israel, Druze are subject to military draft, unlike Israeli Arabs, who are exempt.

The Druze creed arose from a branch of Shia Islam, but it incorporates concepts from Christianity and Judaism, as well from Greek philosophy and Hindu and Buddhist influences.

Like any other society, they have had their generational crisis wars, during some of which they were victims of genocide, and in others they were perpetrators of genocide, making them no different from anyone else. A particularly bloody generational crisis war occurred in 1860 with the Maronite Christians, which is considered a victory by the Druze, resulting in the deaths of 10,000 Christians. It’s only been in recent years that the two groups have attempted to reconcile. Pew Research and Jewish Virtual Library

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KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, Sweida, Druze, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Maronite Christians
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