The Alawi/Nusayri Sect - Their beliefs.

[zyad]

fellah in arabic means farmer and fellahin(plural) generally means the peasant class . looking at their history they seem to have been hostile to muslims ,according to ibn kathir in 1317AD the nusayris revolted and invaded the city of jabala, they desecrated the mosques and turned them into taverns and forced muslims they captured to witness that theres no god but ali , no hijab but muhamad and no door but salman.

[Treize]

fellah in arabic means farmer and fellahin(plural) generally means the peasant class . looking at their history they seem to have been hostile to muslims ,according to ibn kathir in 1317AD the nusayris revolted and invaded the city of jabala, they desecrated the mosques and turned them into taverns and forced muslims they captured to witness that theres no god but ali , no hijab but muhamad and no door but salman.

They had been opressed by Sunni's for a long time by then. They did revolt one or twice but by they don't convert people.

[shufee]

Hi guys,


I'm an allawi and have been studying for several years. Prior to "initiation" I was skeptical because I had been told about this belief. I can tell you it's false, I have asked this question to my sheikh and was warned against it. I was also told that there was a group, a break away that had this belief a long time ago, and they still exist in turkey but are a very small minority.
My brother in law converted and is now an allawi so I'm not sure about this non convert rule, I will have to ask.
The stars and Ali bing prince is non existent in our sect.
I reached the end of my studies 3 years ago, so if anything was true I would know. If it is still true, and they have not told me, it means there would be a handful of people who would believe this the more experienced sheikhs, if mainstream knew this, allawi would shrink dramatically. However, it is very unlikely a few would know this, I don't see the benefit. Either way, if I personally haven't heard it, I can guarantee 95% haven't heard it (if it is true, which im confident it is not)
final words, this is incorrect and false.

[Hakkapeliitta]

Interesting. Especially the part about the women. The sources I have claim that according to some Alawi texts women cannot reincarnate, some even claim women are the product of sinning or even that women are devils. But in Adana many women believe they are reborn persons. So this source of yours would further their position.

It only makes sense to me.

As for children, my sources claim children remember their previous life the first 6 or 12 months of their life and during that period they forget everything. The louder a baby cries during this period the more sins he commited.




Yes, they believe Islamic guideline are only for some people who are 'pure' enough or something.




The translation is a bit difficult to understand but I think I know what you mean.



So this agrees with what I found out. Becoming an Alawi is all up to predestination. In their beliefs only a small number of people will find salvation (rejoin the realm of light).
How this relates to non-Alawi's being able to be reborn as Alawi's and what the requirments are I don't understand but your sources claim it is possible.





These '5 orphans' are new to me. I knew about Ali, Muhammed and Al-Farisi.




Yes, only a small number of men will know their true beliefs. And they don't allow converts.

I would like to thank you TheBlackTower. You have confirmed some of my expectations.
Maybe you can provide a link to your source???




Yes, since Hafez al-Assad came to power he tried to make them more like Sunni's or Twelvers. Some Alawi's go to Iran to study theology and thus are becoming more like Imami Shias.
But the Alawi beliefs in essence are quite different. Shias do not believe in reincarnation and that humans were once stars in a divine world of light.

Today Alawi's seen to be quite divided. I guess many women and most men truely believe they are good Shias with some different beliefs. Many probably do not even know about these esotheric teachings as only some men know these.
Also it seems many Alawi's today are athiest or agnostic and being Alawi for them is a cultural thing just like athiests who call themselves Jews because their ancestors were Jews and they are part of that culture.

---

Anyway, I also mailed to the owner of a site on Alawis which provided the links to the books I found. Maybe he or she can confirm?
If I learn anything I will share it here for the ones who are interested.

It's only weird from a perspective that takes Islam or Christianity as the norm. For me, who takes Christianity as the norm, it looks a bit like Mormonism. As for their beliefs, I see nothing that's particularly more unbelievable than any other religion.

[white-wolf]

Hi guys,


I'm an allawi and have been studying for several years. Prior to "initiation" I was skeptical because I had been told about this belief. I can tell you it's false, I have asked this question to my sheikh and was warned against it. I was also told that there was a group, a break away that had this belief a long time ago, and they still exist in turkey but are a very small minority.
My brother in law converted and is now an allawi so I'm not sure about this non convert rule, I will have to ask.
The stars and Ali bing prince is non existent in our sect.
I reached the end of my studies 3 years ago, so if anything was true I would know. If it is still true, and they have not told me, it means there would be a handful of people who would believe this the more experienced sheikhs, if mainstream knew this, allawi would shrink dramatically. However, it is very unlikely a few would know this, I don't see the benefit. Either way, if I personally haven't heard it, I can guarantee 95% haven't heard it (if it is true, which im confident it is not)
final words, this is incorrect and false.

Wellcome to the board shufee.

Can you please describe your sect's belief a bit, if it is possible? For example; do you believe reincarnation?

[shufee]

Reincarnation is not a part of our religion. We are not far off Shia, there are a few differences. Alawi sect is more laid back, as in.. Im trying to think of an example.......

Let's say another sect as in a Shia, they will miss their prayers and catch up to their prayers at night when they have time to pray. Instead of us missing a prayer, we will pray in our minds. If you get what i mean ? Or instead of making it a point to go to a mosque every Friday, we can pray from our homes and never go to a Mosque.

We believe things like, a lady who is pure inside and dresses how she wants (obviously not like a whore by any respectable parents standards) is worth a million scarfed women who do it for the sake of doing it. Basically, intentions play a very big part in our sect.

In regards to wine and drinking, this isnt the case. Actually in every sect there are people that drink, and say it is ok to drink as long as you ( whatever way they justify it)

Another difference for example my father had taught me, if you want to drink, you can drink, it is not bad ( there is a lot of discrepancy about this particular verse that forbids alocohol) as long as you control yourself, dont hurt yourself or anyone around you, dont make a fool of yourself and do not drink and get drunk or to get drunk, which again comes down to intentions.

[white-wolf]

As far as I know neither sunni nor shia do not pray the prayers at their mind, if you miss a prayer you could catch later doing "kaza".

The ones at Turkey do believe at reincarnation. Where are you from exactly? I hear Assad has been trying to assimilate Nusayri belief to mainstream islam for some time.

[shufee]

As far as I know neither sunni nor shia do not pray the prayers at their mind, if you miss a prayer you could catch later doing "kaza".

The ones at Turkey do believe at reincarnation. Where are you from exactly? I hear Assad has been trying to assimilate Nusayri belief to mainstream islam for some time.

What i mean by pray in mind, is rather than miss a pray, you can pray in your heart/mind, as in your intention to pray is more important that bowing and saying what you need to say for the sake of doing it. If it is in your heart, and in your heart truthful and honestly, this is worth a thousand trips to the mosque.
It is only the Shia who can catch up to prayers from my understanding.

Im actually Syrian, in every sect there is an off shoot, and these off shoots seem to get more attention from the enemies of a particular sect. There is an off shoot who believe everything that is written here, however they are not mainstream alawi.

I do not know of an alawi that believes anything quoted here or any other website i have found.

I hope Assad succeeds in doing so, i think its important.

[Treize]

(EDITED to correct some mistakes on my part.)

In the meantime I have learned alot more about the Alawi beliefs.

The Alawite religion as it is practised in both Syria and Turkey (Hatay and Çukurova) is a unique Shia Ghulat sect from the old Kuffan tradition. It is basically the last of these sects that still exists. The more correct name is Nusayri's.

The religion is organised as a male community based on allegoric interpretations of islamic marriage law and its theology is based on a number of old ghulat writings such as 'kitab al sirat', 'kitab al-usus' and the most important one the 'kitab al haft wa-l azilla' together with some others. The books I listed are supposed to be reports of sessions between the famous pre-alawi ghulat Muffadal ibn Umar and 6th Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq.

These texts are actually different from eachother yet they are all quoted in Alawi texts regardless of the differences. These books provide a neoplatonic conception of God. It speaks of a very very complex cosmology with series of emanations akin to Isma'ilism.

The red line in all this is that the pre-existant creatures one way or another sinned against God so these creatures 'fell' and this fall is called the 'habta'. Meanwhile God created from their sins the devil. From the sins of the devil He created the first women. Now the creatures (the true believer) and these (evil) women somehow (this was before their existance as humans, I don't exactly know how to envision this) reproduced creating offspring. Some good, some bad (most). There are no people of mixed character, there is a very strict distinction between believers and unbelievers in this strand of ghulat thought. Somehow these creatures became humans (they seem to follow the normal story of Adam and Eve with a few twists).

See:

http://goaloflife.files.wordpress.co...ssertation.pdf

So that is that. Muhammed ibn Nusayr added some stuff to these beliefs and after a few succesors (his sect was very small, and situated in Iraq) a man named Al-Khasibi spread this religion to Syria were his two succesors Al-Jilli and later Al-Tabarani codified their beliefs and did their propaganda to convert the natives. This was relatively succesful. At this point the religion had become a dogmatic religion, sworn to strict secrecy and taqiyya but this 'you need an Alawi father in order to be initiated'-stuff seems to be a much more recent innovation.

So in their view God had pity for the punished divine creatures and appears to them as a docetic manifestation throughout history. All prophets, Imams and also Persian rulers and people like Sokrates, Plato, Aristoteles and Alexander the Great are all considered docetic manifestations of God. (Alawites do not believe in 'hulul' nor are they polytheists.) In a more recent Alawi catachism it is written that in India Ali (the most important manifestation of God's essence) is known as Kankara (!).

So the Alawi religion was designed to be a universalist religion that would appeal to many people (muslims, christians and persians in particular). But the sect ended up being rather small, isolated, impoverished and very severely pursecuted (even today as you can see in Syria). The last case of conversion I could find was that Shia Turkmen from Chorasan were placed in the Jabal al-Nusayriyya by Sultan Selim I in order to control the Alawites. Appearantly modern day Alawites still tell their children of the attocities commited by the Ottomans, supposedly 70000 Alawites were driven into the sea and drowned in Latakia. But some of these Turkmen assimilated to become Alawites.

The Levant was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1516 after Sultan Selim I's forces decisively defeated the Mamluk Sultanate at Marj Dabiq. After entering Aleppo, Sultan Selim waged a military campaign against the Alawites, summoning and executing 9,400 Alawite leaders and driving out the Alawite population from the coastal cities of Latakia and Jableh. Unable to subdue the Alawites in the an-Nusayriyah Mountains, their heartland, he dispatched thousands of Turkic tribes fromAnatolia and Khurasan to the settle the region, establishing some of them in several of the mountainous area's most strategic fortresses, including in Abu Qubays, which was referred to as Qartal.^[3]
Selim's strategy ultimately failed in the long-term as many of these tribes, particularly the Shia Muslim Turks of Khurasan, assimilated with the Alawite population. The Turks who originally resided in Abu Qubays, and who are Alawites in the present-day, later became known as "Qaratila," deriving their name from "Qartal."^[3] In 1785 Abu Qubays's inhabitants were unable to pay their land tax and as a result, sold one-third of their farmland to a Christian moneylender based in Hama, meeting the amount owed to the state treasury.^[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Qubays
(Source is the book of Matti Moosa, which I have read.)

I have tried to find out when exactly the Alawites became a closed sect. For the Druze we know this is the year 1048, but for the Nusayri's it is unknown. Important to remember is that the Alawi theology and medieval literature does not seem to forbid conversion.

By the way, there are also Alawi's of Kurdish origin and the Assad clan is one of those who came from mount Sinjar.

A for women, women are not initated, they have to do good deeds and just hope they are reincarnated as men later on. This can be found in the old writings, the works of Tabarani and it was also told to Samuel Lyde by an Alawi man in the 19th century. So I guess that's it, the Alawites do not believe all women are devils/have no souls/are doomed.

Also for non-Alawites, with the possibility of conversion closed off, we seem to have 'promoted' to the position of Alawi women. In a German book on Turkish-Alawi (NOT Alevi ofcourse) immigrant the writer seems to have found some talkative Alawi's who gave their vision on the reincarnation stuff, they seem to believe some non-Alawi's can be reborn as Alawi's if they believe in God, be just and do good deeds. This is compatible with their theology as the belief exists that Alawites can be punished by reincarnation into non-Alawis. Proof of this was the, to me very surprising, story that in Hatay today there are people who claim to be the reincarnated John F. Kennedy and Princess Diana. The writer states that most Alawites she met told her that they believe it is true.

In Alawi society (in Turkey) stories of people who can recount their past life are widespread. It also happened in Syria, in the book of Samuel Lyde it tells of a Christian woman who goes to an Alawi village and shows the villagers were she used to find water. Interesting to note is that the Alawi, or atleast the pre-Alawi, theology tells us that remembering past lives is infact impossible.

Anyway, the Alawite view on non-Alawites appearantly does not seem to be as pessimistic as I used to think, with the exception of a few hardliner sheiks most Alawi's do not seem to believe they are the only 'good people'.


On the process of Alawi initiation and its origins, their views on women and such see:

https://www.academia.edu/1464166/Bel...1-2_2011_53-75




The idea that modern day Alawites somehow have dropped these beliefs is completely false:

http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=...page&q&f=false

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12612501/index.pdf

[white-wolf]

Well, I visited and drunk at Karaduvar, lol. They are known as Arabs to my friends from Mersin.

[Nesimî]

Great post, enjoyable read.

[Treize]

Great post, enjoyable read.

I forgot to mention a few things though.

The 'kitab al-usus' is supposedly written by 'sages' from all different cultures on the order of King Solomon. Yet in reality it also comes from early islamic Iraq.

And the idea that people can remember their previous life is contradictory to the Alawi religious writings. The people who claim this are usually women, who are not though the 'true' religion.

Modern day Alawi's, and especially women who have nothing else really, are fanatic shrine worshippers. In Adana alone there are over 200 shrines. These are usually tombs or trees and such. One observer from the 19th century who visited Syria wrote that Alawi women seem to have kept a pre-islamic cult of tomb/tree/rock worshipping. This phenomenon in my opinion MUST refer to the shrine worshipping, which is not really pagan...

You can read all about it here (about Hatay):

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...muwo.12000/pdf

Note how they decorate their shrines with Turkish flags and Atatürk portraits in order to 'prove' they are loyal Turkish citizens.

[Nesimî]

The flags and Ataturk portraits can be seen with Turkish Alevis too. Perhaps they wish to escape the fate of their Kurdish brothers at the hands of the Nationalist dictatorship. I don't know if that is the case with the Nusayris though.

[white-wolf]

Because they are loyal citizens of Turkey. They feel the republic and Atatürk gave them options to integrate the country and its mechanisms. They are committed to secular regime, because they fear a sunni-muslim (even a Hanefi one) religious regime can take back their priviligies. Hence they are stout members of CHP and stubbornly oppose Erdoğan and AKP, or any consarvetive party.

[Treize]

That is true. The Ottomans (and all the others before them) mistreated them, look up the book by Samuel Lyde 'The Asian Mysteries'.

Mustafa Kemal for the Turkish Alawi's was the same as Hafiz al Assad was for the Syrian Alawi's. A saviour who ended their long suffering and opened up education, positions of power and economic freedom to them.

Fact of the matter is that the rather intense turkification policies have had their effect and, just as is the case with the Laz people, the old generation speak bad Turkish while the young generation barely speak their own language anymore.
For initiation into the Nusayri cult one needs to be able to read Arabic. Hench the Kemalism they so love in the long term will be the greatest threat to the continued existence of their religion. Already young people choosing not to be initiated is becoming more common...

Still... They have a strong sense of community and do not really regard themselves as Turks. They are quite well aware of their 'Syrian' origins.

Yet many seem to hate Kurds, just like the Laz people do, and when I told the only Alawi I know that the laws that harm the Kurdish community also harm her own because there is no Arab language in schools and they (until recently) were not allowed to have like Arabic language. Her answer was 'yeah well we do not need that' without any arguments given. But if you look at the document about Mersin and the book on Adana, if they want to save their language and thus their religion they should really use Tayyip's new relaxed legislation and push for Arabic language classes in Hatay/Adana. Even the Laz and Circassians are making use of this in (very) few cases.

As a side note, I am also active on a Dutch forum and we recently had a few threads on Turkey and its minorities. The position of the Arabs and the Laz just strikes me as odd. They almost seem to have a sort of Stockholm-syndrome were they are willing to scarifice their own language for acceptance into 'Turkishness' because it brings economic benefit. To a lesser extent this is also the case with Alevi's (including the Zaza I guess), they just adore Atatürk (some say they believe he is a (not the) Madhi) even though the kemalist definition of 'Turkishness' appearantly includes being Sunni and the Turkish state hasn't been very good to the Alevi's in the last few decades.