In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [84]
It was a story many journalists knew well, but without the geographical context. The previous month, Shiites had celebrated Ashura, the commemoration of the slaying of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson Imam Hussein in 680 CE at Karbala, situated in present-day Iraq, by forces that were loyal to the Damascus-based Umayyad caliphate. Its leader, Yazid I, a traditional Sunni from outside Muhammad’s family, ordered Hussein’s decapitation, mounted his head on a pike, and paraded it alongside surviving members of his family throughout the empire. After brief stops in Kufa and Mosul, the procession headed through the Jazeera to Aleppo, then south toward the Syrian cities of Idlib and Homs before ending the journey in Damascus.
The spectacle backfired, however, turning Hussein’s cause into a local crusade. Small Shiite communities sprouted up along the procession’s route and were later joined by Sunni tribes from southern Iraq who were familiar with Shiite customs. Some built maqaam, or shrines; other Shiite communities in Syria gathered around the tombs of Ahl al-Bayt (the family of the prophet Muhammad). During the Ottoman caliphate (1415–1918), which was overwhelmingly Sunni, many Shiites in these communities converted to the dominant Sunni Islam to avoid harassment and discrimination. Now, according to Habash, they were converting back.
I asked Habash if he could introduce me to a few converts. Looking flustered, Habash said that he “met some a few years ago, but [he] didn’t know where they were.” When I asked him if he knew of any converts in the aftermath of the Israel-Hezbollah War, Habash looked out of the window over my shoulder and said no.
Still confused, I asked Leila and Othaina to arrange an interview with Syria’s grand mufti, Ahmad Badr al-Din Hassoun. A few minutes into the interview, I asked him if reports of Shiitization were true. Hassoun, smiling from ear to ear, said that there were no conversions, as there were in fact no differences between Muslims in Syria. Reading the puzzled look on my face, Hassoun added that there were only different schools of thought. Traditionally, Syrians followed either Hanafi or Shafi’i schools of Islamic jurisprudence, but Syria’s small Shiite population, which was estimated to account for less than 1 percent of the population, followed the Ja’afari school—the same one followed in Iran. Hassoun estimated that around 7 to 8 percent of Syrians now adhered to the Ja’afari school. When I asked him if this included the country’s ruling Alawite minority—an obscure offshoot of Shiite Islam—Hassoun replied, “No,” followed by a big smile.5
Othaina next took me to see Imam Ja’afar as-Sadiq, the leader of a hawza (a Shiite school) near the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab outside Damascus. After two cups of coffee and a pleasant chat, Sadiq told me that most of his students were originally Shiites from Iraq who follow Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, based in Najaf. As for converts, Sadiq said that he could not allow interviews with them for fear of their safety. “There are a lot of Salafists in this country who might kill them.” Instead, Sadiq referred me to the newly built hawza of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A few days later, Othaina told me that he had tried to contact the Khamenei school many times, but to no avail. I began to worry: without an interview with at least one convert, the magazine would likely kill the story. I also knew that if I did not come up with answers from “on the ground,” other, more alarmist reports of Shiitization were likely to continue, beating the war drums for a strike against Syria at a time when US forces were at a turning point in dealing with the insurgency.
After a few more days, Othaina entered my office and announced, “We have hit a dead end.”
“I know how to find a convert,” said Samah, a thirty-year-old woman from the mountains overlooking the Syrian city of Homs, who worked at Syria Today. “My husband is Shiite, and his best friend