Religion in Syria

The Syrian Druze community constitute the third largest Islamic sects in the country, forming approximately 3% of the population of Syria.[18] The main centre of the Druze population is in As-Suwayda; the small towns and villages under its authority is called the Jabal al-Druze (the "Mountain of the Druze"). The rest of the community mainly live in the Quneitra Governorate, the Rif Dimashq Governorate, and the Idlib Governorate.[18] Even though the faith originally developed out of Ismaili Islam, most Druze do not identify as Muslims,[19][20][21][22][23] and they do not accept the five pillars of Islam.[24]

There are many Syrian Druze also living abroad, particularly in Latin America, who have been living there for over the past hundred years.[18] In Venezuela alone there is approximately half a million Druze of Syrian origin.[18]

St. George's Cathedral in Hama, Syria

The Monastery of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in Aleppo.

The Christian communities of Syria in 2012 accounted for about 5–6% of the population and were divided into five traditions. 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 traditions are: Oriental Orthodox (Armenian Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox) which accept the 3rd Ecumenical Council, Eastern Orthodox (such as Greeks or Russians), Roman Catholics, various Eastern Catholic Churches that are under the authority of the Pope, and Protestants who accept the 4th Ecumenical Council (two natures before and after the Incarnation in one person). The Assyrians accept only the First and Second and deny being Nestorian in doctrine (two natures in a personal non-essential union). The Syriacs reject the 4th Council, denying being monophysites (one nature, the human being subsumed into the divine) and asserting instead that they are miaphytes (two natures united as one in one person, without separation, mixture, confusion or alteration). The East Syriac (Syro-Oriental) Rite is represented by the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic and Ancient Church of the East. Members of the Syriac tradition are all Eastern Aramaic-speaking ethnic Assyrians. Slight differences concerning which books of the Bible are counted as canonical are also apparent.

The total number of Christians before 2011, not including Iraqi refugee Christians, numbered about 1.1–1.2 million or 5–6% of the population estimate of 22.5 million: 500,000 Greek Orthodox, 400,000 Syriac Orthodox, 70,000–80,000 Armenian Christians (Apostolics and Catholics), 200,000 Catholics of various rites and the Church of the East (Assyrian) numbers unknown, and Protestants. Because Protestantism was introduced by missionaries, a small number of Syrians are members of these Western denominations. The Catholics are divided into several groups: Greek Catholics (from a schism in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch in 1724), Latin Rite, Armenian Catholics, Syriac Catholics, Chaldean Catholics and Maronites. The latter declared their allegiance to the See of St. Peter in 1182 which was confirmed by the Pope in 1100: the other Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Rite Christians which are in union with the Papacy came into existence in the 18th and 19th centuries. Catholic and Orthodox Christians were members of one Church until 1054. The Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch ignored the split: technically this Church was in union with both Rome and Constantinople until the split in 1724 over a disputed election (the irony is that the excommunication of the Patriarch by the Pope in 1054 was invalid since he was already dead when it was delivered in Constantinople).

The vast majority of Christians belong to the Eastern communions, which have existed in Syria since the earliest days of Christianity. The Orthodox churches are autonomous; the Uniate churches, which are in communion with Rome; and the Assyrian Church of the East is independent. Even though each group forms a separate community, Christians nevertheless cooperate increasingly, largely because of their fear of the Muslim majority. In 1920 Syria was 12% Christian in a population of 1.5 million. Christians have emigrated in higher numbers than Muslims and have a lower birth rate.

With the exception of the Armenians and Assyrians, most Syrian Christians identify ethnically as Arameans or Arab Christians. Many Christians, particularly the Eastern Orthodox, have joined the Arab nationalist movement and some are changing their Aramaic or Westernized names to Arabic ones. Syrian Christians participate higher proportionally speaking in political and administrative affairs than do Muslims. Especially among the young, relations between Christians and Muslims are improving.

There are several social differences between Christians and 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. Syrian Christians are relatively wealthy and highly educated than other Syrian religious groups.[25] Proportionately more Christians than Muslims are educated beyond the primary level, and there are relatively more of them in white-collar and professional occupations. The education that Christians receive has differed in kind from that of Muslims in the sense that many more children of Christian parents have attended Western-oriented foreign and private schools. With their higher urbanization, income, and educational levels, the Christians have therefore somewhat the same relation to other Syrians as the Jewish community formerly did before most Jews left for Israel.

The presence of the Christian communities is expressed also by the presence of many monasteries in several parts of the country.

The Central Synagogue of Aleppo.

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.

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.

In 1964, there were about 10,000 Yazidis in Syria, primarily in the Jazirah and northwest of Aleppo; population data were not available in 1987. Once seminomadic, most Yazidis now are settled; they have no great chiefs and, although generally Kurdish-speaking or Arabic speaking, gradually are being assimilated into the surrounding Arab population.

Yazidis generally refuse to discuss their faith which, in any case, is known fully to only a few among them. The Yazidi religion has elements of Mesopotamian religions.

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. The former beliefs are especially marked among the bedouin, who use amulets, charms, and incantations as protective devices against the evil power of jinns (spirits) and the evil eye. Belief in saints is widespread among non-beduin populations. Most villages contain a saint's shrine, often the grave of a local person considered to have led a particularly exemplary life. Believers, especially women, visit these shrines to pray for help, good fortune, and protection. Although the identification of the individual with their religious community is strong, belief in saints is not limited to one religious group. Persons routinely revere saints who were members of other religious communities and, in many cases, members of various faiths pray at the same shrine.

Unorthodox religious beliefs of this kind are probably more common among women than men. Because they are excluded by the social separation of the sexes from much of the formal religious life of the community, women attempt to meet their own spiritual needs through informal and unorthodox religious beliefs and practices, which are passed on from generation to generation.

• 1943[29]

• Other Syrian census with religious data: 1953 (with separate data for every Christian community, as in the 1943 one)[32]
• 1960[31]
  • Sunni Muslims: 75%
  • Shia Muslims: 13%
    • Alawis: 11%
    • Imamis: 3%
    • Ismailis 1%
  • Druzes: 3%
• Total Muslims: 92% (4,053,349)
• Total Christians: 7.8% (344,621)
• Jews: 0.2% (4,860)
• Total: 100% (4,403,172)

In the next census of 1970, the religion statistics were no longer mentioned.

In matters of personal status, such as birth, marriage, and inheritance, the Christian, Jewish, and Druze minorities follow their own legal systems. All other groups, in such matters, come under the jurisdiction of the Muslim code. 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.[33]

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. An instance of this deterioration was the nationalization of over 300 Christian schools, together with approximately 75 private Muslim schools, in the autumn of 1967. Since the early 1960s, heavy emigration of Christians has been noted; in fact, some authorities state that at least 50 percent of the 600,000 people who left during the decade ending in 1968 were Christians. In recent decades, however, emigration was slow until the Syrian Civil War.

• Freedom of religion in Syria
• Human rights in Syria
• Religion in Lebanon

•  This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/.

• Marcel Stüssi, Models of Religious Freedom: Switzerland, the United States, and Syria by Analytical, Methodological, and Eclectic Representation, 2012, p. 375 ff.

• Sectarianism in Syria (Survey Study)
• Islamic Education in Syria