Yasir Qadhi – The History And Beliefs Of The Nusayri Alawite Sect
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Today is going to be one of those
awkward and difficult topics, but inshallah, as usual,
will be a benefit inshallah ta'ala.
As you're all aware, the situation in Syria
is becoming quite difficult right now, and our
duas are for the people of Syria.
My job here today is not to be
a political analyst, but to teach you some
facts that you should know about that region,
and in particular, the reality of the sectarian
differences that are taking place.
So today, inshallah ta'ala, I want to
introduce to you one of the most fringe,
bizarre movements of our faith, and it is
of practical relevance because this movement is in
charge of the land of Syria, and I
mean here the group that is known as
the Nusayris or the Alawites.
Now, my goal today is not to fuel
the fan of sectarianism.
I have always been a vocal critic of
sectarianism, and I remain a critic of violence.
We should not be hurting one another, even
if we have different interpretations of Islam, but
we cannot change the fact that there are
many sectarian elements taking place in that land.
So today's information is really for just knowledge
purposes.
As for actual, you know, sectarian warfare going
on, I have always been opposed to this,
but the fact of the matter is, when
you bring in sectarian politics, and when you
have people being killed, it is understandable they're
going to stand up and defend themselves, right?
So with this disclaimer, today's topic is going
to be about who is this group?
What is this group that call themselves the
Alawis, the Nusayris?
We begin with a brief introduction.
We're talking about one of the strands of
Shi'i Islam.
Now, Shi'ism is a very complex and
very nuanced spectrum.
It begins from something very close to Sunnism,
and it works its way all the way
out to the fringe.
And the movement that is closest to Sunnism
is, for example, Zaydism.
This is the very closest movement.
And Zaydis are in Yemen, and Zaydis are
in that awkward spectrum where the Shi'a
consider them Sunni, and the Sunni consider them
Shi'a.
I'm not joking.
Zaydis are smack in the middle.
The Sunnis consider them to be the beginning
of Shi'ism.
And the other Shi'a say, no, you're
the end of Sunnism.
So they're in that middle.
We'll talk about Zaydism maybe another day.
The next movement after Zaydism is the famous,
largest group of Shi'ism called Twelver or
Imami Shi'a.
And these are the ones that believe in
12 Imams.
These are the ones that are predominant in
Iran and other places.
And this is the largest demographics of Shi
'i Islam.
Zaydis are very small, less than 5-10
% of Shi'ism.
Twelver Shi'ism is probably 80% of
Shi'ism.
You move on one more, and then you
get Ismailism.
And Ismailism is probably another 7-8%
of Shi'ism.
So Ismailism is another strand called Seveners.
And for the Indian-Pakistanis, you know them
as the Buhra, or the Aga Khanis, the
Zahdis.
For the Arabs, there's a Druze strand, very,
very small strand.
All of this is Ismailism.
Then you move to the now we're talking
about the most fringe.
That's our topic for today.
And this movement actually goes back to an
ancient movement called the Ghulat movement.
The Ghulat are literally extremists.
Now I'm not using this term.
The term Ghulat is used by both Sunni
scholars and Twelver Shi'i scholars.
This is the key point here.
The term Ghulat al-Shi'a is not
something I am inventing in this year.
The term Ghulat al-Shi'a goes back
to the first books ever written about Islamic
theology from both Sunnis and from Shi'a,
Twelver Shi'a, Imam al-Shi'a.
The Imam al-Shi'a is, for example,
one of the great scholars, and Nawbakhti, and
also Al-Qummi and others.
They have Firaq al-Shi'a.
They have an entire book about Tashayy'u.
And they have a category called Ghulat, the
extremists.
They call this group the Ghulat.
This isn't coming from me.
We also call them the Ghulat.
What is the main distinction between the Imamis
and the Ghulat?
The Imamis, the Twelvers, and for the record,
I have said this very clearly, I don't
agree with their theology, but I also don't
agree with the notion that we all consider
them to be Kuffar.
No, they are Muslims with creeds that we
believe are heretic or deviant, Bida'a we
call them, right?
But they are within the fold of Islam
as a default.
And I am public about this, and I
will defend this if anybody wants, we can
talk about this.
As a default, we're not talking about specifics
if they have a bizarre ideology, a particular
person.
As a default, Imamis, Twelvers are within Islam,
and I have always been against any type
of violence or sectarianism between our two strands.
The Imamis consider this strand to be Ghulat.
What is the distinction?
Imamis say that Allah wanted Ali to be
the Khalifa after the Prophet ﷺ and his
descendants.
This is their belief.
The Ghulat go more than this.
The Ghulat say that aspects of divinity are
in the Imams.
This is the distinction between the Imamis and
the Ghulat.
The Imamis do not claim divinity at all.
They do not say that our Imams are
manifestations of God.
They don't say this.
As for the Ghulat, which is the most
extreme sect or trend of Shi'ism, from
the beginning, and this goes back all the
way to the first century of the Hijrah,
there was a movement within Iraq, within Kufa,
called the Qaysanis.
And the Qaysanis are the first movement of
the Ghulat.
And they literally said that Ali is a
manifestation of God on earth.
And the Imamis themselves said, no, no, we're
not going there.
We don't agree with you.
That is called the Ghulat.
Now, make a long story short, the only
Ghulat sect that remains in our times is
the sect we're talking about today.
And that is the Nusayinis.
What is the main characteristic of the Ghulat
sect?
Number one, we'll mention three things.
Number one, all of the Ghulat sect, they
claim that the Imams have aspects of divinity,
or they are manifesting Allah on earth, or
they are Allah on earth.
One of these things, all of the Ghulat
sect.
There's something of divinity in the Imams.
Number two, they say that the Ruh of
the human does not go back to Allah
and become resurrected.
There is no heaven and *.
Rather, the Ruh transfers to another body, like
the Hindus believe, like the Buddhists believe.
This is called Tanasukh Al-Arwah.
It is called the transmigration of the soul.
So the Ghulat movements do not believe in
Qiyamah.
They do not believe in Jannah and Na.
They think if you're good, the Ruh goes
to a higher body.
And if you're bad, it'll go to a
lower body.
And if you're really good, eventually, it will
free itself from this world and reunite with
Allah, which is essentially straight out of Hinduism
and the Far Eastern religions.
And by the way, the Ghulat movements, including
the Nusayris, the Ghulat movements, they are combinations
of Islam and non-Muslim religions.
For example, Christianity, we'll see that today, Gnosticism,
Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, you have aspects of other faith
traditions in the Ghulat movement.
So number two, they don't believe in heaven
and *.
They believe in Ruh going from body to
body.
And number three, none of the Ghulat movements
follow the physical laws of the Shari'ah.
They interpret the Shari'ah to be in
a mystical manner.
There is no Salah.
There is no Zakah.
There is no Siyam.
There is no Hajj.
There is no Tilawat Al-Quran.
There is no Ibadah that we recognize.
So the Ghulat do not have any aspects
of our Ibadah.
Now, as I said, the Ghulat were many
movements.
In our times, the main movement that remains
from that is the Nusayris.
It is the Alawis.
Now, first the terminology, Nusayri or Alawi.
For 1360 or 15 years, they were only
called the Nusayris.
That was the movement's name.
There was no other name.
In 1920, one of their intellectual leaders, a
pan-Arab socialist nationalist, a very famous person,
Ghalib al-Tawil, he wanted to bring the
Nusayri movement closer to mainstream Islam, at least
sociologically, not theologically.
He wanted to make other Muslims consider his
strand to be similar to Islam.
So he started calling his own movement Alawi.
We are followers of Ali.
We have things to do with Ali.
We are Alawi.
We are people of Ali.
So the term Alawi only goes back 100
years, literally 1920.
Before this time, the term Alawi did not
exist.
And the movement adopted the term Alawi so
that the notion is they are Alawi, followers
of Ali.
There's an Alawi association with us, right?
There's a Sufi tariqa called the Ba Alawi
order, which is a mainstream Sunni tariqa, Sufi
tariqa.
So the Alawi is a term that is
common in Muslim circular.
So they adopted it.
Why?
To make this notion that we are similar
to everybody else.
So we actually use the term Nusayri because
that's the classical term.
Where did the term Nusayri come from?
And how many are they?
The Nusayris are probably around 1.7 million,
1.6 million.
And the majority of them are in Syria,
a smaller amount in Turkey and in Lebanon.
But the majority of them are not only
in Syria, but in one province of Sham
of Syria, which is the close coastal region
of Latakia.
This is the coastal region of Syria.
And that region is 70% Alawi.
That is a concentration in that one small
province.
This is where the majority of Alawis are.
And we're going to come later on to
the fact that 50 years ago, 60 years
ago, one of their military members, Hafez al
-Assad overthrew the government and took charge.
And so he instituted the entire government to
be from his own tribes and his own
background.
Currently, the Syrian regime is around 75%
Alawi, the bureaucrats, the politicians, the generals, the
military.
So even though in the country, they're less
than 10%.
In the military and the politics, they're 75%.
So I understand this point.
In the country, they're a minority.
But in the ruling party, they are three
-fourths, they are the majority, they are the
default, and they are the ruling family.
And they used to have their headquarters in
Latakia.
Now their headquarters is in Damascus because of
the ruling family over there.
Why is it called Nusayris?
It is called after its founder.
And that is Muhammad ibn Nusayr, Muhammad ibn
Nusayr.
Now we have to go back 1200 years,
a little bit of Shi'i history over
here.
You're probably aware that the 12 Rashi'a
believe in 12 imams.
The 12th imam is a hidden imam for
them, right?
The 12th imam for the 12 Rashi'a
is a hidden imam.
Now, the 11th imam, Hassan al-Askari, the
11th imam, Hassan al-Askari, had a disciple
by the name of Muhammad ibn Nusayr.
So Muhammad ibn Nusayr is a student of
the 11th imam.
Okay, and the 11th imam died a very
young age in his 20s.
And he was not married and he did
not have kids according to Sunni historians.
According to Shi'i historians, he had a
secret, you know, milki amin, a slave girl.
And so he had a legitimate child.
And that legitimate child was taken and hidden,
you know, in one of the caves of
Iraq.
So that is the 12th imam, Muhammad ibn
Hassan al-Askari, the Ghayb Mahdi imam.
Sunni historians never believed this child existed.
We don't believe it's a true story.
He died a single man.
He doesn't have children.
That's our version of events.
Now, the death of the 11th imam is
a big crisis in Shi'i history.
Why?
Because the imam died and doesn't have a
son.
What's going to happen?
So we believe, and I know that 12
Rashi'as don't accept this, we believe that
12 Rashi'as invented a hidden imam.
We don't agree with this.
But how about the other Shi'a that
don't believe in this?
This is where Muhammad ibn Nusayr comes along.
And Muhammad ibn Nusayr invents a new theology,
a new ideology, which eventually becomes Nusayrism, right?
So Muhammad ibn Nusayr began claiming that the
11th imam is a manifestation of God, and
he, Muhammad ibn Nusayr, is the baab or
the door to the imam.
And so he begins preaching a new ideology.
In fact, when Hassan al-Askari died, the
Shi'i movement split into 15 firqas, 15
strands, because it was a crisis.
When the imam dies, one of those becomes
12 Rashi'ism, another strand becomes Nusayrism.
So here's a key point, Nusayrism and 12
Rashi'ism, they go back to the same
strand.
Nusayrism is not a part of Ismailism.
Nusayrism broke away from 12 Rashi'ism, and
it retained some of the original teachings of
the Ghulat movement.
So long story short, Muhammad ibn Nusayr began
preaching a message, one of his students, Abu
Abdullah al-Husayn ibn Hamdan al-Khasibi, was
one of the main architects of the theology.
Al-Khasibi's grandson, Maimun ibn al-Khasim al
-Tabarani, these three names are the main names
you need to be aware of.
Al-Khasibi and his grandson, al-Tabarani, they
were the ones who fled to Syria and
began preaching to a small group of Christians
in Raqqa.
So it was these Christians who converted to
their version of Islam, and those descendants are
what we now call Nusayris.
So it was al-Khasibi and his grandson
who fled because they were exiled by the
state, they were not allowed to preach, so
they fled to the regions far away, and
they fled to these coastal towns, and they
converted the non-Muslims there to their version
of Islam.
Generally speaking, people do not convert to a
Nusayri theology, they're not active in preaching.
And here's another key point, Nusayrism, like all
of the Ghulats, Nusayrism does not teach its
own followers their theology, its own followers are
not taught what it means to be a
Nusayri.
Rather, there's a hierarchy, and a few of
the select elites, the Khassa, a few of
the elders are chosen by the elite to
teach their theology to.
The rest are left, they're called Amma Awam,
the rest are left in darkness, and it
is forbidden for a Nusayri to tell non
-Nusayris about their beliefs.
Their books are not printed, their ideology is
not public, they don't have seminaries, they don't
have shuyuk that go study, it is simply
handed down in their very elite circles, not
even the average Nusayri can tell you what
they actually believe.
Nusayrism has become a cult that the members
are born into, and they don't even know
what they believe, it's just a gang, really.
And that explains a lot of what you
see in that region, because in reality, they
don't even know what they believe.
And it's only been recent where non-Muslims
who are intrigued, they've tried their best to
uncover their books, they've tried their best to
find their manuscripts, and modern, you know, the
Western Academy has actually done a great amount
of research in what they actually believe.
But the problem comes, what they believe is
only amongst the khasatul khasa, their elite.
The average Nusayri is not capable, nor is
he allowed to tell you what they actually
believe.
This is one of the ironic things of
their faith, they're not even taught their faith,
and they're told to just follow their traditions
and elders, and the actual beliefs are not
something that the average Nusayri would know, but
we know this because plenty of research in
the last 150 years has been done by
non-Muslims.
And here's an interesting story as well in
this regard, that they are so secretive in
this regard that by penalty of death, they
will kill anybody who reveals their religion.
And what happened was in the 1860s, 1863,
a Nusayri converted to Christianity, because the French
came to Syria at the time, they began
preaching Christianity.
So a Nusayri by the name of Suleyman
al-Adani converted to Christianity, and he fled
from his region, and he took some of
the books, he was one of the elders,
one of the khasa, he took some of
the books, and he wrote an exposition of
the Nusayris.
He exposed the Nusayris, and this book is
called Al-Baqura as-Suleymaniyah.
Al-Baqura as-Suleymaniyah, actually I have a
copy of this, and I approved this book.
It's a difficult book to acquire, but it
is available if you search for it.
So it is called Al-Baqura as-Suleymaniyah.
This is in 1863, he wrote this book.
And he describes his own experiences, his own
beliefs, he describes his own rituals in which
he participated in, and he was one of
the first people, 130 years ago, to expose
the reality of what Nusayris believe.
And he mentioned that as a part of
their salah, they drink wine, their rituals, they
drink wine, which is a Christian notion.
They believe the blood of Husayn is in
that wine, just like Christians believe the blood
of Jesus.
Literally, you see Christianity over here.
As a part of their ibadah, they're drinking
cups of wine.
And he mentioned as well that they believe
in the divinity of Ali and other things
of this nature.
The Nusayris convinced him to come back on
some family issue and whatnot, they convinced him
to come back, he came back to that
land, and they literally pounced on him, cut
him up, burnt him alive, to make an
example that you don't dare expose our secrets
to other people.
There's a famous incident that took place where
he was literally coaxed and tricked to come
back, and they executed him.
Now, what is some of their beliefs?
What are some of their beliefs?
So we said already the name Nusayri goes
back to Muhammad ibn Nusayr.
What are some of their beliefs?
I'm sorry, I'm going to really confuse you
guys, because they're really, the beliefs are not
simple for us to understand.
They are Gnostic, they are Manichaean, they are
Zoroastrian, they are not Islamic, and you have
notions of Christianity.
So one of the things they believe, trinity.
They believe in a trinity.
They believe in three manifestations of God, and
they call it Al-Ma'na, Al-Ism,
and Al-Baab.
Sorry to confuse you, this is the reality.
Al-Ma'na, Al-Ism, and Al-Baab.
And they believe Al-Ma'na is the
original, Al-Ism is the manifestation, and Al
-Baab is the door to get to both
of them.
And in this case, Al-Ma'na, which
is the original, is, now listen to this
carefully, is how Allah manifests himself on earth.
Allah shows himself through the Ma'na, and
the Ma'na chooses the Ism, and the
Ism and the Ma'na both then have
created the Baab.
So the Ma'na and the Ism are
both uncreated, like the father and the son.
The Ma'na and the Ism are somehow
both divine.
So there is this type of trinity over
here in this regard, and every generation has
this type of trinity.
They believe in the repetition of history over
and over again.
So in the time of Adam, and Seeth
and others were there, in the time of
Yusha, in the time of Musa, in the
time of Isa, and then in the time
of the Prophet ﷺ, now we have the
same trinity here.
And here is where it gets completely ghulat.
The Ma'na, according to them, is Ali,
the original.
The Ism is Muhammad ﷺ, and the Baab
is Salman al-Farisi.
So it is as if the Ma'na
chose the Ism, to be very simplistic, Ali
ﷺ, according to them, is a manifestation of
Allah.
He chose the Ism, the Prophet ﷺ, and
the both of them then created the Baab,
Salman al-Farisi.
This is their trinity in this issue.
Now once again, the point being, simplistically, we
say they're saying Ali is God, and perhaps
that is the belief of many of the
Awam.
But technically, and I'm trying to be technical
because I don't believe in stereotyping, technically what
they say is that the body of Ali
has personified the reality of God on earth.
They don't say, at least they're scholars, they
don't say that Ali is walking God.
They say, Allah tajalla fi surati Ali.
That Allah has manifested himself in the form
of Ali ﷺ.
And one of them says, I'm sorry this
is all kufr here, but I have to
teach you this.
Naqirukuf laisi bikafir.
I just remember this point, okay?
I'm just teaching what they say.
And so they say, and because again, for
the record, obviously I'm not sectarian at all,
and I try my best to bring all
the groups at least within Islam, but some
groups we draw the line.
So if I wasn't clear enough, obviously this
group is outside the fold of Islam.
There can be no two opinions about this,
right?
When you believe that Allah manifests himself in
surat Ali, you have left the fold of
Islam.
So there's no issue to say this, that
these people are not within the Islam, they're
outside our kalima, but we need to know
who they are.
So they say that, and I quote from
their books here, and again, I try to
be very academic here.
So they say, it is not him, meaning
Allah is not Ali, but Allah is not
other than Ali either.
And in Arabic, okay?
Again, this is their mystical interpretation, right?
The surat of Ali is not God, and
yet the surah of Ali is also not
not God, i.e. we don't affirm he's
God, but we don't negate he's God either.
Okay, this is their technical language that they
say.
And so God, Allah manifested himself seven times
on earth.
The last of them was in surat Ali,
in the surah of Ali, and therefore, Ali
radiallahu anhu, created from his light, Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wasallam.
This is their version, right?
From his light, from his nur, Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wasallam came.
When I say created, it's again technical, I
shouldn't say created, because they will say fayadlan,
they will say that it just came through.
That originally was Ali, and then Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wasallam comes, and then from the both
of them, you have the Baab or Salman
al-Farisi.
So and they also say then that Jesus
Christ was the previous embodiment of God, just
like Ali was this.
So they have that special status of Ali
radiallahu anhu, and they have their own versions
of other prophets as well.
They also believe that wine, as I said,
khamar, it is a symbol of the death
of Hussain.
And so drinking wine in their ritual symbolizes
that Hussain radiallahu anhu has basically almost died
for their sins, like Christians believe that notion
is there, like Christianity believes as well.
They believe that this is very, I'm sorry
to say this, but I'm just teaching what
they say, just like Allah manifests himself in
a trinity, so to Iblis manifests himself in
a trinity in every one of these cycles.
So Iblis also has three.
And so in the time of Musa, they
say there was Firaun and Haman and Qarun.
In the time of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam, astaghfirullah, but that's what they say, it
was Umar, Abu Bakr and Uthman radiallahu anhu,
right?
And Umar is the main, Umar becomes the
asal, they call him the Iblis wal abalisa,
like the biggest Iblis, astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah.
And then Abu Bakr comes from him and
then Uthman.
So this is their version of, and of
course, there's a lot of animosity towards them
and towards those who respect them.
They say that the salah, the zakah, the
hajj, all of them are symbols of the
various imams.
So to offer the salah simply means to
believe in Hussain.
To go for hajj simply means to affirm
one of the imams and so on and
so forth.
So there is no actual salah or siyam
or hajj or tilawa of the Quran.
They don't have the Quran as a book
that they recite because every one of these
rituals is interpreted to be symbolic.
They also believe in the extreme practice of
taqiyyah and kitman, covering their beliefs.
As I said, they're not allowed to preach
their beliefs to other people.
They believe in the transmigration of the soul.
As I mentioned, they do not have masajid.
There are no masajid amongst them.
And their rituals are done in the homes
of their teachers, of their shuyukh, they call
them, right?
Their rituals are done in the homes of
the elite and only men participate in the
rituals.
Women do not have any teaching.
Women do not have any rituals.
Women have no idea of their beliefs.
They are not, now this has led to
the accusation that they think that women are
not human or don't have souls.
As far as I'm aware, I wasn't able
to find this phrase, but for sure, they
don't view women to be worthy of rituals
and worthy of teaching.
So women are excluded from all ceremonies, and
women are excluded from all teaching.
And as we said, only a small group
amongst them, they're called the khaasah, are taught
their theology and become leaders.
The bulk of them, 80-90%, they remain
amma, juhaa, they are not taught.
And the duroos are similar to this, by
the way, they have a similar notion.
Now, what is the stance of the 12
rashia with regards to the ghulat?
Here we find an interesting point.
For most of Islamic history, the 12 rashia
considered the ghulat to be kuffar, or at
least extreme heretics.
And great Shi'i scholars, such as al
-Majlisi, al-Baqir al-Majlisi, such as al
-Tusi, these are classic icons of the 12
imams.
They said the alawis or the nusayiris are
outside the fold of Islam, or they are,
you know, ahl al-bid'ah, very extreme
people, we don't view them as being correct.
However, in the last 50 years, this has
now changed.
And there is a reconciliation, there is a
rapprochement between many of the modern ayatullahs, many
of the modern clerics, and between the nusayiris.
And so the famous Lebanese cleric, Musa al
-Sadr, the famous Musa al-Sadr, gave a
fatwa in which he said that the nusayiris
are one of the firaq of the firaq
of the 12-ers, they're one of us,
one of the firaq, just the one, and
then madhhab amongst us, right?
And this is completely contradicting what the classical
12-er imams said, such as al-Tusi,
and such as al-Baqir al-Majlisi and
others.
So we now have a rapprochement happening.
And the analysis is that Hafiz al-Assad,
the father of Bashar al-Assad, made a
point to try to bring reconciliation between the
nusayiris and between the 12-ers for the
first time in their history.
Otherwise, this had never happened.
And Hafiz al-Assad wanted to become more
mainstream.
So he tried to get some type of
taqarum between 12-ers and between nusayiris.
And that seems to have worked because we
now see that some type of, you know,
alliances taking place.
However, historically, this has not been the case.
Now, to summarize some aspects of history, then
maybe inshallah, we'll continue another day, but I
don't want to go too long here.
Historically, this movement has never preached outside of
itself.
This movement did not welcome converts.
This movement has been isolated, as we said,
in one province, in Bilad al-Sham, in
Syria.
And throughout all of Islamic history, they remained
in this one province by and large, and
they were considered to be a nuisance to
everybody else.
They were bandits, thugs, highway robbers.
They were not given positions of power and
influence.
They were isolated.
And every visitor that visited them, and you
had plenty of visitors.
Ibn Battuta went and heard about them.
Even in Muslim, sorry, modern times, you had
non-Muslims travel through Syria in the 18th,
19th century, and they described the nusayiris as
being violent, vicious, backward, uneducated.
Everybody despises them because they're just causing nuisance
to everybody, destroying livestock, raiding into the villages.
So nobody used to like them throughout all
of history.
In fact, when the crusaders came, the crusaders
thought they were Muslims for a while.
So they were also being persecuted by the
crusaders.
When the crusaders realized that these are not
Muslims, they actually invited them into their armies,
and a number of them became a part
of the crusader army against the Muslims.
This shows you that distinction that existed.
And in the time of the Mamluks, the
Mamluks attempted to convert them to Sunnism.
They sent preachers, they built masjids in that
region, but it had no impact whatsoever.
In fact, it is said that they took
the masjid, the Mamluks built masjids in their
cities, they used the masjids to house their
sheep and their livestock.
The masjids became places where they would house
their sheep and their livestock.
And if a wanderer wandered through and he
saw a masjid, and he would give the
adhan, they would make fun of this person.
What are you doing here?
What are this weird noise that you're saying?
They had no clue what the adhan was.
And therefore, our scholars, Abdul Qahir al-Baghdadi,
he said this group is outside the fold
of Islam.
He's writing 1000 years ago, because this group
has nothing to do with Islam because they
make Ali radiallahu anhu into a divine manifestation.
Ibn Taymiyyah was asked about what is the
verdict of the Nusayris?
And Ibn Taymiyyah said, the Nusayris, in a
famous remark, they have more blasphemy than even
Jews and Christians.
Jews and Christians are more rightly guided than
these people, he's saying, like they have such
deviant beliefs.
And he said, they cannot be considered Muslim,
you cannot marry them, you cannot eat their
zabiha, they have nothing, they don't pray.
So Ibn Taymiyyah actually was, you know, fairly
well aware for the people of his time,
even though he didn't have access to their
books, yet he described in somewhat accuracy, and
he considered it to be outside the fold
of Islam.
And he said, they are a bigger threat
to the ummah than the Mongol invasion.
This is Ibn Taymiyyah's famous fatwa.
He said, they are a bigger threat to
us than the Mongols who are invading us.
This is a group that is a worse
animosity to us.
To make a long story short, what happened
in the last 60-70 years, when the
French came, and it's always the colonizers, when
the French came, and they colonized this region,
they wanted to find a group that they
could use against the Sunni majority.
And so they began rallying to the Nusayris.
And they did the same to the Druze,
by the way.
The Druze is another group, maybe we'll talk
about them another day.
So the Nusayris, they began educating them, and
they began conscripting them into the army, the
French.
They began giving them elite military training, elite
weapons that they didn't give to the Sunnis,
because they knew that the Nusayris hated the
Sunnis.
And they knew the Nusayris could be used
against the Sunnis, even though they're a minority.
And so the French transformed this group to
become a militia, to become a well equipped
training militia.
Thus, when World War Two finished, who had
the weapons, who had the training, who had
the army, who had, it was the Nusayris.
Long story short, they were the ones who
then overthrew the ruling parties, and one amongst
them, a young lieutenant by the name of
Hafez al-Assad, he was a part of
the overthrowing group in the 60s.
And then he did a coup amongst his
own group.
And he overthrew his own friends in 1970.
And in 1970, he declared himself to be
the leader and the president.
And this was a shock because they're a
minority, and they were a despised minority.
But in 1970, he declared himself to be
the ruler of Syria.
And he was a very brutal, all the
Syrians know this, all the people know this,
he was a very brutal dictator, did not
allow any type of dissent, a very secret
military police force.
And in his reign, his group, the Nusayris,
were given the dominance in the land.
And then of course, his son has taken
over and now we have this reality going
on here.
So to conclude, the Nusayris are the most
extremist Shiite interpretation in all of human history.
There's nothing beyond them.
They are the most extreme.
And I don't like to say this, but
there's no way to say this, really, the
fact of the matter, we have to draw
lines.
And this group is outside those lines.
There's just no way else to say this,
right?
Even if we don't want to preach violence,
that's a separate thing altogether, we have to
speak factually.
Once you say that God manifests himself in
a human being, khalas, there is no kalima,
there is no, once you have no salah,
no zakah, no hajj, no Quran, what do
you have left, right?
So yes, we have to draw lines as
multiple times.
And so this group is beyond those lines.
And even if we consider them outside the
fold, had they remained in their province and
done what they done, we would not want
to hurt them and they don't want to
hurt us.
But unfortunately, what has happened is this movement
has been violent.
This group has been tyrannical.
This group has destroyed its own country.
And so what has happened has happened.
And that's a political analysis beyond the scope.
My goal today was to explain to you
who this group are and what they believe.
And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to protect the brothers and sisters that we
have in Syria, our Sunni brother in there,
we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
allow tyranny to be to be overthrown, to
justice to prevail and to protect all the
innocent lives of the people
of
that region.