Druze Stirrings and the Re-Shaping of Syria

Andrew Cusack Druze stirrings The Druze are an elusive people. During the few summers I spent in Lebanon I met Maronites, Melkites, Sunni, Shia, Armenians, and many others but I recall knowingly meeting only one Druze. Their beliefs are as secretive as they are distinct.

They are usually filed as (for lack of a less judgmental word) a schismatic branch of Islam that emerged out of Isma’ilism; others argue that they are gnostics who took up the Islamic mantle to avoid oppression. They do not call themselves Druze, but muwa ḥ idūn , which more or less means “monotheists” or “singularists”—believers in the singularity of God. Ethnically, they are Arab, and seem to have migrated to the Lebanese mountains from southern Arabia before the advent of Islam.



Evangelised from eleventh-century Cairo, they are the only remnant that has clung to this school of Islamic interpretation. Many refuse to identify as Muslim. Christians traversed the four corners of the globe.

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