Beyond reported deaths, there is always life shaped by conflict
In wars, we speak of death tolls and civilian casualties. We report the statistics of death and forget those of life. I have lived in a war zone for long enough to understand that life goes on, whether this pleases the conflicting parties or not.
What saddens me about war Syria is not solely the tens of daily deaths. It is not sieges, unreported famines, or even the hanging question of millions of refugees and internal displacements. Don’t get me wrong; those are the hideous outcomes of an inhumane conflict, which consumed every aspect, significant or not, of our lives. What does dishearten me, though, are those little daily encounters that slip through our survivalist lives; ones that assure me that this conflict had changed us so drastically, altered our coexistence with disguised hatred, and caused deceit to grow its roots in the minds of everyone - youth and adults alike.
I came back to Syria for my summer holidays and rested my head on my pillow after a long travel. Having lived in a boarding school for only a year, I seriously doubted that any significant changes had taken place in my war-afflicted country, but little did I know that sectarian prejudices were plaguing the hearts and minds of the people, including my family.
It is commonly known that today’s Muslims over the breadth of the world, by no means, constitute one cohesive entity. Since the death of Prophet Mohammad, Muslims’ search for the Prophet’s legitimate successor resulted in a major breakthrough which would later alter the landscape of the Islamic faith. As different groups of Muslims chose to follow the teachings of different descendants of the Prophet, sectarian divisions came into being. This, in effect, meant that Islamic teachings were no longer unified in their essence, interpretations of Quran largely varied, and disagreements regarding what is prohibited, permissible, and what is to be eschewed widened. Needless to say, these divisions came at the expense of igniting conflict and catalyzing the emergence of infinite atrocities amongst people who belong to sects with conflicting ideologies.
It is definitively unrealistic to claim that the social life of pre-war Syria was void of sectarian prejudices. Those are as old as the Islamic faith is, and although they surface most clearly in conflicts and times of political instability, they are easily detectable in the everyday life affairs of peaceful states’ communities. Away from generic statements, I am eager to provide my personal experience with this issue, regardless of whether it complies with the claims of other members of the Syrian society, home or abroad, or not.
I knew of the concept of sects when I was 9 years old. Someone mentioned the word ‘sect’, and after my question about the meaning of the word, there were many awkward coughs and exchanging of perplexed looks from adults around the room, who clearly understood that such a separatist mentality should not be introduced to children to avoid corrupting their innocent outlook on the world. Granted, back then, naming sects or speaking about sectarianism openly could only take place in family reunions and private spaces in general. The media never dared to mention anything regarding sectarianism –but rather denied its existence, bragging about the cohesiveness of the Syrian society- and mentioning the name of a certain sect in public was considered hugely inappropriate. For my primary and secondary education, I attended a school with students and faculty who belonged to a majority sect in Syria, one that has a history of conflict with my sect, and never had I been explicitly mistreated or discriminated against based on my religious orientation. Maybe the most overtly sectarian remark I received was by a fellow student asking about why I don’t wear hijab (Muslim headscarf) with an undertone of disapproval. Throughout my life, I had met people from all sorts of sects and become very good friends with many of them. I resided a neighborhood where people from 3 distinct sects in addition to those belonging to the Christian faced coexisted. Holistically, sectarianism existed, and many minor daily incidents, (being cursed in the street for not wearing hijab, fearing to walk down a street of an ‘enemy’ sect alone, being warned not to go to a friend’s house because of their sect etc.) could account for this claim, but it was always in the background and never in the forefront of social life.
Upon my return to Syria, I came to understood that I cannot AT ALL enter certain neighborhoods of Damascus anymore. I don’t wear hijab which makes my religious orientation overt, and going to neighborhoods whose residents from ‘adversary’ sects became dangerous. I attempted calling some of my friends from middle school and, to my surprise, no one would pick up. I then found out that they also blocked me on Facebook. Once, I had a reunion with friends and everyone was saying how much they missed each other. A couple friends excused themselves to go use the bathroom, and the rest of the group, who belonged to a different sect than theirs, started bluntly condemning their hypocrisy, saying “I would never believe those bastards. If you only bother to see the hypocrisy which persons x and y in their history manifested and is manifested by the actions of their fighters today, you’d understand that it runs through their veins.” During the Eid (Muslim celebration), two women who clean the staircases of our building show up to ask for a treat on the occasion of Eid. My father refused to give his money to those belonging to the ‘other’ sect, saying he does not feel sorry for any of what they have to go through to make a living because they deserved it. In sectarianism, being from the ‘other’ sect makes you damned. It means that God disliked your soul enough to make you a part of ‘them’. The Wi-Fi was not working properly in our house, and mom asked dad to bring in a technician from our sect to check the router. “I don’t feel safe having one of ‘them’ in the house. You can’t guess what they’d do”. All talks involve ‘us’ and ‘them. It puts every individual belonging to a certain sect in one box; the box is then closed and labelled. Media started naming sects and sects’ names became indispensable vocabulary for political analysts arguing on TV channels.
Although politics in the Middle East have always been intermingled with religion and hence sectarianism, during conflicts this becomes crystal clear. This is also one of the prime obstacles that hinder our quest for democracy and political modernism. Many of the political discussions I had this summer revolved around the interaction between the regime, dominated by members of one sect, and the population, dominated by the members of another, majority sect. The talks were mainly about how the president’s sect would be cleansed if he was to abdicate his power, because in the midst of all this chaos, he is the only figure from this sect in power. They also emphasized how the so-called Syrian Revolution is solely based on sectarian hatred; the fact that the majority of the population coming from a certain sect are not pleased with a regime dominated by a minority sect.
I can site an infinity of examples without breaking a sweat. As the conflict intensifies, people’s belief in the conflicting parties as their political representatives grows, and ordinary people’s interaction becomes hence based on the events of the political arena. Conflicting parties capitalize on those prejudices which were hibernating in people’s mentalities, and just like lighting up a pot of dynamite with a small match, sectarianism erupted intensely in people’s beings as it did before in other conflicts in the region. We were never a cohesive society, no, but we would not hammer our coexistence as badly as we did in the past six years and are still doing. The media tells you this faction did this, bombed this, and deplored that. What you should examine after hearing this is the relationships that die after all of those occur, the insecurity that grows, the black-white “us and them” that gets bolstered, the frowns a child gets from their mother for befriending a child from another sect, and the list goes on. Beyond the big headlines of conflict, life always changes beyond death and despair.