Being Druse

The virtue of parochialism

This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Convert or Die.

The Druse are an offshoot of Ismaili Shia Islam founded 1,000 years ago in Egypt. They draw on the Platonic heritage, referring to Plato as The Master. They are a monotheistic, monogamous, esoteric sect that believes in reincarnation. They do not practice the Five Pillars of Islam, but, to prevent their persecution by Muslims, ban conversion into their faith and claim to be Muslims themselves. They reside in the hills and mountains of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. They were eliminated in Egypt shortly after their faith was established, and are viewed as heretics or apostates by Sunni and Shia Muslims. They call themselves Unitarians, but are known as Druse. They excommunicated Nishtakin al-Darazi, the preacher of Unitarianism who was sent to the Levant, and after whom they were named, shortly after the faith had spread. The community is led by feudal families, the most prominent of which today is the Jumblatt family, to whom my family owes allegiance.

For most people, their first political memory is of some sensational world event. The signing of the Oslo Accords. The Iraq War. 9/11. A scene from a TV screen.

For me, it was this. A Christian boy next to me on the school bus in Amman, Jordan, was being picked on by another, Muslim, boy for being Christian. There was some tut-tutting and disapproval, but the other boy kept at it. I chose to step in. I knew I was different too - I am Druse, and my mother had always warned me to never tell anyone in Jordan that. If asked, I was to say that I was Muslim.

I leaned over to the Christian kid and told him not to mind. We were both different from the Muslims. “I’m Druse,” I told him. This was my little act of solidarity. I could not pick a fight with the Muslim boy because others would back him, and this was the best I could do.

The next day, we were getting on the bus. The Christian boy did not know that I was behind him. He asked the bus driver: "Ammo, esh ya’ni Druse [what does Druse mean].”

“Allahu a’lam [God knows best]. Hol zay el yahood. [They are like the Jews].”

This was in Jordan in the late 1980s. The height of the first Palestinian Intifada against Israel. I would not have been older than 8 at the time.

The first political joke I had learned from a Jordanian kid at school went something like this:

There was a contest to see who could last longest in a pigsty. The American went in, and he ran out after half an hour. The Jordanian went in, and he ran out after five minutes. The Jew went in, and an hour later the pigs ran out.

This was perfectly normal in Jordan and in much of the Middle East, where hatred of Jews is a state religion. At school, we learned regularly about Palestine and how horrendous Israel was. Everyone knew that the Jews were bloodthirsty, greedy and downright awful. Details, nuance and tolerance were unimportant. To put it mildly, being called a Jew was no laughing matter. The lesson was clear. Solidarity and sympathy were risks that I could not afford in this hostile land.

A few days later, religion came up again on the school bus. The Christian boy asked me: “what did you say your religion was again?”

“Muslim.”

“No, you said something different.”

“No, I said I was Muslim.”

Fortunately, he got distracted and dropped the subject.

We returned to Lebanon after the civil war ended, in 1991. Now, mother said, we could proudly tell people that we were Druse.

A few weeks after we returned, some kid at school said to me, “great, one more idiot Druse.” I punched him without a second’s hesitation.

I was home, and I could fight. That is what made it home.

The precariousness of tolerance

When the Christian Maronites in my mountainous village, Bzebdine, wanted to build a church, the Druse supported them. My family chopped down pine trees to use in building the roof. Pine trees are a treasure. The kindling was used to bake bread. The cones and the pine seeds’ shells were used to start fires in wood burning stoves in winter. The branches chopped during pruning or felled by snow were used as firewood. And the pine seeds are a delicacy used in cooking and desserts. Felling a pine tree is not done lightly. When the Maronites wanted to consecrate that church, they consulted the Druse. The Maronites wanted to dedicate it to the Virgin Mary. The Druse said no. It had to be a warrior – perhaps St Elijah, depicted with a raised sword stained with the blood of the priests of Baal, or St George, dragon slayer, both revered by Muslims and Christians alike. The Maronites chose St Elijah.

During the civil war of the 1840s, the Druse of Bzebdine, led by my great, great grandfather, and the Christians, led by a man named Geryes Ghusteen, exchanged house keys. It was agreed that if Druse forces entered the village, the Druse would protect Christian homes, and if Christian forces entered the village, the Christians would protect Druse homes. Thankfully, neither force entered the village, and life went on. The agreement was untested, but it generated a great deal of goodwill down the generations.

During the 1975 civil war, my father, his cousin, and a friend brought the first 25 AK-47s to the village. My father was deputy commander of the village’s Druse militia – a platoon sized formation. When Syrian President Hafez al-Assad's forces assassinated the leader of the Druse, founder of the Progressive Socialist Party, Kamal Jumblatt, the Druse went on a rampage. Against the Christians. They were impotent against the Syrians. In my village, the Druse shot up the Christians’ homes and forced them to flee. Disgusted, and his life at risk from his own side for objecting, my father left Lebanon. After working in a few Arab countries, he ended up in Jordan. And this is where I was born. During those years, the Druse were briefly on the backfoot in the civil war. Many of my family had to evacuate the village ahead of the advancing Maronite militias. Some houses were burned, and there was much looting.

Eventually, the Druse, with support from Assad’s Syrians – yes, the same Assad responsible for killing the Druse leader Kamal Jumblatt – and the Palestinians, regained the advantage against the Christians. The allied forces robbed, looted, and burned the Christians’ houses in my village, stealing valuables, furniture and even removing the tiles from the walls and floors, the copper from the electric wiring, and the classic Lebanese red tiles from the roofs. Only the walls were left standing. The lessons were clear. Generations of friendship and peace can be abruptly upended. Tolerance is precarious. Diversity is often a scorpion that stings without warning.

The Jumblatts

I cannot discuss being Druse without discussing the community’s leading hereditary feudal lords, the Jumblatts. The Jumblatts have played a prominent role in the history of Lebanon since the 1600s. When Lebanon was still a restive part of the Ottoman Empire, in the 1820s, my family sided with Sheikh Bachir Jumblatt, nicknamed Pillar of the Sky, in his feud with Emir Bachir Chehab II the Great, who ruled Mount Lebanon on the Ottomans’ behalf. My great, great, great grandfather, Selim, sheltered the chief of the guard of Jumblatt after the latter’s defeat. Jumblatt and Chehab had waged a battle, and their chiefs of guard had duelled. Legend has it that Jumblatt’s chief of guard, a relative of my family’s, had chopped his rival in two. Although the Emir won the battle and the war, he was furious at losing his general in such a spectacular manner. Selim, my ancestor, sheltered Jumblatt’s chief of guard and helped him escape to Hermel, north of the Bekaa, reportedly with a treasure. For this, my ancestor became a wanted man. Emir Bachir Chehab retaliated by sending his forces to our village, and stabled their horses in the Majlis, the Druse house of prayer. Some of the Emir’s horses perished due to being placed in such an unsuitable setting, and word was sent to him to ask if the rest could be removed. The emir insisted on humiliating my family until my ancestor surrendered, ordering his troops to keep their horses in our majlis “so long as there’s a single horse in Bachir’s stables”. His soldiers took the family’s grains, slaughtered the livestock and pillaged and robbed as best they could. Eventually, mediators convinced Chehab to pardon my ancestor. When he was on his way back to the village, he caught a fever in Mdayrej, along the Damascus Road, and died. Chehab’s reaction upon hearing the news was, “Blessed be God, He got to him before I did.” Chehab had had no intention of sparing my ancestor. This land is never ruled without violence, cruelty and vindictiveness.

My family had been loyal to the Jumblatts since well before the 1840s, though we do not know for how long. We have never not been Jumblattis. I see no choice before me but to hold on to this feudal loyalty. I do so despite Walid Jumblatt’s representative admitting to Jumblatt having smuggled USD500 million out of Lebanon, while my father’s pension is blocked in a bank, as are the pensions and savings of hundreds of thousands of others. I have to trust the Jumblatts to lead the Druse, not because of a particular policy that I agree with, but because I do not trust that any other faction will reciprocate my allegiance during whatever future crisis Lebanon will throw up. This choice has been made for me before I was born. Who am I to question it?

I support the Jumblatts with hesitation, however. My doubts come from the fact that Walid Jumblatt, our current leader, and his late father, Kamal, are revolutionaries and Arabists and so are insufficiently parochial. Kamal Jumblatt, Walid’s father, went against the advice of his mother and became a socialist, founding the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) in 1949, originally a cross-sectarian party (!). The PSP promoted secularism, by which it meant in practical terms more Muslim power; a stronger social safety net, by which it meant a more centralised state overseeing healthcare, education, social security and other forms of welfare, thereby usurping the religious institutions that regularly played that role; and opposition to imperialism, by which the PSP meant opposition to the West and to Israel, and not to Arab or Islamic imperialism. Kamal Jumblatt’s idealistic stances led Lebanon to disaster. To push forward progressivism in Lebanon, Kamal Jumblatt sided with the militias of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) after they entered Lebanon in 1969, and against the Christians. In doing so, he helped start the 1975 civil war, which, to the Christians, was about protecting their identity and political power against its usurpation by Islamic forces. To the Muslims, it was about fairness and progress. The Christians lost this war, and the consequences included even worse governance than before the war, even more inequality, worse education and healthcare and a chronically bankrupt and incapacitated state.

Walid Jumblatt, one of the richest men in Lebanon, still leads the PSP. His son, Teymour, is in the process of expanding his role and influence there as he is groomed for succession. The PSP has become a vehicle for the Jumblatts’ feudalism. I do not object to feudalism for the same reason that I do not object to imperialism, or, indeed, to elephants, wolves or sheep. Feudalism is a part of nature, just like imperialism, communal hatreds and human frailty. I just prefer my feudalism without the progressive veneer. My family have put up with revolutionary progressivism through the reign of two Jumblatt generations. We are patient. But three generations may just be too much. That said, Walid Jumblatt seems to have learned his lesson. He is now focused solely on his community, not on being a national Lebanese leader or on some hollow idealistic claim or the other. And that is good enough for me. I owe him loyalty for serving and protecting my community. The risks are too high for regional adventures that are far bigger than us, temptingly grand as these adventures may be.

Being Druse

Every Druse I know describes how, when they cross a certain point in Lebanon, they can again breathe easy. After that rock, after that tree, after that turn, there starts the territory he calls home. For me, it is when the car turns left in Bhamdoun, away from the Beirut – Damascus Highway, towards Qraiyeh, and begins its descent down the road of the Hotel Ambassadeur. From there, I know it is my territory. I know that help is not more than minutes away. I know that I have family in almost every village. I know it is enough to say who my father and grandfathers are, and that that would guarantee me shelter or aid. In my village, I know that there are people who would fight and die for me, even though I have been away for nearly 20 years. I know that whenever I am back, I am among family, no matter what changes. It is unimportant that there may be other families next door with whom we were feuding. It is unimportant that some relative or neighbour holds a particularly nasty grudge. It is unimportant that some people in my village would rob me blind in a heartbeat, and perhaps murder me. I have no romance about this – small communities are full of intense, petty and parochial hatreds, as well as great loyalties. What is important is that when I begin the descent into that valley, I am home, this is where I am from, this is where I belong, and here I can and will fight.  

To be Druse, and to survive, requires one to be certain about human nature. It is tribal, hostile, jealous, fickle and dangerous. To be Druse is to know that you cannot afford illusions, or sometimes even sympathy. To be Druse is to be certain that freedom is limited to certain spaces and enclosures, and that freedom is communal before being individual. To be Druse is to be certain that there are obligations to family and community, that they, whoever they are, are out to get me, that my only refuge is with my own, and that I do not give up our mountains, because there is nowhere else I can be myself. The mountains may be hostile. I may be a minority even in my own village. But it is my village, and there, I can make my stand. Even if it is against another Druse family, even if it is against the whole world. This mountain is mine. My ancestors tamed its rocky crags and made it fertile. They defended it against many enemies, failed sometimes and succeeded many others. They survived. Even if it is just a rock, this rock is mine. If my feet are on this rock, the rest of the world can be damned.

This bond to the land and to the community, this commitment to communal freedom, this understanding of freedom as bounded and local, combined with the broad hostility towards the Druse from all other communities, explains much of Druse politics. These reasons are why the Palestinian Druse chose to side with the Israelis rather than leave their homes. They offer their military skills to the Jewish state but gain experience that will be invaluable should the Jews ever lose the land again. And they get to remain Druse. This is why the Syrian Druse support Assad. Like the Israelis, Assad guarantees the Druse their communal freedom - not their individual freedom - allows them to mostly limit their military service to their own regions, and, in exchange, the community remains loyal to the state. This is why the Lebanese Druse do not want a fight with Hezbollah. They accept that Iran is the ascendant empire, they are uncertain that they can defeat Hizbullah, and, if they lose against it, they might lose their land and therefore their existence. The Druse will compromise with whatever the power that be happens to be today, in exchange for communal autonomy and survival. All they want is that space where they can make a stand when there is nowhere else to go. To be Druse is to know that, while adventures are tempting and may show early success, eventually, there will be nowhere else to go. To be progressive, to be Arabist, to be socialist, to have great hopes and grand ambitions, is to take a gamble with the survival of the community. Idealism, novel loyalties and perfectionist ideologies are luxuries that we cannot afford.

Druse and Christian

To avoid misleading you, dear reader, I must here confess that I was baptised into the Catholic faith three years ago. This obviously affects my views, much as I would like to claim to be neutral and objective. I offer you this disclosure so that you can assess my views while fully informed of my biases. I can never not be Druse, even if I do not believe in the Druse faith – indeed, one feature of the faith is that most of its adherents do not know its content – this is a community based on tribal loyalty first and foremost. The chains that bind me to my community and my land are what they are, regardless of my faith. My faith is what it is, regardless of those chains. To say that I am conflicted is an understatement, but I am also whole.

Culturally, the Druse today are much closer to the Christians in their way of life and their values. Most middle-class Druse families today, and, traditionally, most Druse families of all classes, regularly visit Christian shrines to make vows for loved ones, travellers or the sick. If they were but a little humbler, and more focused on conversion than on power, the Christians of Lebanon could benefit from the Druse’s legendary fighting prowess. The Druse could benefit from the Christians’ education, skills and culture. But for that to happen, the two communities must focus on the reality that there is no Druse village in Mount Lebanon without either a Christian community or a neighbouring Christian village. The two communities are completely entangled. They are the only two communities in Lebanon who share a fundamental reality: they can only be themselves in Lebanon. They can only rule themselves and be autonomous in Lebanon. It is only on this mountain that they share, and nowhere else, that they have any relevance. They have no true foreign patron, like Iran for the Shia or Saudi Arabia for the Sunnis. The Christians of Egypt are a crushed and often humiliated minority, and that may end up becoming the fate of both the Christians and the Druse. In Syria, Christians and Druse are only protected by the Alawite government – the Sunni majority would subdue and humiliate them both. In Iraq, Christians are all but extinct thanks to the US invasion that unleashed Sunni and Shia Islamic radicalism. The West does not care about the Levant’s Christians, let alone its Druse. We are both alone, and we are in Lebanon together. The tragedy is that this makes the two communities even more hostile to each other than they are to anyone else.

The supposedly progressive stances of Kamal Jumblatt, which Walid has inherited (and which I pray will not be inherited by the heir apparent, Teymour), still drive a wedge between the Christians and the Druse that makes Lebanon ungovernable, even at the local level. The Jumblatts are obsessed with keeping the Christians down, out of fear that a strong Christian leadership would threaten Jumblatt’s position. Some Christians, for their part, are obsessed with Jumblatt and with the Druse, out of a false belief that Jumblatt cannot effectively represent their interests, or out of parochial jealousies, or as a means of showing their toughness by taking a stance against him. The split between the two communities means that the two Lebanese minorities that are most certain that they have nowhere else to go are constantly at each other’s throats. This prevents the emergence of a unified Mount Lebanon that can move away from the Sunni – Shia struggle that is ravaging Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria. Lebanon’s Sunnis and Shia cannot help being part of that struggle – it is theirs, whether they like it or not. But the Christians’ and the Druse’s best reasonable option is to minimise the impact of these struggles on them, rather than be divided and paralysed. The first step towards achieving this is to heed Christ’s call: Love thy enemy. Love thy neighbour. The Christians and Druse are neighbours – and enemies – with nowhere else to go. Now is the time for the two communities to be sufficiently parochial to get along. Alas, in a land of long grudges, of mistrust of tolerance, of pettiness and by parochialism, this reminds us of the final tragedy of being Druse: to be Druse is to be irrational, just like everyone else.