Sweida

Today I attended a gathering of Druze to mark the recent massacre in Sweida, Syria.

Like many of you, I’m angry. I’m grieving. And I’m searching for meaning in all of this. The Druze are not defined by hate, but by peace. We use our strength in defence. The actual ethics of the faith: wisdom, honor, loyalty, and protecting the vulnerable, run completely counter to what our initial feeling of anger might bring about. The five pillars of Druze ethics,  truthfulness (sidq), fellowship, safeguarding others, honour (sharaf), and devotion to God (tawhid) leave zero room for the mentality that would put us in league with the fanatics that wish to erase us.

Druze history is complicated. We’ve had alliances, betrayals, and bloodshed with many communities, Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike. But none of those moments ever justified erasing our values. Our strength has always come from principled pragmatism, not revenge, not hate.

We’ve had painful chapters with Islam, yes, like the suppression under the Mamluks and Ottoman conscription, or more recently in regional power plays where Sunni political factions saw us as obstacles. But we’ve also had moments of shared resistance, like the 1838 Druze-Sunni revolt in Hawran, where Shibli Agha al-‘Iryan led us in legendary defense.

We’ve clashed with Christians, too, like during the Mount Lebanon Civil War of 1860, when Druze and Maronites slaughtered each other, stoked by European powers and sectarian incitement. But go back just a couple decades earlier, to the Battle of Wadi Baka, and you’ll find a Christian officer, Jirji al-Dibs (I briefly mentioned the story previously from one of my cherished books Stories and Scenes From Mount Lebanon) risking his life to feed the Druze family information about Ibrahim Pasha’s army. Before 1860, Druze and Christians even fought side by side, proof that our alliances shift not by faith, but by circumstance and conscience.

Even with Judaism, there are stories, whether during the Fatimid period or more recent chapters involving clashes with early Zionist militias, where Druze found themselves in difficult conflicts. Some believe that during the Egyptian campaigns under Ibrahim Pasha, Druze fighters pushed into Acre and other coastal cities, facing off with local Jewish communities. That history is still debated, but what’s clear is this: our past is full of gray areas, not clean lines of good and evil.

So let’s be honest: We’ve suffered at the hands of many groups. We’ve also stood with many of those same groups in other moments. And in every case, our survival has come not from rage, but from restraint. From choosing clarity over chaos. From remembering who we are. If we abandon that now, then we’ve already lost, not just lives, but legacy.

What we’ve seen out of Sweida is nothing short of horrific. Innocent people slaughtered at the hands of fanatics. And that’s what they are, fanatics. They don’t represent the same people who came to offer their condolences and recite the Fatiha when I laid my father to rest in his ancestral village in South Lebanon. Or those among us here in Edmonton that we’ve accepted into our homes, and vice versa, that we do business with, that we go to each other’s weddings, share in celebrations and sorrows.

Justice needs to come for the Druze in Sweida. And perhaps, it may only end how we’ve been known to end things in our history: we strike the final blow. But it’s a blow that is for justice and peace.

May the sacrifice and memory of our fallen unite us.