The violence that overwhelmed Sweida in July 2025 reflects challenges under the transitional government, but also age-old tensions over Druze autonomy.
Articles on Druze
Displaying all articles
Lebanon has a long history of sectarian violence, and the recent events in Syria are causing alarm among its religious minorities, including the Druze.
Israel’s strikes in Syria, framed as protecting the Druze, reflect a strategy to fragment the Syrian state and secure Israel’s role as the dominant regional power.
A scholar of religious minorities and the Middle East explains the historical persecution and marginalization of the Alawite and Druze communities.
Today, most of the Druze community is split between three countries: Lebanon, Syria and Israel.
The Syrian goivernment has lost control of the southern province of Sweida. This suits Israel just fine.
Syria’s foreign ministry says a number of soldiers and civilians have been killed by coordinated Israeli drone attacks and airstrikes near the two countries’ border.
Syria has become engulfed in a wave of sectarian violence.
The fall of the Assad regime marks a turning point in Syria’s history. But it also opens a ‘chapter fraught with peril’ for the country’s minorities, an expert on religious minorities writes.
Druze are often held up as the best-integrated of Israel’s Arab minorities. But members of the faith who live in the Golan Heights have an especially complicated relationship with Israel.
A rocket attack killed 12 children and young people in a small Syrian Druze community in the Golan Heights.
The Israel-Hamas conflict is putting a spotlight on all of the different people affected by the war, including Israel soldiers from Ethiopian, Filipino and Bedouin backgrounds.
Lebanon’s 1989 peace deal ended a civil war by sharing political power between religious factions. That created a society profoundly divided by religion – something today’s protesters hope to change.
Political leverage aside, it’s a major source of water in a parched corner of the world that harbors significant oil deposits.
For many centuries, Syrian society has included people of many faiths – Sunni and Shi'i Muslims, Christians and Druze. This past is important to know to understand the present.
Illuminating the origins of one of the oldest peoples in the Middle East.
Why are Syria and Israel competing to be the ultimate protecters of the Druze?
Top contributors
-
Instructor in History and Ethics, Lebanese American University
-
Associate Professor, University of Kansas
-
Director of International Studies, Colorado State University
-
Associate Professor of Politics and International Studies, Centre College
-
Senior Lecturer in English, The Ohio State University
-
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of Law, Queen's University Belfast
-
Associate Professor of Political Science, Virginia Commonwealth University
-
Professor of Political Science, Kennesaw State University
-
Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex and Non-Resident Fellow at Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona, University of Essex
-
Lecturer in Anthropology, Brunel University of London
-
Research Fellow, Middle East Studies, Deakin University
-
Lecturer in International Security, King's College London
-
Professor of History and Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame
-
Professor and Director of the School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University
-
Assistant Professor in Global Humanities, Simon Fraser University