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>Neighbor why the frick you know these things

Right now I cannot do a long-ish and coherent spergpost about the Alawites, but watch this video below on them, basically they are a syncretic mix of Shia Islam with Gnosticism, Christianity, Phoenician Paganism, and Neo-Platonism, what is interesting about them is that they are a secretive esoteric religion, so in theory. their actual beliefs and doctrines are supposed to remain secret, and only revealed to the higher-up initiates, but just like Muslims themselves, Alawites are not a monolith, some of them like in Syria under Assad just claim to be Shia Muslims, downplay their non-Islamic beliefs and rites, and due to the demands of the Syrian Civil War, they are getting closer to Islam than being their own religion, others elsewhere continue to resist the political demands for them to claim to be Muslims, and practice the doctrines unique to their religion.

For example, Alawites are not forbidden from drinking alcohol, in fact they drink wine and eat consecrated bread much like Christians, also similarly to Christians, they perform mass, celebrate Easter, Christmas, Epiphany, and the feasts of John Chrysostom and Mary Magdalene, and just like Catholic and Orthodox Christians, they also perform prayers to saints, now when it comes to "unique" beliefs not seen in either Islam nor Christianity, is that some of them go as far as to claim that Ali is Allah, and view him as superior to Muhammad, though IIRC, most of them in Syria just claim that Ali is a representation of Allah, but not literally God himself in person like Jesus in Christianity, they also have their own version of the trinity - Ali, Muhammad, and Salman al-Farsi, and similarly to Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism, they also believe in some form of reincarnation:

>Women are prohibited from religious studies, since they came from the devil and have no souls, according to Alawite beliefs.

>According to Nusayrite beliefs, females are excluded from re-incarnation.

!moidmoment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites#Theology_and_practices

Also, historically they were always called Nusayrites, it was not until very recently in the 1920s during the French colonial period that they changed their name to Alawites, they also historically desired an independent Alawite state, and denied being Arabs, but as you can see, in the majority of the time, politics changes religions, and not the other way around.

Don worry mon, erry ting is going to be alawite

they might be very different than vanilla islam, but i doubt they would consider themselves that way.

@sandkwinn ask your mom