The phrase "Defending the nation" has been replaced by "Defending Allah", among other changes.
Moving from seculism and nationalism to religious fundamentalism.
Other proposed changes include Evolution and the Big Bang theory being dropped from science teaching.
Rejecting science and reasoning.
References to the gods worshipped in Syria before Islam, as well as images of their statues, are also being dropped.
The significance of the great Syrian heroine Queen Zenobia, who once ruled Palmyra in the Roman era, seems to have been downplayed.
Destroying Syria's rich history.
Fundamentalism was a 1920s movement among Evangelical Christians to conserve their religion against the growing critique against it, particularly from the advancements in science and philosophy. The driving force was blind belief, as answers based on reason and logic were not possible (i.e. the Trinity: 1+1+1=1). The philosophical critique originated in the Renaissance, before which the Christian world was in the dark ages that punished science by death. Incidentally, the European powerhouse of science in the middle ages was Islamic Spain, the proliferation of it inside Christian Europe was a trigger for the Renaissance and European Christians called it a Muslim conspiracy against Christianity.
This entire concept never applied to Islam, as Islam's golden age was concurrent with widespread proliferation of science and philosophy. All the greatest scientists and philosophers from the Islamic world (i.e. Avicenna, Averroes, Ghazali, etc) were also religious clerics and theologians. 9th century theologian al-Jahiz wrote of evolution and natural selection, and many more after that up until the colonial times.
Once the Islamic world forfeited science, it entered into it's own dark age. And the dumbass religious scholars unnecessarily adopted the Evangelical line of defense, not only to their own detriment but also against their historical tradition, primarily because they were ignorant in science.
Now as I see it in 2024, Muslim theologians and clerics are slow to adopt science but somewhat accepting of philosophy though still very critical. They've improved from the colonial era when they were at the nadir. But I have only witnessed this improvement outside of the middleast. The Arabs are still rock bottom.
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As for Syria, my estimate is a long civil war, Afghanistan 2.0 + a fatal mistake by Erdogan which will destabilize Turkey at best or lead to it's destruction at worst.
From the two posts I see that you believe that Syrian people have made their choice of HTS because of their action or inaction. However, history has shown me that most of general public do not make a choice but passively accept whatever fall on them, winner of power doesn't neccessarily represent people.
I think Syrians would've backed anybody Muslim, Shia or Sunni, against Assad, regardless of how fanatical they are, purely on ethnoreligious grounds. Syria is almost 90% Sunni, while Assad is an Alawite, something like a sub- sub- sect of Shia syncretized with Syriac Christianity, a small group concentrated in Latakia, who held majority of the positions of power in the country.
The Alawite rise to power has it's roots in the French Mandate. Alawites are not even actually considered a sect of Islam by most Muslims including the Shia. Minority rule over the majority, just like in Saudi Arabia where the British installed the Wahhabi minority over the Hanbali majority.
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