83 summarily executed in genocide

We mustn't bury these details, awful as they are.

I'm not trying to bury details. Language matters and the claim that
it’s permissible in Islam to take Druze women as sex slaves.
Is not true, inflammatory and anti Muslim. It needs to be clarified that it is extremists perpetuating this and not a belief of your average Muslim.

I agree that, this is the type of behaviour perpetrated by radicals, which is very different to the claim that it is permissible in Islam.

I repeated what Jolani’s cousin has said. I never said it was fine, nor did I say it was what billions of muslims believe. If a muslim himself declares his belief in the practice that is not on me thats on him.

Lets be honest though Isis did it because they believed it was permissible according to whatever grotesque beliefs they have. A Yazidi woman was found in Gaza precisely because some people actually believe it. Hamas talked about it in their videos because some of them believe it is permissible.

I’m not muslim, I have no idea if that whole “what your right hand possess” thing is true or not or misquoted or misinterpreted. But enough people believe it in the middle east that thousands of women have been taken into sexual slavery. Thats not a me problem, it’s a them problem.

But this is the type of behaviour perpetrated by radicals, and there are a lot of them in the Syrian regime. I'm sure there are plenty of peaceful Muslims in Syria, but they're not the ones in control. The peaceful majority aren't able to stop this. You only need a small percentage of violent people (in any culture) to come together and cause carnage.

This isn't about being anti-Muslim, because it can happen in any culture. We mustn't bury these details, awful as they are. In a way we are all tainted by the histories of our people. Peaceful Muslims need to call out this type of behaviour.

Will you be marching, or know anybody who will be marching, for the Syrian fatalities?

Just saw Jolanis cousin helpfully reminding everyone that it’s permissible in Islam to take Druze women as sex slaves

No it is not! This kind of rhetoric is not helpful and inciteful. He is likely referring to Islamist extremists so needs to clarify that and not taint the billions of Muslims around the world

I think this is a slightly disingenous response when the immediate response across social media to Israel taking action in Syria to protect the Druze was to see it through the lens of anti-zionism. People who know nothing sbout the relatiinship between the Druze and Israel having a knee-jerk reaction. Saying it was evidence of an Israeli land grab or similar.

its not so much what is 'on the news' but what is picked up in the population. And it is true to say that on the whole the reaction to attacks on various minorities In the region never garner the traffic that the Palestinians do. I have a constant stream of posts and images relating to gaza coming through daily. Most of it a bit shallow and hysterical. Nothing on the Druze except from a few Kurdish, Syrian, Israeli and Jewish accounts tjat I follow.

Thankful to the UN for these investigations and highlighting the violence and killings happening in Syria. It sounds like complete lawlessness which is a very dangerous space for innocent civilians. Who is arming these gangs?

I was watching Tousi TV last night and saw the reports of it, then found a video on X Tousi didn't show because it was too graphic (people being forced to jump off a balcony). It's horrific. Gangs of men with automatic weapons summarily executing people.

BBC downplaying it to make it sound like tribal fighting, rather than the murder that it is. Israel the only country to actually do anything to help, but those people are going to need more help than that. Why minority groups who are no threat are being targeted is just insane, they're hardly likely to or interested in toppling the regime. They are simply 'other', apparently that's a good enough reason to slaughter them.

The West struggles to understand tribal based societies which has caused endless pain - Afghanistan is a perfect example, Syria is another. We saw it during the dreadful genocide in Rwanda in the early 90s.
When there is a very “strong” leader like Assad or Kagame, the national identity can be paramount but often by methods the West don’t agree with - lack of democratic institutions for instance. When this leader is gone, it can be very difficult as the different factions fight for control, as we are now seeing in Syria.
I hope this can be resolved by the Syrian people peacefully and without more
bloodshed.

Ugh ...that is abhorrent.

Not seeing it in the papers except for small by-lines.

Just saw Jolanis cousin helpfully reminding everyone that it’s permissible in Islam to take Druze women as sex slaves. Fucking lovely.

It was the top story in all R4 news coverage yesterday, all day.

There are armies heading towards an area full of civilians and killing them very much on purpose only because they are Druze.

Gaza is at war because their leaders dragged them into a war, it’s shit and civilians are suffering but Hamas lays down it’s arms and returns the hostages and it can be over.

The Druze are being killed for being Druze. Christians are being killed because they are Christian.

It really isn’t, I have subscriptions to various newspapers, it’s really not getting coverage.

Personally this isn’t about Israel it’s about the hostility to minority groups in the middle east. The sheer level of hatred that motivates thousands to get in the cars and trucks and go to an area of the country to hunt a specific religious group. They have no reason to be there. There was no Druze terror attack on Sunnis. A conflict between Druze and Bedouin has escalated to thousands of sunnis calling for the Druze to be wiped out. There were protests in Damascus calling for the eradication of the Druze. That is what genocidal intent looks like. The christians are calling for help and the Kurds and Israelis are sending aid.

The insanity of that is mind boggling.

They need to have a federal system otherwise the minorities in Syria are going to end up decimated.

The reasons the current protests are so centred on Israel is that it is currently Israel that is dropping the bombs.

In earlier decades the mass protests were against the US and the UK for their invasion of Iraq - which has been such an important part of the cause of the explosion in Islamism.

Powerful nations dropping bombs naturally attract the most vocal opposition.

Absolutely horrific.

This is such a strange take on the conflict in Syria. Of course it is getting coverage. The conflict in Syria has been all over the news recently. And who has the 'a narrow approach to conflict in the middle East' that you mention, OP, other than various bubbles in social media politico-chat? Who on earth thinks that "the word 'genocide' ... is something it appears only Palestinians can claim" ?

This thread strikes me as an appalling attempt to enlist the existence of yet more violence and death in the long recent history in Syrian war into the cause of point-scoring in relation to the current catastrophe in Gaza,

It has really shocked me in recent years how the quality of political discussion on MN has descended into these awful polemicised caricatures of political comment. Mass death discussed with the same dynamics, the same facile obsession with Being Right On The Internet that we see in angry MN threads about toxic MILs, bridzillas and mums-at-the-school-gate.

These are people's actual lives that you are recruiting into winning at chat.

That's probably too simplistic. Not suppressed so much manipulated. I can't begin to really understand the complexity of Syrian politics

https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/syrias-druze-have-run-out-of-patience-with-assad/

What gets me is the sheer number of people who probably never had dealings with the Druze prepared to drive for hours to just kill some. It’s religious hatred pure and simple.