The memory of ordinary, everyday intercultural or interreligious relationships, in brief
The Old City of Damascus is globally renowned as a special place for Christian-Muslim relations, and once also embraced its Jewish population just as deliberately. The relationships surrounding the traders of the Old City – and the specialisms of well-known families from different religious communities – were experienced and often treasured by the whole of the city’s population. The clerical and intellectual elites encountered each other through their roles in public institutions, while ordinary citizens encountered each others’ significant life events, including in their separate religious versions, and met either through school, through army service, or in their professional lives. What is much less widely appreciated are the relationships which developed in the newer suburbs of Damascus and in towns in its surroundings, amongst populations which moved in and lived together in neighbourhoods and in towns nearby. Here, middle class and poorer residents – Sunni and Shia of different backgrounds, for instance – encountered each other in person, and in the context of their everyday occupations, and not through sectarian propaganda.
The context in which these relationships made a difference at the time
At an elite level, interreligious diversity has long been a recognisable and deliberate feature of its institutional life. This was and remains very evident in the Old City. The city’s vibrant economy embraced a very broad diversity, culturally and religiously, meaning new communities grew up in which Syrian Druze, Jews, and Palestinians, for instance, lived alongside Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Circassians and Greeks. Alongside narratives of difference and competition, members of these communities could have many opportunities to live, learn and work together, and in these contexts many residents of the city and its surrounding towns have had strong friendships which were marked by the acceptance and celebration of each others’ personal, cultural and religious lives.
What has happened since, which makes the memory valuable
Sectarian propaganda and violence has meant many citizens recall with great feeling the strength of earlier social solidarities. Immigrant minorities also experience discrimination in the tense context marked by economic scarcity and social division. From the 1940s onwards, in a situation with parallels for citizens of other backgrounds, the Jewish community was hounded by regime security actors, and Damascene Jews abroad recall the memories of peaceful social solidarity with affection, as well as recalling the discrimination, harassment, and violence they faced. Christians and Muslims from different communities have held on to these practices of intergroup solidarity, often seeing they are of practical use in the face of the violence and deprivation of the last decade. Discourses about social solidarity and division are also understood in the light of highly politicised discourses about political and military actors – keeping more personal memories alive is a counter to the politicisation of religious identity of recent years.
How might the memory be used in bringing people together in practice now?
Traditions of intercultural acceptance can be seen as a factor in social and political cohesion amongst Syrians in the country and in the diaspora today. It is both true that these traditions still shape ordinary people’s behaviour, and at the same time also that the nature of social coexistence has been shaken by political conditions. The obstacles to idealist teachings about the future are obvious, but these memories are widely seen as normative elements of the identity of the breadth of the city’s residents. Interreligious relationships are also seen to have functional humanitarian and civic purposes. To share the very personal nature of these memories can stand against simplistic, ideological or politicised constructions of the meaning of, for instance, Christian-Muslim or Alawi-Sunni relations.
Additional context/Some additional readinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus