The myth of Syria’s Sunni majority

In a Syria broken by decades of one-family rule, the ruins are not confined to cities and neighbourhoods. Ideas too have collapsed. Chief among them is the belief in a coherent “Sunni majority”, a notion that dissolved the moment it was tested against reality. A majority without a centre The roots of this illusion run deep. Under the Ottomans, Sunni Islam formed part of the empire’s legitimacy, yet Syria’s Sunnis never developed as an organised communal body. They were subjects of an imperial order, not members of a defined constituency. Urban scholars and administrators carried out the instructions of Istanbul but did not lead a unified community with shared interests.Minority communities enjoyed a measure of autonomy under the millet system. Sunnis, lacking a comparable framew…