Critics have accused Mr. Assad and the minority he belongs to, the Alawite sect, of fomenting the same kind of conflict in a bid to retain power by dividing the opposition.
But we have always been members of the same sect, for whom the rules of democracy are sacred and from which we may not deviate under any circumstances".
Prediction: "The blood of the just will be lacking in London, Burnt up in the fire of '66: The ancient Lady will topple from her high place, Many of the same sect will be killed".
Bernard Lewis's "The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam" covers much of the same material as Stark's first book (and its subtitle is guaranteed to catch the modern eye), but it would be a mistake to think that she has been replaced.
In May, ISIS won control of the Syrian city of Raqqa, and marked the victory by publicly killing three men it said were Alawites, members of the same sect as President Bashar al-Assad.
As adherents of the same sect that ISIS claimed to champion, Sunnis feel targeted by the Shia-led government simply based on their religious affiliation.
(He also called for ramping up government targeting of Muslims within the U.S., suggesting he's not sure how he feels about followers of the religion -- the vast majority of Iraq's Kurds are Sunni Muslims, mainstream and moderate members of the same sect of Islam that ISIS claims to represent).
What made the claim of a massacre in the village unusual were the accounts of witnesses, identified as survivors of the atrocity on rebel YouTube channels, who said that the victims were Alawites — members of the same minority sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, as President Bashar al-Assad and most members of the shabiha militia.
The two men were the leaders of the Ravidass sect, Sikhs who revere a saint of the same name believed to have been born in the 15th century to a family of leather workers, considered "untouchables," or outcastes, and known today as Dalits.
An intense and indiscriminate bombing campaign aimed at dispelling the Houthi rebels, followers of the same Shiite sect of Islam as Iran, began in March of 2015.
