‘Allah has spoken to us: we must keep silent.’ In the folds of secrecy, the Holy Book of the Druze

ABSTRACT

This article explores the cultural dynamics of bond and separateness created around the Book of Wisdom (kitâb əl-ḥikma), the Druze Holy Book. The Text, unrevealable to Druze non-believers or foreigners, is shrouded in a collective pact to ‘keep quiet’. I assert that this alliance aims to protect Druze intimacy rather than highlight their separateness from others. It is rooted in the Druze premise that meaning is both corporeal and feminine, that it pertains to an ineffable interiority. I thereby distance myself from anthropological analyses that consider the so-called Druze secret around the Book as static content solely related to language.

KEYWORDS:

• Secrecy
• sacred text
• body
• word
• Druze
• Israel

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Claire Chevallier for translating my text from French to English.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Éléonore Armanet is a socio-cultural anthropologist and senior lecturer at Aix-Marseille University (France). Her research in Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey has mostly focused on the relationship between body, gender, and the sacred. For many years, she also carried out fieldwork among North African and Turkish migrants living in the suburbs of Brussels (Belgium), exploring the impact of migration and exile on mental health and folk-healing systems.

Notes

1 From 1996 to 1999 and December 2014 to January 2015.

2 Druze religious doctrines, jurisdiction, and the political inclusion of the group in surrounding societies have been the subject of major comprehensive research. See (1) on the Druze religion, cf. Silvestre De Sacy (1838); Bryer (1975a, 1975b, 1976); Makarem (1974); Azzi (1992); Obeid (2006); Hatem (2006); Firro (2011); (2) on the Druze and their insertion within Nation States, cf. Chabry and Chabry (1984); Hazran (2014); (3) on the Druze and their relationship to Israel, cf. Ben-Dor (1973, 1979, 1982); Firro (1999); Rivoal (2000, 2001, 2002); Nisan (2010); Weiner-Levy (2009); and (4) on the Druze jurisdiction, cf. Layish (1976, 1978, 1982).

3 The Druze identify Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, and Plotinus as five of their prophets (anbiyâ').

4 From qamîṣ, a shirt. The Druze thereby assert that the body (əl-jisəm) is clothing for the soul (ər-rûḥ, lit. breath), which then lets go life after life.

5 For further reflection on the status of the word and meaning in the Mediterranean region, cf. Gilsenan (1976) and Jamous (1993).

6 This duty of transmission is also characteristic of the Ismaili tradition, from which the Druze movement originated. See Corbin (1983, 93–94).

7 The etymology of the Arabic word dîn, commonly translated as ‘religion,’ actually refers to ‘debt’ (dên).

8 On the condition that the murder is not committed to save one’s honour.

9 However, deviants are not actually denied group membership. Indeed, they are allowed to participate in the first half hour of weekly services, dedicated to reciting prayers and reading enlightening stories.

10 Contrary to what one generally finds in orientalist literature.

11 Specific to the Arab-Muslim world, the notion of maḥram (from ḥarâm, lit. what is forbidden, sacrilegious) refers to the “nearest” (aqrab ishî) consanguinity with the opposite sex. It defines the boundaries of exogamy and refers to people from whom it is not necessary to avoid physical proximity.

12 Druze religious dress and its particularities have been discussed in the literature dealing with the Druze community (cf. i.a. Azzam 2007, pp. 128-130). That said, little has been suggested by way of interpretation.

13 According to villagers, Druze men who married foreign spouses left to settle in Eilat, Dimona, and Beersheba. All located in southern Israel, these cities are the furthest from the traditional Druze settlements.

14 Take, for example, Ibtissam Maraana’s movie Lady kull al-‘arab (2008). The documentary portrays a young Druze girl who entered the Miss Israel pageant: the first Druze girl to try her luck in the world of Israeli fashion, Du‘â Fâres passed the first tests successfully. But she had to give up before the finals, under threat of murder for having violated the honour of the community who was offended by her immodest outfits.

15 Nevertheless, the Mamluk and Ottoman governments were not always convinced of the Muslim orthodoxy professed by the Druze. Fatâwî (sing. fatwâ) denouncing the Druze position in Islam were proclaimed during most wars between the Druze and the Muslim ‘ulamâ' (Firro 1986, 468).

16 This is the theory developed by Lebanese Druze author Sami Makarem, who refuses to define taqiyya as the reaction of a minority against persecution (Makarem quoted by Firro 1986, 467). Among Druze academics, the notion of taqiyya is strongly related to debates about the authenticity of the Druze religion: some writers claim that many of their religious norms, values, and rituals are not truly Druze, but were adopted out of taqiyya, while others claim that the Druze are indeed close to the Muslims, since many of their religious features are similar. What is more, as codified in Shiite Islam, the Alawis and Ismailis in Syria also practice taqiyya, in much the same way as the Druze (Firro 1986, 467).

17 On the Internet, acculturation is at work on Druze websites whose ambition is to promote a still unknown religious minority. Far from betraying the intimacy of the group, the discourse available on the web is prolix, but ultimately says nothing or only very little. The point here seems to be the production of a loquacious discourse while preserving Druze wholeness.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen) for which grateful acknowledgment is made.