It all started with a somewhat mysterious audio clip. In it, a member of Syria's Druze minority was purportedly heard to be insulting Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. 

But the person who supposedy made it, cleric Marwan Kiwan, insisted he had nothing to do with it. "Whoever made it is evil and wants to incite strife between components of the Syrian people," he said in a post on social media.

Various Druze leaders and community members also said they rejected the insults heard in the audio, which many Syrian Muslims considered blasphemous.

But by then it was too late, British-Iraqi researcher Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, who knows Kiwan, wrote on his Substack page. "The circulation of the clip led to calls for mobilization to 'defend the Prophet Muhammad's honor,' and accompanying those calls were sentiments directed against the broader Druze community."

Unidentified armed groups began attacking the Druze-majority town of Jaramana near the Syrian capital Damascus. Observers say some attackers may well have been connected to the new, interim Syrian government's security forces, but there were likely also angry, armed civilians. They note that this underlines again how Syria's new government doesn't yet have complete control over security.

As a result, armed men inside Druze communities got involved. Between Tuesday and Thursday, the violence spread into several Druze-majority areas, including the towns of Jaramana and Sahnaya, both near Damascus, and into the Druze-majority province of Sweida.

'At home, afraid'

"In the past few days there was a kind of siege, no exit or entry," Mohammed Shobak, who lives in Sahnaya, told DW: "We were just sitting at home, afraid."

The armed men in the town had cars and machine guns, Shobak continued. He believes they got them from military barracks when Bashar Assad's authoritarian regime fell in December 2024. The men said they were there to prevent Syrian government forces from entering the town.

"It was bad during the clashes," Shobak continued. "But half an hour before the [state] security forces entered, all the gunmen disappeared. Everyone fled toward the olive groves."

The fighting resulted in the deaths of over 80 people, local authorities say.

The situation has since calmed with Druze community leaders agreeing to allow Syrian government forces into their areas and, in some cases, locals surrendering weapons. 

Who are the Druze?

The Druze are ethnically Arab and one of Syria's many religious minorities. They make up around 3% of the population, with an estimated 700,000 people living mainly in the southwest of the country.

Druze practice a monotheistic belief system that diverged significantly from Shia Islam centuries ago and includes elements of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism, among others.

Since the fall of the Assad regime, the new Syrian government — led by members of the Islamist rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, that toppled the regime — has been negotiating with the Druze community about how it will fit into Syria's transitional government and military.

What do the Druze want?

"The [Druze] community is divided along religious, military, and tribal lines," Omer Ozkizilcik, a non-resident fellow for the Syria Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council, wrote earlier this month. "Religious leadership of the Syrian Druze is split between three figures [and] the fragmentation of the Druze community extends to its military groups."

One of the most controversial negotiating points has been how Druze militias could be integrated into a new national army. Some insist on independence, at least until elections can be held, while Damascus insists the state must have a monopoly on arms in order to prevent a resurgence of violence. 

Meanwhile, other large Druze militias are more open to working with Damascus. In fact, on Thursday, five prominent Druze leaders issued a statement that indicated they were ready to do so.

'Deterioration and division'

On Thursday, one of the Druze's religious leaders, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, made a statement calling for international peacekeeping forces "for the swift protection of an innocent, defenseless population" from "extremist gangs" he believes are affiliated with the new Syrian government.

Al-Hijiri's critics point out that the cleric, who supported the Assad regime until around 2020, is just one of the Druze community's religious leaders. Other leading clerics don't necessarily agree with him.

Syria's Foreign Ministry rejected al-Hijri's call. "Any call for foreign intervention — under any pretext or slogan — only leads to further deterioration and division," it said in a statement.

What is Israel doing?

Early on Friday morning, Israeli jets bombed an area next to the presidential palace in Damascus, the seat of the new Syrian government. Israel also bombed Syria on Wednesday, when violence in Druze areas started.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday's strike was a "clear message to the Syrian regime" that Israel would "not allow the deployment of forces south of Damascus or any threat to the Druze community."

There is also a significant Druze community living in Israel, around 130,000 strong, with communal ties that reach over the borders.

Although the Syrian government has repeatedly said it doesn't want to fight with Israel, the latter is demanding that three provinces south of Damascus be "demilitarized." Israel has also expanded its presence on the ground in Syria, moving beyond a UN-mandated buffer zone in the Golan Heights and, reports suggest, expelling Syrians from those areas. 

Experts concur that Israel's interference is only making the situation worse for the Druze as well as potentially destabilizing Syria's already-precarious political transition.

When Israel — a state that the majority of Syrians perceive negatively — says it wants to "protect" the Druze community in Syria, it adds, some argue, to populist, damaging opinions about Druze that suggest the community is disloyal to the country.

"If Israel persists in this approach … it risks pushing Syria toward one of the very scenarios it says it wants to avoid," analysts at the think tank Crisis Group, wrote in a March briefing.

"Israel is overreaching," Shira Efron, research director at the New York-based Israel Policy Forum and Danny Citrinowicz, a research fellow at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, wrote last week in the magazine Foreign Affairs. "If Israel's leaders give in to the impulse to ramp up its incursions into Syria, they may well create a new enemy when there is currently none."

The majority of the Druze community and its leaders have already rejected Israel's "protection" and there have been popular protests against Israel.

As Fabrice Balanche, a Syria specialist and lecturer at Lumiere University in Lyon told French broadcaster France24 this week, "being considered a heretic is one thing, but to be seen as linked to Israel in Syria is even worse"

Edited by: A. Thomas