section_path: Beliefs/Theology and practices/Development
section_name: Development
paragraph_text: Development
  
  Yaron Friedman and many researchers of Alawi doctrine write that the founder of the religion, Ibn Nusayr, did not necessarily believe he was representative of a splinter, rebel group of the Shias, but believed he held the true doctrine of the Shias and most of the aspects that are similar to Christianity are considered more a coincidence and not a direct influence from it, as well as other external doctrines that were popular among Shia esoteric groups in Basra in the 8th century. According to Friedman and other scholars, the Alawi movement started as many other mystical ghulat sects with an explicit concentration on an allegorical and esoteric meaning of the Quran and other mystical practices, and not as a pure syncretic sect, though later, they embraced some other practices, as they believed all religions had the same Batin core.
  
  Journalist Robert F. Worth argues the idea that the Alawi religion as a branch of Islam is a rewriting of history made necessary by the French colonialists' abandonment of the Alawi and departure from Syria. Worth describes the "first... authentic source for outsiders about the religion", written by Soleyman of Adana – a 19th-century Alawi convert to Christianity who broke his oath of secrecy on the religion, explaining that the Alawi, according to Soleyman, deified Ali, venerated Christ, Muhammad, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, and held themselves apart from Muslims and Christians, whom they considered heretics. According to Tom Heneghan:
  
  Alawite religion is often called “an offshoot of Shi’ism,” Islam’s largest minority sect, but that is something like referring to Christianity as “an offshoot of Judaism.” Alawites broke away from Shi’ism over 1,000 years ago.
  
  According to a disputed letter, in 1936, six Alawi notables petitioned the French colonialists not to merge their Alawi enclave with the rest of Syria, insisting that "the spirit of hatred and fanaticism embedded in the hearts of the Arab Muslims against everything that is non-Muslim has been perpetually nurtured by the Islamic religion." However, according to associate professor Stefan Winter, this letter is a forgery. According to Worth, later fatwas declaring Alawi to be part of the Shia community were by Shia clerics "eager for Syrian patronage" from Syria's Alawi president Hafez al-Assad, who was eager for Islamic legitimacy in the face of the hostility of Syria's Muslim majority.
  
  Yaron Friedman does not suggest that Alawi did not consider themselves Muslims but does state that:
  
  The modern period has witnessed tremendous changes in the definition of the ʿAlawīs and the attitude towards them in the Muslim world.... In order to end their long isolation, the name of the sect was changed in the 1920s from Nusạyriyya to ʿAlawiyya'. By taking this step, leaders of the sect expressed not only their link to Shīʿism, but to Islam in general.
  
  According to Peter Theo Curtis, the Alawi religion underwent a process of "Sunnification" during the years under Hafez al-Assad's rule so that Alawites became not Shia but effectively Sunni. Public manifestations or "even mentioning of any Alawite religious activities" were banned, as were any Alawite religious organizations, and "any formation of a unified religious council" or a higher Alawite religious authority. "Sunni-style" mosques were built in every Alawite village, and Alawis were encouraged to perform Hajj. It's also worth noting that the grand mosque in Qardaha, the hometown of the Assad family, being dedicated to Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq who is venerated by Sunnis but not Shi'ites.