Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri’s journey: From obedience to opposition?

PARIS — Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri has taken center stage in Suwayda since Assad fell last year, as the top figure in the southern province or the primary representative of his religious minority.

After rising to Druze religious leadership in 2012, it took years for al-Hijri to take a clear stance opposing the Assad regime. With the new authorities in Damascus, however, he is taking an adversarial stance from the start. 

Al-Hijri’s opposition to President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s administration makes him a key player in any formulation of consensus or disagreement with Damascus. In recent months, his name has become immediately associated with any discussion of Suwayda or the Druze, even though there are currents within his own community that oppose his positions. 

“No understanding or agreement with the government in Damascus,” al-Hijri vowed in mid-March, calling it an “extremist government in every sense of the word, wanted by international justice” in his sharpest criticism to date. “We are at a stage of ‘to be or not to be,’ working for our interests as a sect,” he added.

During his 13 years as the foremost of Suwayda’s three Sheikhs of Reason—the top Druze spiritual authorities—al-Hijri’s political stances have shifted dramatically: from total support for Bashar al-Assad and calling on Suwayda residents to join regime forces, to championing a local anti-Assad protest movement and finally opposing al-Sharaa’s new government. 

Who is Hikmat al-Hijri, and how have his positions changed over time? What drives him, and what impact could he have on Syria’s Druze?

Who is Hikmat al-Hijri? 

Sheikh Hikmat Salman al-Hijri was born on June 9, 1965 in Venezuela, where his father, Sheikh Salman Ahmad al-Hijri, worked at the time. He later returned to Syria, where he completed his education and studied law at Damascus University from 1985 to 1990, according to al-Amama, a website covering the Druze community. 

After 1993, al-Hijri returned to Venezuela for work, before returning to Suwayda in 1998 and settling down in Qanawat, his hometown in northeastern Suwayda. Qanawat is home to Dar Qanawat, the headquarters of the Druze spiritual presidency. 

Al-Hijri became head of the spiritual presidency—the primary Sheikh of Reason—following the death of his brother, Sheikh Ahmad al-Hijri. Sheikh Ahmad died in a suspicious car accident in March 2012 after holding the position—passed down through the family for decades—for 23 years.

A history of loyalty

At the funeral of his brother and predecessor, which Assad attended, al-Hijri directly addressed the then-president: “This event has turned to joy. You are the hope—Bashar the hope, Bashar the nation, Bashar of pan-Arabism and the Arabs,” he told him. “May God prolong your life and take your hand.” 

The following year, al-Hijri expressed further support, stressing the importance of “standing united with the Syrian army in its confrontation with armed terrorist groups” in a March 2013 interview with al-Baath newspaper. “Our choice is to confront the terrorist groups with all our capabilities and stand united with our valiant army,” he added.

However, his public statements at the time were “not independent of Syrian intelligence,” Firas Zeinuddin (a pseudonym), a journalist living in Suwayda city, told Syria Direct on condition of anonymity. “Military Intelligence assigned a security officer to accompany Sheikh Hikmat.” Since rising to leadership in 2012, “his meetings and statements, for several years…were under security surveillance.” 

In March 2015, al-Hijri issued a statement calling on Suwayda residents and factions to take up arms and work under the umbrella of the Assad regime. “We assure all the people of Suwayda who wish to arm themselves that we will seek to immediately request the provision of weapons and appropriate logistical support from the relevant authorities in the Syrian government, as well as requesting direct supervision over the training of most of them,” it read.

Sheikh Wahid al-Balous—the founder and then-leader of the Men of Dignity faction who was assassinated months later in a bombing orchestrated by the regime—rejected the call, and what he called “the weapons of allegiances and discord.” He urged the province not to take any side among the “conflicting parties,” saying those who “fight outside the boundaries of the mountain [Suwayda] only represent themselves, and such people will bring woe and disasters to the mountain.” 

This rhetoric was a direct challenge to the policy of the Sheikhs of Reason, headed by al-Hijri, for the Druze to become involved in the war. Al-Balous’s stance deepened divisions between the Men of Dignity—as a social, religious and military movement—and the religious establishment.

Then came the emergence of the Sheikhs of Dignity, religious figures with a different position from the Sheikhs of Reason, namely that the priority should be “protecting the mountain” and not engaging in the Syrian war. 

With temperatures rising between the Men of Dignity and the Sheikhs of Reason, the latter gave a “mandate” to Brigadier General Wafiq Nasser—then the head of military security in Suwayda—to eliminate the group. This was captured in a video of a meeting between Nasser, the three Sheikhs of Reason and other local figures, believed to have taken place weeks after al-Balous was assassinated. 

“We agreed to one message: to give the law and the state free rein to act as they see fit,” al-Hijri says in the video. In response, Nasser calls this statement “a mandate for us to lift the cover” of protection. He stresses that “the al-Balous group” must be “killed on the ground as an armed aggressor and as a term,” concluding: “I will act in accordance with this mandate.” 

Over the following years, al-Hijri again publicly affirmed his support for the regime and invited young people in Suwayda to join its forces. In November 2018, he called on Suwayda’s men to enlist in light of what he described as “the wonderful victories,” referring to the summer 2018 settlement agreements that saw Damascus regain control of parts of central and southern Syria. He urged them to take advantage of a presidential amnesty issued for those who had not completed their military service or settled their status with the state. 

Journalist and political activist Samer al-Fares (a pseudonym), described al-Hijri’s trajectory as “vacillating, full of contradictions, double standards and a lack of wisdom in making decisions to preserve the historical and national status of Suwayda province.” He chalked this up to “a love of exclusive power, making decisions alone, and a fear of the former regime’s brutality.

Al-Hijri’s positions impacted his “traditional and popular standing,” al-Fares told Syria Direct from his home in Suwayda, requesting anonymity for security reasons. “He was no longer the top decision-maker in the province, and it contributed to the formation of divisions and the emergence of new currents to defend the dignity and prestige of the province from the oppression and tyranny of the state.” He pointed to the Men of Dignity movement, and “Sheikh Hikmat agreeing to the former regime’s plan to get rid of it and wipe it out.”

From support to opposition

At the start of 2020, al-Hijri started to change. He put out a statement calling for an “economic rescue plan to rein in the corrupt,” coinciding with a wave of protests in Suwayda sparked by worsening economic and living conditions. 

“We do not absolve the responsible authorities of the state of deterioration, loss and mismanagement, and the resulting subjugation and suffering of the deprived,” al-Hijri stated. He pointed to “the obscene and illegitimate wealth of corrupt influential people, thieves and kidnappers, and the manipulation of the poor’s livelihoods,” stopping short of directly criticizing Assad. 

It seems that Brigadier General Louay al-Ali, then the head of military security in southern Syria, took offense. He insulted al-Hijri and the Druze during a phone call between the two in January 2021, when the sheikh was demanding the release of a 17-year-old boy from Suwayda detained by the intelligence services. 

While the spiritual presidency attempted to conceal the incident to avoid any escalation, it became public knowledge two days later when local media reported on it. Anger exploded in the province, and pictures of Assad were ripped up and burned. Fearing the protests would expand, the regime apologized and Assad called al-Hijri to praise his religious standing in Suwayda. For the moment, the incident was resolved. 

However, at a secret meeting with a Russian military delegation in April of the same year al-Hijri rejected Assad’s continued presence in power. This marked his first stance in direct opposition to the then-president. 

Two of the local journalists Syria Direct spoke to attributed this change in al-Hijri’s stance to regional and foreign factors. The pivot followed “advice given to him by the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt in Lebanon, and Sheikh Muwaffaq Tarif, the head of the Druze in Palestine, that he needed to stay away from the regime and oppose it,” Zainuddin said. 

Al-Hijri’s later positions toward the Assad regime sharpened and grew more direct, especially in July 2022 after he announced a “general mobilization” against the Raji Falhout gang—an armed group affiliated with Syrian military security—and other similar groups tied to the regime and implicated in kidnapping and drug trafficking. 

The following year, al-Hijri threw his weight behind Suwayda’s protest movement. Sparked in reaction to economic hardship and price hikes in late August 2023, the protests become a sustained nonviolent movement that continued on through the fall of the regime last December. 

“Sheikh Hikmat derives his stature from his religious position, which he inherited as the spiritual head of the Druze sect, since this position is considered the primary point of reference in social and religious matters,” al-Fares said. This stature was shaken over the years as, “despite his certainty that the Assad regime was responsible for assassinating his brother, Sheikh Ahmad, he supported the former regime, submitted to its orders and did not object to the massacres and violations it committed.”

As soon as al-Hijri felt “his status was at risk, and he was being insulted by the authorities and people in the province, he decided to shift gears from being a man aligned with the authorities to someone who began to change his positions, little by little,” al-Fares added. 

After Suwayda’s anti-Assad movement began in 2023, al-Hijri moved to “jump from Assad’s boat to that of the Syrian revolution. He emerged in a new form in the Syrian scene overall,” al-Fares said. When the regime fell, “he was the first to reap the fruits of this victory in Suwayda, as a religious, political and national leader. He regained the stature he had previously lost—though it soon began to decline with his shifting positions towards the new authority.”

Before the protest movement, al-Hijri was “the least popular of the Sheikhs of Reason, even though he is the top sheikh of the sect,” said Ammar Salim (a pseudonym), a journalist living in Suwayda city. “He delved deeply into the hirak, and gained his popularity from it, then controlled anything related to the movement,” he added, requesting anonymity.

Differences within the religious establishment

In the years following al-Hijri’s ascent to the helm of Druze spiritual leadership in 2012, disagreements began to surface with the other two Sheikhs of Reason: Yousef Jerboa and Hamoud al-Hanawi. The divisions, which became apparent, were rooted in a dispute over leadership, and who would dominate the scene on the mountain. 

This conflict led the spiritual council to split into two bodies. One, known as the “spiritual presidency” based in Qanawat, is led by al-Hijri. The second, based at the Ain al-Zaman Shrine in Suwayda city, is represented by Jerboa and al-Hanawi. 

Al-Fares attributed the split to “al-Hijri’s desire to dominate the scene as the sole leader and only head of the Druze sect in Suwayda,” though “his traditional status and popularity as the spiritual leader of the community were negatively affected.” 

The roots of the dispute between the three Sheikhs of Reason date back to 2014, Zainuddin said, when “Sheikh al-Hijri tried to monopolize sect decisions and control over the Ain al-Zaman Shrine, and started to issue his statements in the name of Dar Qanawat and the spiritual presidency.” 

“Sheikh Hikmat tried to appoint a fourth Sheikh of Reason, from one of the big families on the mountain, as his ally against al-Hanawi and Jerboa,” Zainuddin added. “But the traditional and religious leaders all refused that.” 

Aspirations to a political or military role?

Al-Hijri congratulated the Syrian people when Assad was overthrown on December 8, 2024, centering Suwayda’s role in the event: “We liberated all the southern areas, and were the first to reach Damascus and announce the liberation,” before the arrival of forces from the north commanded by al-Sharaa.

Since the regime fell, al-Hijri has taken oppositional and sometimes adversarial stances toward the new administration, bolstered by local military groups that have aligned behind him. Putting himself forward as “a representative of an important component of the Syrian state,” al-Hijri has drawn the attention of the local and international community, al-Fares said. 

Read more: Is Suwayda heading for a showdown with Damascus?

“Sheikh Hikmat is a man of religion and politics, an intelligent, changeable and ambitious person. His ambitions have gone beyond religious and social life, and he aspires to a political and military role,” the journalist said. More critically, he described him as a “narcissistic figure, someone who likes to be in charge, who has mastered the policy of holding the stick in the middle.” 

However, al-Hijri represents only “a part of those in Suwayda opposed to the new administration,” Salim said. “There is a broad spectrum in Suwayda who oppose the new authority in Damascus, but also oppose al-Hijri’s position.”

Salim accused al-Hijri of “representing regime remnants and supporters, as well as political currents that view him as a national leader and rally around him,” thereby “bringing together supporters and opponents of the former regime.” 

“Sheikh al-Hijri today represents a wide segment dominated by sectarian, discriminatory and familial tendencies, as well as a general ignorance of Syrian affairs,” as al-Fares sees it. “This includes a segment of factions and individuals who benefit from chaos and lawlessness, and another segment of former regime followers accused of committing crimes against Syrians.”

Al-Hijri’s current positions toward Damascus are based on “international support invoking the protection of minorities, human rights and self-determination,” al-Fares said. He pointed to “clear support from members of the Druze community in occupied Palestine, under the sponsorship and supervision of the Zionist entity [Israel] and the United States.” 

Al-Fares reads personal motivation, rather than a true fear of “the Druze religious role in the country being marginalized” as the basis for al-Hijri’s current positions. 

“It is impossible to erase a fundamental component of the Syrian state throughout history,” he said. “Rather, he fears being [personally] excluded from Syrian political decision-making,” and seeks to “stand in the place that will give him greater status and respect.” 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.