Wiktionary
n. 1 (context Islam English) A member of a mystical Shiite Islamic group that reveres (w: Ali) (Ali ibn Abi Talib). 2 A person raised in the Alawite culture.
Usage examples of "alawite".
Do you have any idea what an Alawite or an Ismaili or a Shiite is saying this month beneath what he appears to be saying?
Assad took power, the Muslim Brotherhood, a loosely knit underground coalition of Sunni Muslim fundamentalist guerrilla groups, which had existed on and off in Syria since the late 1930s, began working to topple the predominantly Alawite Assad regime through a ruthless campaign of assassinations and bombings.
Additional intelligence units and elements of the 47th Independent Armored Brigade, commanded by Alawite Colonel Nadim Abbas, with its T-62 tanks, were also stationed in and around the town.
Assad understood from the start that at a certain basic level Hama was a tribe-like clash between his Alawite sect and the Sunni Muslim sect.
It is quite possible to find in such a village a Sunni Muslim villager who has hung a picture of Alawite President Assad on his wall, not simply because it will ingratiate him with the local party and intelligence officials, but also because he sincerely feels that this man Assad has behaved not just as an Alawite, and not just as a power-hungry autocrat, but as his own President, with a national interest in mind.
A chill, arid wind blew from the mountains of the Jabal Alawite across the lava rock and gravel desert of Badiyat Ash-sham.
But more important, the new man was the son of peasants and from the minority Alawites, a poorer Moslem sect which was traditionally scorned and oppressed by the majority Sunnis.
The special units were under his personal control and all the officers were Alawites, former peasants like him and the dictator, men who owed their good fortune in life entirely to him.
The Alawites, a splinter sect of Islam with many secret and even Christian-like tenets, have lived for centuries in the isolated mountain villages of northern Lebanon and Syria.
Praetorian guard, dominated by Alawites, whose sole responsibility was protecting the Assad regime from its domestic opponents.
Assad hailed from the village of Qardaha, near the Syrian seaport of Latakia, and he and his main allies were not Sunni Muslims but Alawites.