Westerners’ Emphasis on the Heretical Elements in the Studies on the Alaouite Sect

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Irene Melikoff as a leading western figure who has gained a special status in the researches on Alawi issue, has attempted to solve the Alawi syncretism by only depending on Alawi sources. She, although quite aware of the fact that Alawi sources are the part and parcel of Islamic sources, deliberately has ignored Islamic faiths and motifs. Melikoff has claimed that Alawies ascribe transcendentness (holiness) to Ali by depending on some materials found in Alawi sources. But she has never taken those Alawi materials, which consider Ali as a simple saint and God as wholly transcendent, into considerations. As I have shown in our article, Melikoff has not analysed the materials that exist in Buyruk, Mankıpname’s and Alawi poems as a whole. Instead she has picked up only materials that would serve her own purpose. Such attitude cannot be considered as scientific let alone objective.