When Questions Make Quarrels

 When I Read About a Marriage, I Saw a Deeper Wound

By Hawraa Ghandour

I was scrolling through a Facebook group one evening, sipping my tea, when a question stopped me cold:

“Can Alawites marry Shiites?”

The replies came flooding in—some filled with confusion, others with judgment, and too many with venom.

I read them with growing disbelief. I wasn’t the one who asked, but I felt like the one being attacked.

I felt as if the very essence of our humanity was being torn apart, comment by comment.

These were not just words on a screen. These were daggers.

Some replies used words like “heretics” and “unbelievers.”

Others arrogantly assumed the right to speak for communities they knew nothing about.

No one, it seemed, thought to ask an Alawite. Or a Shiite. Or a person, simply.

And in that moment, I realized something: we don’t just live in a time of information—we live in a time of disconnection.

Disconnection from each other, from truth, and most painfully, from our shared humanity.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking:

How did we reach a point where marriage between two human beings becomes a reason to spew hate?

Where difference becomes danger?

Where instead of seeking to understand, we rush to accuse?

I remembered the timeless words of Imam Ali:

“People are either your brothers in faith, or your equals in humanity.”

And I asked myself—have we forgotten this?

I imagined a world where someone, instead of judging, asked:

“Can you tell me more about your tradition? About your love? About your story?”

A world where curiosity replaced condemnation.

Where respect replaced rumors.

Where we looked at someone different from us and said:

“You are not a threat. You are a fellow traveler.”

I’m not a religious scholar.

I’m not a political leader.

I’m a woman. A daughter. A sister. A mother in the making.

And I carry a voice.

This is that voice.

To those reading this:

Let us stop asking about people from afar,

and start asking people, face to face, heart to heart.

Let us stop labeling others with names that wound,

and start naming what matters—compassion, truth, and connection.

Religious difference is not a crime.

Marriage is not a battleground.

And love? Love is not a sin.

To those who rushed to condemn, I say this with love:

Come closer. Listen deeper. Speak kinder.

Because if we lose our ability to see the human in each other,

we lose everything.