Topic Tracking & Discourse Analysis Report

Two positions are about level: that the Murshidi community has a right to its beliefs and celebrations (24% of items), and contempt and insults (23% of items), with greetings at 21% of items. The right-to-celebrate position and the contempt position pull in opposite directions, and greetings sit with the first. A further 13% of items argue the belief is outside Islam, often in a calmer tone than the insults. A comment can hold more than one position, so the shares do not add up. 20% of items hold none of the listed positions, and 190 of those hold a clear view that is not on the list. More than 50 writers attack the reporter or the page for running the piece, most in comments with no listed position, some saying it stirs up strife and some asking why nothing else was worth a report; others thank the pages for the coverage, and some ask them to block abusive comments. The balance shifts by page: contempt is 26% of items under Enab Baladi's post against 19% under SyriaNow's post, while the right-to-celebrate position is 29% of items under SyriaNow's post against 20% under Enab Baladi's post.

301 items (2%) hold a view not on the list (190 of them hold no listed position), among them, in no order of size: "A country with multiple sects is a curse rather than a blessing and leads to instability"; "A unified belief system contributes to the security and stability of a country, whereas intellectual diversity leads to conflict"; "All religions are human inventions and only the message of humanity and love is true".

Share of each source's own items; sources under 30 items are left out. The table shows the largest positions, and any other whose share of a source's own items the text gives.

Comments are quoted as written; see the content note in the Summary.

One comment for each of the leading positions other than quarrels between commenters, translated in full. Every quoted comment is in the appendix.

• Positive runs 9 points ahead of negative.

% of the 12,185 items counted · tone of the item

Positive items (39% of items) lead with greetings and good wishes to the celebrants, such as "May you be well every year", followed by arguments that the community has a right to its beliefs and that mocking it is wrong. Commenters praise Murshidi people as honest, generous, peaceful and well-mannered, and the largest themes are interfaith coexistence, then moral conduct, then ritual practices and religious identity, which are about level. A smaller group of positive items thanks God for Islam or prays for others to be guided, which holds that the Murshidi belief is false even in warm words. Among neutral items (31% of items) that hold a listed position, the view that the Murshidi belief is false or outside Islam (695 items), contempt toward the community (676) and defences of its right to celebrate (663) are about level; 1,304 hold none. Others ask questions, such as some who had never heard of the festival, and the main themes are theological validity, ritual practices and moral conduct. Negative items (30% of items) lead with contempt, insults or defamation toward the community, including mockery of its origins as "superstitions" and sexualised jokes about the rumoured night gathering and about what they worship. Quarrels between commenters that are not about the topic come next, then claims that the belief is false or outside Islam, and the main themes are moral conduct, sectarian conflict and theological validity. The overall lead does not hold under each post: under SyriaNow's post 48% of items are positive and 21% negative, and under Enab Baladi's post 33% are positive and 36% negative. The two posts stand a year apart, so the data cannot say whether the outlet or the time explains the gap.

Not charted, at 0.5% of items or more: Political Affiliation (4%), Historical Origins (3%), Religious Conversion (2%), Divine Nature (1%).

In this theme, 41% of items defend the Murshidi community's right to its beliefs and celebrations. Commenters say mocking or attacking them is wrong, call their Murshidi friends kind-hearted, and one says that beautiful festivals mean respect for everyone. Another 12% of items in this theme send greetings and good wishes to the celebrants. Against this, 29% of items in this theme express contempt, insults or defamation, many of them sexual insinuations about a night gathering and the community's women, or mockery of its founder. A further 12% of items in this theme argue that the Murshidi belief is false or outside Islam and that Islam is the only true religion. Some defenders in this theme also accuse the community's critics of extremism and of spreading false rumours about it, and others are quarrels between commenters that have little to do with the festival.

In this theme, 44% of comments say the Murshidi belief is false or outside Islam and that Islam is the only true religion. Commenters write that the true religion with God is Islam, that every prophet called people to worship one God with no partner, and one asks how anyone can be a Muslim and still rejoice in "another lord". Others ask whether the community has a book or a prophet sent by God with proof. Another 36% of comments go past argument into contempt, cursing the community's founder, calling followers fools, and asking whether any sane person would worship a human being. A smaller 14% defend the community's right to its beliefs, with one commenter stating calmly that the festival is called the Feast of Joy in God and that they revere only the one God. Some of the sharpest exchanges are quarrels between commenters, 7% of these comments, who trade insults while arguing over whether temporary marriage appears in Sunni hadith collections or whether every sect treats the others as unbelievers.

In this theme, 81% of items argue that the Murshidi community has a right to its beliefs and celebrations, and that mocking or attacking it is wrong. Commenters call the community "kind and peaceful", "respectful" and "wonderful", and several cite the Quranic verse that peoples were made so they may know one another. Another tells critics the community's worship is its own business and calls their remarks "silly". Alongside this, 43% of items in this theme offer greetings and good wishes, such as "Happy Eid", "all love and respect" and prayers for lasting joy. Only 4% of items in this theme say the Murshidi belief is false or outside Islam. Some of these combine respect with a hope that the community will be guided to Islam.

In this theme, 37% of items are greetings and good wishes to the celebrants. Commenters wish the community a happy festival and call it a lovely one, some for its sweets. Dozens ask to come and share it, some who went praise their hosts, and some ask what the correct greeting would be. Another 25% of items in this theme show contempt or insults toward the community. These commenters often repeat the rumour that the community turns off the lights at a night gathering, mock the idea of celebrating "in God" and curse the celebrants; some say anyone who truly rejoiced in God would not anger Him with the women's dress and the mixing, and another asks why the Lord of the Worlds would need anyone to celebrate him. A further 15% of items in this theme say the belief is false or outside Islam. They insist that Islam has only 2 festivals, the Eid after Ramadan and the Eid of sacrifice, and one asks for its source in the Quran or the Sunna. Another 10% of items in this theme ask questions out of curiosity, for example whether the community gathers, turns off the lights and mixes together on that day, or whether that is only a rumour.

In this theme, 49% of items are contempt, insults or defamation aimed at the Murshidi community. Commenters call its members unbelievers, "garbage" or "beasts", lump them with the Alawites, and some accuse them of having fought for Assad and killed Sunnis; one says that, "from experience", they are filthier than the Alawites. All 21 comments on the violent-language risk card fall in this theme. Others argue the Murshidi belief is false or outside Islam, which 20% of items in this theme do. They insist Islam is the only true religion, and some tell a Murshidi directly that being Sunni is the only way to be Muslim. An equal 20% of items in this theme defend the community's right to its beliefs and celebrations. One of them, in a reply posted about ten times, asks whether everyone must be a Salafi Sunni for God to be pleased with them. They say the Murshidis never harmed anyone, and some say the community itself suffered injustice under the former government, some adding that it never stood with the Assads. Another 13% of items in this theme are quarrels between commenters that drift away from the festival, with both sides trading insults, some calling their opponents unbelievers and some calling them terrorists.

Of the items holding each position, the share using each frame. An item can use more than one frame. Each row shows its three most used frames, more where tied; frames held by fewer than 3 of a position's items are left out.

Frame descriptions

The chart counts the 12,186 of the 12,188 items that carry a date; the other 2 are posts by the pages themselves, which carry no date.

Collection ends inside the week of 31 August 2026, so that bar covers 3 days where the first covers 5 days and the rest seven. Compare them as daily rates, not weekly totals.

The bars above cover 11,625 of the 12,188 items (95%). The other 563: 3 published by the pages themselves, which carry no dialect; 560 the report could not place in one of its six varieties: 437 unclear, 3 in other languages or varieties, 31 mixing two languages or varieties (most often Levantine mixed with English) and 89 that are only a tagged name or a platform translation, not counted as English.

Share of each dialect group's items; groups under 30 items are left out.

Levantine-speaking commenters write 53% of items and writers in Modern Standard Arabic (the formal written register) write 33%, so these groups together produce most of the conversation; Gulf-dialect writers add 5% of items and Egyptian-dialect writers 3%. Tone differs sharply: 19% of Modern Standard Arabic items are negative against 38% of Levantine items, and 54% of Modern Standard Arabic items are positive against 32% of Levantine items. Tone only describes how comments sound, and the positions show the split in content: the largest share of Modern Standard Arabic items, 31%, offers greetings and good wishes to the celebrants, while among Levantine items, contempt, insults or defamation toward the Murshidi community (28%) and the view that the community has a right to its beliefs and celebrations (27%) are about level.

The five most-engaged accounts together drew 21% of the engagement on audience items, so most engagement lies outside them. Voice_1 drew 851 in engagement and holds the position that the Murshidi community has a right to its beliefs and celebrations in 17 of its 21 items, with a neutral tone. Voice_2 drew 740 in engagement and argues the Murshidi belief is false or outside Islam in 7 of its 12 items, also with a neutral tone. Voice_4 (285 in engagement) holds the community's right to its beliefs in all 3 of its items, and Voice_5 (262 in engagement) does so in its single item, both with a positive tone. Voice_3 holds no single clear position. The pattern is a split: the top five include accounts defending the community and one account challenging its belief. Voice_13, with 64 items, is one of the 4 accounts the scan found posting the same message repeatedly: about half its items are three replies pasted across threads. Voice_11 and Voice_12, the two that wrote the most, write as Murshidis: Voice_11 thanks those who greet the community and answers its critics (91 of its 129 items are positive in tone), and Voice_12 argues with its critics, often in insults (51 of its 67 items are negative in tone), and 21 of its items attack Sunni orthodoxy.

Share of Voice: each account's engagement as a percentage of the engagement recorded across every item the audience wrote in this dataset. Engagement = likes and other reactions. Replies and shares are not counted. It is a share of the reactions these items drew, not of how much of the conversation an account wrote: the items column is that. The pages' own posts and replies are not in this table, and their likes were not collected, so their share is not given. The table lists the ten accounts with the most engagement, then the three that wrote the most among the rest (Voice_11 to Voice_13).

An episode is a surge of conversation: days with at least three times the usual daily volume and at least 20 items, grouped when they fall within three days of each other, and holding 100 items or more. 5 smaller surges (240 items) are not counted as episodes. 1,074 items fall between surges.

Episodes with fewer than 30 items are left out. A move of a few points between episodes is within what a repeat reading moves.

The August 2025 episode (E1) and the August 2026 episode (E7) come from different sources, so the gaps between them cannot be read as a change over time. Contempt, insults or defamation toward the Murshidi community make up 26% of items in E7, which sit under Enab Baladi's post, against 17% of items in E1, which sit under SyriaNow's post, a gap of 9 points. The view that the community has a right to its beliefs and that mocking it is wrong holds 20% of items in E7 and 26% of items in E1, 6 points less in E7 than in E1. Greetings and good wishes to the celebrants hold 20% of items in E7 and 27% of items in E1, lower in the same direction.

3 signals detected across the 12,185 items the audience wrote.

Context: the 12,185 items the audience wrote average 1.4 items/hour across the 372 days the items span.

The scanner counted 3 of the 6 indicators it could check, which gives a LOW rating. It found some accounts that posted the same message again and again, with 52 repeated items in all. It also found identical text shared across 12 accounts, and near-identical templates across 9 accounts. Each of these is small, and people who copy a slogan, a blessing or a quoted line, or who repeat themselves in a thread, produce the same pattern. The scanner also found 4 bursts of posting, where many accounts wrote within the same half-hour. These bursts hold 63% of items, so most of this conversation falls inside them and they are not a departure from it, and the scanner does not count them toward the rating. Bursts that cluster around a thread opening look like an audience arriving, not a sign of coordination. None of this shows coordination, and the rating is a count of indicators, not a verdict. The repeats come from four accounts, each repeating itself: an insult to the community's beliefs (21 near-identical items from one account), a defender's replies, the question whether everyone must be a Salafi Sunni, and a prayer that the community be guided to Islam, which goes on to call its faith the invention of a cunning man and entirely outside Islam. A person should read the shared texts to see whether they are greetings, chants or copied comments, and check whether the accounts sharing text are linked in other ways, such as when they were created, what else they post, or whether they post together on separate days.

Track how the people who commented on Syrian media coverage of the Murshidi community's Eid al-Farah bi-Allah festival split between defending the community and insulting it: 24% of items hold that the Murshidi community has a right to its beliefs and celebrations and that mocking or attacking them is wrong, while 23% of items are contempt, insults or defamation toward the community, across 12,185 comments under 2 posts. Re-run this comparison on later posts and measure it separately for each source, because the balance is not the same under each, though the two posts also stand a year apart: SyriaNow's commenters defend the community's right to its beliefs more often, and insult it less often, than Enab Baladi's (see Key Findings). The leading positions are only 1 point apart, so a single reading cannot say which leads, and the comparison needs repeating before anyone treats either as the settled balance.

Comments are quoted as written; see the content note in the Summary.

Each comment is shown whole, as collected, with a translation of the whole comment. Grouped by the first position each holds.

Posts by the pages this conversation was collected from carry no tone or dialect here, as everywhere else in this report: they are the pages speaking, not the audience.

Among the entities the classifier listed, Syria has the most mentions with 464, followed by Al-Murshidiya with 440 and Salman al-Murshid with 422. Syrians come next with 100 mentions, well behind the leading entities. The table has no row for any other sect, because the classifier rarely listed sects as entities: a word search finds the Alawites named in about 250 items. It also finds the community named in about 1,100 items and Syria in about 490, so these counts rank the classifier's list and not what the conversation is about. The leading sentiment is positive toward Syria, Al-Murshidiya and Syrians. It is negative toward Salman al-Murshid, Bashar al-Assad and Saji al-Murshid. India also reads negative, but its 44 mentions mostly answer or echo a remark that its many religions do not mock each other, and some of the negative ones reply that Muslims are killed or persecuted there. Idlib reads positive mostly because commenters from there send greetings. Homs draws a mixed leading sentiment with 53 mentions, and Hama is neutral with 33 mentions.

Mentions: items in which the classifier listed the entity; a word search can find more. Leading sentiment: the sentiment the classifier recorded toward the entity where it recorded one, otherwise the tone of the item that names it. The two can differ: a comment angry at those who insulted someone is negative in tone and positive toward him. Mixed means the leading tone led the runner-up by a fifth or less.