Alevism

[DeistPaladin]

There's a sect -spesific to Turkey- called Alevism. (not to be confused with Alawi's of Syria) Alevi's differ from other sect dramatically. It's a mixture of shi'a sufism and turkic paganazim -göktanrı(Skygod) religion-, some even says it's a different religion than a sect of islam. I believe it's turkicized version of Islam.

Technically, I don't consider it as a sect in Islam because anything which excludes one of the five pillars of Islam cannot be Islam.

Christians have the same issue splitting hairs over what constitutes "True Christian" ™.

Do Mormons count as Christians? Do Catholics? And then there are the early Christianities that had such varied beliefs about Jesus that none would be considered "Christian" today.

I have a hypothesis that as a religion becomes more dominant in a culture (meaning, greater percentage of the population follows it) they become proportionally more aware of and less tolerant of heterodox ideas in a religion.

I came across this hypothesis when I met with Christians in Indonesia, a majority Muslim country. In this land, there was little knowledge of the distinctions between Catholic and Protestant. A woman I was dating had no idea at first which group she belonged to. In America, being oblivious to this point is almost unheard of and many Protestants don't consider Catholics to be "Christians".

I wonder if American Muslims would be more likely to consider Alevists to be fellow Muslims than those in majority Muslim countries?