Syria: How the 'house of sisters' threat split society

A knock on the door, a muted threat and then they made the decision to leave the country, says Layla, a math teacher and mother-of-three in her 40s.

Until recently, Layla - who didn't want DW to use her full name for security reasons - was living in Damascus, Syria's capital. She and her family are Alawites, the same religious sect as former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, who are often targeted because they're seen as Assad's allies.

"But we never supported him, his father killed members of my family. We hated him actually," she told DW. Still, she describes feeling fearful when rebel groups entered Damascus in 2024 for the first time after the fall of the Assad regime, calling them "extremists."

At first, she and her husband decided to stay in Syria. But then a stranger came to the door.

"He told me 'we know your daughter plays piano and has dance lessons. You should stop that. If you don't, maybe we will take her to the house of the sisters," Layla recounts.

In conservative Islamic circles, women playing music and dancing for an audience is frowned upon. And Layla had heard about the so-called "house of the sisters" — she had read online it was a place where Syrian women from other sects were forced to convert to Islam. A few days later, the family decided to leave the country. They are now in Lebanon.

"I just don't want my children to grow up that way," Layla explains.

What is the 'house of sisters'?

Headlines about the "house of sisters" first really made waves in Syria in May after an Alawite university student Batoul Alloush, 21, was reported missing by her family, possibly kidnapped, only to turn up later wearing religious clothing and saying she left her family in order to convert to Islam.

There were already other stories of missing women, including from the Alawite minority.

Reham Suleiman, a psychologist who works for the United Nations and with the Alawite community, told DW she has firsthand knowledge of several cases of kidnapping. "And it's not just one incident or coincidence," she says. It is clear some of women were kidnapped for ransom money, revenge or forced marriage.

But other cases were apparently resolved when, for example, the women said they had been visiting friends, wanted to escape their families or had run away to a lover. Alloush herself said she wished to convert to Islam and leave her family. Her parents insist she's been drugged or coerced.

Organisations like Amnesty International and the UN's Commission of Inquiry on Syria say the cases - which number between 40 and 60 - have not been fully investigated.

A political football

Syrian authorities did look into the "house of sisters." A spokesperson for Syria's Minister of Social Affairs, Hind Kabawat, told DW that the ministry has not licensed any facility with that name and that any unlicensed centres of this nature would be shut down.

Syrian fact-checking organisations like Verify-Sy found that pictures of the supposed "house of sisters" building were created with AI.

"A constant stream of unverified claims circulates on a daily basis concerning alleged kidnappings and killings, arrests and cases of torture in detention facilities," a spokesperson from Verify-Sy told DW.

"Verifying many of these is challenging when evidence available through open sources is scarce, contradictory or otherwise insufficient."

So whether the "house of sisters" exists in some form is unclear. But real or not, some groups appear to have instrumentalised it for their own agenda anyway, independent media outlet Shaam News Network, or SNN, wrote recently.

"Despite the absence of any physical evidence … social media platforms and pages began circulating 'the house' as an established fact," SNN wrote. "And it gradually became the focus of broader narratives about the 'organised kidnapping' of Alawite women."

International influencers

A private organisation called the Syrian Investigation Mechanism, or SIM, founded in May 2026, links the "house of sisters" to a Muslim organisation that proselytises to gain new converts. SIM claimed the missing women were coerced into converting and held in "the house."

In an interview on YouTube, SIM director Yasir Saleti, who is based in Brandenburg, Germany, claims this is evidence of "demographic engineering." SIM did not reply to DW's requests for further comment.

A Berlin-based organisation, the Union of Syrian Alawites in Europe, or USAE, has also repeatedly posted about the "house of sisters."

On his personal Facebook page, Muaiad Ibrahim, who is listed as USAE's deputy director in official court documents, regularly criticises the new Syrian government and recently expressed support for Syria's highest religious scholar under the Assad regime, Ahmed Hassoun. In late August, Hassoun was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of inciting civil war and complicity in intentional killing.

Other recently founded overseas organisations - including some that claim they have a network of millions of human rights advocates but link to incomplete websites - have also repeatedly disseminated stories about the "house of sisters."

Arab investigative journalism outfit DARAJ notes some of these organisations have been criticised for their apparent support of the Assad regime.

The damage done?

"This kind of information ebbs and flows, but it does have a real impact and its quite powerful," says Gregory Waters, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, who's travelled extensively in Syria and monitors events on his site, Syria Revisited.

"It has the political intent to isolate Alawites, to make them fearful and keep them from engaging with the government, with [Syrian] Sunnis, and maybe to some extent, pull them towards insurgent [anti-government] networks."

Online propaganda feeds on real events within minority communities, adding to their existing fears, he says.

Verify Sy conducts a monthly audit of online disinformation, and researchers there say incitement is the second most common objective. Waters says Syrian authorities have been trying to rein in local influencers who spread disinformation, although obviously they can't impact those based overseas.

Seven bodies were found in bags in the same grave in a military facility in Douma, near Damascus, Syria, on 17 December, 2024.

Like anywhere else in the world, you'll get a wide spectrum of opinions within every Syrian community, Waters notes. "There are there those who will insist that there's a program of ethnic cleansing, and there are others who say life is fine, we are fully integrated into the state."

Although it depends which part of the country you're looking at, he doesn't think relations between different communities are getting worse.

"In Syria, everything is unique to its local environment," Waters explains. "So in some places, we could say that walls between communities have hardened over the past two years and little progress has been made in reducing that. But even so, the walls are not getting higher."

Stabilisation first

"Right now, generally speaking, the government in Damascus is busy establishing institutions, taking control of the security situation and trying to stabilise the country," argues Naseef Naeem, research director at the Berlin-based Candid Foundation, which consults on Syrian affairs. But sooner or later, Syria is going to need more of a national dialogue between different community groups, he says.

In the meantime, both he and Waters believe the Syrian economy, devastated after years of war, could hold the key to better relations.

"As soon as the economic recovery really gets underway, many of these phenomena will gradually disappear," Naeem told DW.

For example, Waters says, over summer, a lot of domestic tourists, many of them Sunni, made their way to the Syrian coast, an area where many Alawites live.

"There was a massive tourism boom," Waters explains. "Everybody's interacting and I've heard from friends there that there wasn't harassment, no violence. The government and security authorities really emphasised supporting the tourism industry in coastal areas this year and it's had a really positive impact."

Those kinds of inter-community contacts in real life "help reduce the impact of disinformation campaigns and the level of fear," he concludes.