Who are the Middle East's Druze religious community?

In Syria, Druze fighters recently clashed with forces loyal to the country's new Islamist rulers, highlighting the struggles they and other minority groups have faced with shifts in regional power dynamics. "The Druze are a kind of an ultra-tribe which transcends space and geography," said Makram Rabah, assistant professor of history at the American University of Beirut. Despite being a minority in a majority Sunni Muslim region, the Middle East's Druze have played "a very important role", Rabah said.