Despite being on my year abroad in Jordan, I know only a handful of Jordanians. This is largely because, through a series of choices, half-coincidences, and lucky chances, I have ended up ensconcing myself in the Syrian community here in the city of Amman - a community made up, for the most part, of refugees (officially registered or otherwise) fleeing the awful humanitarian situation in their country. I’ve made a lot of friends here, had a lot of fun, and acquired plenty of anecdotes completely unrelated to the ongoing revolution, but inevitably discussion often turns to politics, and what Syrians have to say about the crisis is often not what you’d expect.

It would be silly to claim that the people I’ve spoken to here are universally representative: they’re almost all active or semi-active members of the opposition, with well-formed political views and a strong desire to talk about them and to ask their own questions of me. I obviously can’t present every single story or opinion I’ve heard - but I’d like to try and bring out some of the common threads that have emerged in conversation.

People regularly stress that there is no sectarian element to the conflict in Syria, or rather, there are no underlying sectarian tensions. Often people elaborate on this by explaining that while sectarian elements have come to the fore – and that the Alawites in particular, the religious group President Assad’s family are from, have attached themselves solidly to the regime – these problems were not present before the revolution.

A friend of mine has told me many times about close Alawite friends of his from home, many of whom were active in the opposition before the revolution; he also regularly mentions Christian friends of his family. Even those people who are quick to describe the Alawite faith and Shi’i Islam as ‘not real religions’ (in contrast to Christianity, Judaism and Sunni Islam) tend to stress that this is nevertheless none of their business. Any sectarianism now present is attributed, generally, to the regime’s tactic of ‘divide and conquer’.

People were and remain generally supportive of Western intervention, although they tend to emphasise the difference between a “new colonialism” and a humanitarian intervention. People have asked me exasperatedly why the British parliament voted against intervening in Syria, with their own conclusions generally being either callousness or stupidity.

It’s also striking that individuals often are very curious to know (and, if necessary, discredit) the Western view of the conflict, and also of Islam and Arabs in general. I still haven’t come up with a pithy answer for “What is your opinion of Muslims?”, despite being asked over fifty times, and I have no idea how I am supposed to respond to “What are the main flaws of the Arabs, in your opinion?” More generally, people are usually convinced that western media is exaggeratedly pro-Israel and anti-Arab.

People in general are perhaps understandably given to mistrusting the media; several Syrians who follow Western newspapers have angrily denounced the BBC or Fox News for its lies or misreporting on a given incident. At the same time, there is a powerful rumour-mill. Friends of mine (who work with many other Syrians) heard from their friends there that there was soon to be an election announced; the election never materialised.

Also surprising is that attitudes towards Islamist groups are mixed and ambiguous. Although people usually leap to condemn al-Qaeda, it doesn’t necessarily follow that their politics will be anti-Islamist. My friend regularly argues for the restoration of the Caliphate (an Islamic state) in our conversations, while also referring to the common tropes of liberal democracy - the nation-state, fair and free elections, and so on.

These ideas, for many, are in no way contradictory. As for the al-Nusra Front (a branch of al-Qaeda), most people I have spoken to – including some whose political orientations you could definitely describe as Islamist – resent the idea that the Front wants to assert its own idea of Islam. One of my friends asked me, rhetorically, “Do they know better than me what Islam is?”

These are, of course, just some of the many issues and points of dispute surrounding the Syrian revolution, a conflict which remains both complicated and obfuscated by a lack of clear data and the preference of media for a compelling, cohesive narrative. We must not allow these narratives to drown out the voices of individual Syrians, who are, after all, those who hold the highest stake in the future of their country.