Mamdouh Bitar, ruba manosour :
In order to understand Arab nationalist thought, this thought must exist, and we must submit to logic and rationality in interacting with it, if it exists. It is difficult to deal with and interact with calcified wishful thinking based on illusions that do not exist in reality, such as the hybridization of Arabism by returning to a distant past, far removed from its modern present in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In fact, the Arabism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has no connection to the events of 1440 years ago, nor does the Levant have a special connection to the Bedouinism of the Arabian Peninsula, except insofar as the Levant was transformed into a Bedouin Quraysh colony for a very long period.
Arabism and Arab nationalism were not truly born from the womb of past glories, Rather, they were born as a counterreaction to the wave of Turkification practiced by the Ottoman Union and Progress. Furthermore, there were no past glories to begin with. Conquest, captivity, theft, spoils of war, the concept of the fifth, prophet billionaire wealth, tribalism, revenge, invasion, violence, wars, and much more are not glories, but rather decadence! It is difficult to understand or comprehend the Arab unification tendency in terms of it being a matter of self-realization of its own identities. Unity is not important in and of itself, but rather through its production and results, which must be positively reflected in most aspects of life.
Since unity is established between states, unity is therefore political, because states are political entities. The essence of the unity demanded by the Arabists is not political and has no relation to the derivatives of politics. Their unity essence is moral. The Arabists are distinguished by their poeticism, slogans, and their certainty that Arabism and Arabism are the standard for the natural thing in life. They prove the error by the fact that it is not compatible with Arabism, and the proof of the error is limited to the fact that it is not Arab, since Arabism, in their view, is something almost instinctive, almost inborn, then almost natural, and even sacred. Other than that, it is abnormal and deviant. The regional units are isolationist, narrow, and hostile to Arab nationalism and Arabism. Their being hostile negates any validity or credibility.
The one who is hostile to Arab unity is not an Arab. Arabism is a culture that must be a unionist. Antoun Saadeh is not an Arab, as if a person does not have the right to choose the cultural, intellectual, and political identity that he wants. What Saadeh sees regarding the Syrian nation is nothing but an imaginary matter that goes back to pre-historic time. For the Arabists, historical time began 1440 years ago. Neither Saadeha nor anyone else has the right to believe that the people of the Levant are distinguished from other peoples, and that they are more civilized than other peoples, such as the Bedouin peoples. However, the prophet has the right to consider his group the best nation.
The essence of unity is utilitarian before it is ideological, identity-based, or the fulfillment of desires and dreams, or because language or religion is what brings these uniters together, or because of the existence of a common history between the invaders and the peoples of the colonies. However, common history has aspects, foundations, rules, and regulations. There is no common history between the slave and the master, nor a common history between the colonizer and his colonies. Common history is the partnership in its manufacture and production, and this does not apply to the Quraysh conquerors and the peoples of their Levantine colonies. On the contrary, there are many aspects of common history between Rome and Syria, because the law that was applied to Rome was applied to Syria, and a large part of it was made by Syrians. Also, there were army leaders from the Syrians, and from them there were jurists, then many Caesars, and there was construction that was not distinguished from Roman construction, rather it was the construction of Syria-Romania, and even culture was shared… theaters… music, philosophy, law… etc., then care for agricultural infrastructure such as the construction of irrigation canals and paving Roads and streets for transportation, all of that was made in a partnership in which Syria and Rome contributed, so much so that it was said that Syria ruled Rome, or Rome ruled Syria, that is, Syrian Rome or Roman Syria.
This is called a shared history, because it was a joint production.Even religiously, there was no common life with the Arabs of the peninsula. The Arabs of the peninsula came with the sword to spread a religion other than the one embraced by the inhabitants of the colonies, and they presented the inhabitants with difficult choices: either the new religion, the tribute, or fighting. Did life under absolute racist, tyrannical religious occupation, under the sword, the tribute, and the Tuareg, represent a common life? Did the Umar Covenant allow for a common life? Did the Levantines participate in political and military life as officials and leaders, or in decision-making, or in cultural life, which was originally dwarfed to the point of nonexistence? Cultural life was confined to religious matters, and the activities of some Levantines, such as the Syriacs, were limited to temporary and necessary employees, due to their experience and knowledge of administration, translation, writing, and reading. The invaders were completely illiterate in the alphabet and also illiterate in administration.
History cannot be approached in such a naive and simple way, such as talking about a shared history without partnership or participation. There were no common denominators between the Levant and the Bedouins of the Arabian Peninsula, even environmentally and humanly. The Levant was a land of urban settlements and cities, while the environment of the invaders was desert and therefore did not know stability in one place. The Bedouins knew nothing but conquest, spoils of war, violence, plunder and looting, while conquest, spoils of war and corruption were absent from the history of the Levantines.
The shared history that was intended to justify the concept of the Arab nation that includes Syrians according to the Arabists’ concept, was nothing but a pale lie intended to consecrate the Arabists’ position as an internal colonialism after the departure of external colonialism after the First World War. Colonialism and its vocabulary cannot coexist with the peoples of the colony and their vocabulary. Colonialism, especially the possessive conquest, has its written line of injustice, tyranny, enslavement, oppression, killing and annihilation, which it practiced without any asceticism or humanity. In slaughtering, the invaders were not humble. They slaughtered hundreds of thousands, while the peoples of the Levant were not occupied, slaughtered or colonized, nor were they plundered or plundered, nor did they know the spoils of war. So how can the two opposites come together in a shared history? Could the Zionists, the thieves of stones, trees and land, have a common history with the Palestinians, and how? Therefore, the common history between the Levantines and others, such as the Spanish, Egyptians, the Bedouins of the Arabian Peninsula and others, was nothing but a political lie intended to camouflage the colonial, occupying and possessive past.
It is a lie like the lie of liberation, and the lie of glories that did not exist. The existence was due to the layers of dust of war that condensed in the sky of this country and blocked its sunlight. The existence was due to the red rivers, the Tuareg, and the Umar Covenant and its heinous provisions. The existence was due to stagnation, backwardness and savagery. The Levantines did not color the waters of Zamzam and the oases of the Empty Quarter red, nor did they participate with them in the invasion and kidnapping of the daughters of the Spaniards and the daughters of the Amazigh women according to the specifications announced by Caliph Abd al-Malik in his famous letter to his governor in North Africa.
All this savagery, lies and decadence represent attempts to tame history in order to continue enslavement and exploitation by means of Arabism and Arabism represented by desert Bedouinism (the fifth column). For long periods, they have been able to leap over history and climb the ladder of lies of virtue, liberation and civilization. The fifth Arab Brotherhood column of the Quraysh has been able, over the course of a century, to sabotage the projects of the states established by Sykes-Picot. These states had and still have many possibilities for success and development, just as Austria, Hungary, Serbia, South Korea and many of the states that emerged from the duality of victory and defeat in wars developed, with no shared history with the worst enemies.