On the anniversary of Antoun Saadeh’s execution after a trial that lasted several hours without a lawyer, we affirm the validity of his statement regarding Arabism as a psychological illness. Let the peoples of this region look inward, searching and asking about the causes of the failure that befell the countries of Arabism and Islamism. With them, those countries lost all their battles in life, whether social, political, economic, or even military. These peoples relied entirely on Arabism and Islamism, believing that salvation would come at the hands of this system. After the defeat or defeats, the minds of Arabists and the Brotherhood searched for the cause. Heads swelled, and most likely the swelling was due to an intellectual burden or rope that lacked enlightened ideas. This burden or rope of heads gave birth to a mouse or a gerbil called “conspiracy.” The mission of the newborn was to remove responsibility from the parents, i.e., from the Arabism-Islamism dichotomy, and place this responsibility on others. Thus, the people of the gerbil believed they were innocent of any guilt or negligence. What happened does not fall within the scope of their responsibility. The conspiracy was the first and last cause of the setback or the cursed catastrophe. It is not a defeat, but a setback. The linguistic difference between a setback and a defeat is very large. The door was wide open to euphoria as if nothing had happened. Euphoria also became pregnant and gave birth to the snake of boasting, bravado, arrogance, recklessness, and schizophrenia. All those setbacks, failures, poverty, and destitution did not attract the attention of the Arab-Islamists, so they did not seek to remove what was destroyed and ruined by recklessness and conspiracy, may God curse it. The logic of those conspiring against them pushed them to demand that the conspiracy and conspirators fix what they had spoiled. They had to finance those peoples, and they had to receive refugees, then liberate the peoples from their dictatorial selves, in addition to establishing unified states for the victims of the conspiracy. They also had to plant democracy in the souls of the peoples and free them from their tyranny. In addition to all that, they had to arm the warring parties, kings, sultans, etc. Whoever contemplates the state of those countries and the dependence of those in charge of them, then the rats and snakes they had produced and the ways of thinking of Arab-Islamism, could only say that those peoples and their guardians They were and remain a byword for foolish naivety and foolish ignorance. These people are not mentally normal, but rather psychologically ill, as Saadeh put it. We return to Saadeh and his definition of Arabism and ask ourselves: Was he exaggerating or objectively realistic? Does the trajectory of these countries, from the Atlantic to the Gulf, allow for an assessment that differs from or contradicts Saadeh’s? Is it possible for any obstacle to destroy this region in the way we see and perceive it now, other than the obstacle of an incurable disease, namely the psychological disease of Arabism-Islamism, the disease of addiction to failure, the practice of suicide, contempt for life, and so on. My friend, I am tired of my Arabism. Is Arabism a curse and a punishment? This is what Nizar Qabbani expressed, who also wrote: “Do not listen to a single word of the Arabs’ speech, for it is all grammar, morphology, and literature, and all of it is wishful thinking and merrymaking.” It seems that Arabism is not just a psychological illness, but a punishment, followed by dreams and merrymaking. It is a big lie that has deceived people for decades, that is, since independence. For its sake, the Syrians sacrificed their Syrian entity. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the people set out beyond their Syrian interests and yearned for a patch of hope and a broader and more comprehensive future that was the world from the ocean to the Gulf. Thus, an Arab-Islamist cultural and political structure dominated the minds of people from all social, cultural, and political levels. And this was the subject of concerns. Syria carried the Arab concern before the Syrian concern. Did Syria make a mistake, and did the Syrians make a mistake by preferring others over themselves? The others were nothing but a giant lie, a curse, a punishment, and merrymaking that destroyed Syria and its future! The Syrians shared with Arabism the loaf of bread, the fruits of the tree, and the building stones. They gave Arabism their beating heart. What did Arabism do with its beating heart? There is no need to search for the answer, a quick look at the region provides the answer. It is a homeland killed by the knives of words, the chains of tanks, and the barrels of aircraft falling from the sky. On the ground are the slaughterhouses of verses and the machetes of jihadists, both male and female. The killing of the Syrian homeland was at the hands of Arabism – Islamism in the first placeOn the other hand, it is possible to partially exonerate Arab-Islamism from responsibility for the failure, but it is impossible in any way to exonerate Arab-Islamists from most of the responsibility. They have turned Arabism into a religion and turned religion into politics. There is no fate for politicized religion except stiffness, and there is no fate for politics that wears the religious Qurayshi galabiya except misery and unhappiness. That is, the Arab-Islamist twin has also committed suicide. There is no longer religion, just as there is no longer politics. The country has gone bankrupt at the hands of a dead-end view regarding the establishment of a state. And the development of peoples into a mutually supportive and cohesive society, when the Arabists began to think of Arab nationalism, the West was on the verge of the end of its nationalist thought and the beginning of its internationalist thought, which they developed into globalization. The homelands of this region were unable to keep pace with history and the development of humanity, so the homelands fell outside of history and turned into a parasitic tail on humanity in every way. Among the causes of failure that must be mentioned was the addictive tendency towards heritage and the passion for the buried old, then a vague and incomprehensible anti-modernity tendency, then the passion for practicing obedience and submission contrary to human nature, such as obeying the rigid text and then submitting to the will of dreamy goals. They wanted Arab unity and an Islamic caliphate without thinking about the possibility of implementing these projects and then thinking about the utility or feasibility of those projects! Efforts were wasted and the magic turned against the magician. The quest for Arab unity turned into fragmentation, and the countries that were supposed to unite with others disintegrated into dozens of entities. Even talk of unity turned into a source of anxiety and fear. All dreams and imaginations turned into their opposite in reality. The demand for freedom turned into slavery, and the demand for modernity turned into the consecration of the past. No to contamination with Western ideas, except for its products, such as virility enhancers. The faithful Arabists did not realize the relationship between reason, science, and production, at least for the sake of producing their classy women, not keeping up with the civilization of others through reason. Not even by transfer, modernity has turned into a synonym for a virtual enemy that must be rejected because it defiles Arab privacy. Instead of modernity, there was consumerist modernization. Modernity was confused with modernization, and the Arab Brotherhood-affiliated Arabists did not realize the difference between them. We must not forget here the Arab Brotherhood-affiliated Arabists’ tremendous ability to create enemies through cursing, rebuke, satire, resonant speeches, deafening shouting, and noise. Confrontation with the different other was limited to cursing and denouncing him in wooden language repeated for the millionth time. Then the bombastic, resonant threatening speeches, the deafening shouting and the noise… A nation of voices! Here, the thinker Al-Qassim got it right! Just as he got Saadeh right and Nizar Qabbani right!
Adopting the methodology of development and modernity, borrowing from the non-advanced, let’s say colonialism! It was the only thing that could be obtained for free. The peoples rejected the blessing of creation and waited for the Creator’s blessings. For decades, even hundreds of years, the peoples have been waiting, and it does not seem that the Creator’s blessings are coming!!