Mira Al-bitar, Ruba Mansour:
There are several ways to identify a person’s affiliation and identity. Belonging is determined by one’s place of birth, and this matter is not subject to one’s will. Whoever was born in Syria is Syrian by affiliation, but identity is something else. Identity is optional, meaning it is subject to the rules of conviction. I was born in Syria and I want my identity to be Chinese. Therefore, I am Chinese by identity and born in Syria by affiliation. Whoever lives voluntarily in Syria and carries a Syrian personal identity, in addition to accepting or choosing a Syrian identity, is Syrian, whether the Arabists and the Brotherhood like it or not.
Syria as a state is a Syrian state, because its geography was named Syria several thousand years ago. Syria is not Arab, French, Indian, etc. Identity has nothing to do with the will of others, as if the Arabists were imposing an Arab identity on others. It has nothing to do with lineage, ancestry, ethnicity, or historical roots. The choice of identity is entirely personal.
Julia Domna, a Syrian woman from the city of Syrian Homs, it is not known for having any connection with the Arabs. Its connection was with Rome, and from its family there were several Caesars in Rome, that is, Roman citizens. None of that has anything to do with the Arabian Peninsula. It is like Zenobia. Zenobia was queen in Palmyra, and Palmyra is located in Syria. Therefore, the Kingdom of Palmyra is Syrian, no more and no less.
America is American, France is French, and so Germany is German, Greece is Greek, Egypt is Egyptian, etc. There are, for example, 80 million Americans of German descent. These are Americans and do not want Germany to occupy America, nor for America to be considered German, because these people want to live as Americans and do not want to practice internal colonialism in America. There is a group in Syria that wants to consider Syria Arab, and this group is not doing so for the sake of Shukri al-Quwatli or anyone else, but for the sake of Ibn al-Walid and Ibn al-Khattab. This group is doing so for known political goals: it is colonizing the country from within as a continuation of Arab-Ottoman colonialism from the outside, and this In reality,
what the Arabists did, in conjunction with the Muslim Brotherhood, over the last century, is that we do not want our identity to be Arab, because we are ashamed of this identity. We do not want to be ruled by Arabs, not because Arab rule is barbaric—and it is, in fact, barbaric—but because our personal choice calls for a different identity. We are not ashamed of our Syrian identity, because the Syrian identity has provided many positive benefits to humanity for ages. Anyone who looks at Syria finds traces of a great civilization, regardless of the prestigious material status of Syrian civilization, whose traces remain towering to this day. There is human civilization, manifested in the Syrians, their plow, and their alphabet. This has nothing to do with pathological boasting; it is a neutral narrative of history.
We do not want an Arab identity, because this identity offers nothing but humiliation: the humiliation of conquests, the humiliation of the culture of captivity and theft, the humiliation of the concept of Bedouin rights, the humiliation of the subjugation of many peoples by the sword, and the humiliation of aggression against others. The humiliation of the Spanish occupation for seven or eight centuries, then the humiliation of heading east to India, and the humiliation of the killing of millions of Indians, and the slaughter of people in Iraq at the hands of Ibn al-Walid. Even the presence of Ibn al-Walid and others like Ibn al-As, Uqba ibn Nafi, and Saladin, and then the caliphs from the first to the last, was humiliation. All of this was manifested in an even greater humiliation: the colonization of Syria, then its transformation into ruins at the hands of the Arabs after 1,440 years, divided between the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula and the Ottoman sultans.
It is not reasonable for the caliphate to rule this country for 1,440 years without leaving a trace of any achievement. We do not find this. We do not know if the Ottoman Suleymaniye Tekkia was anything noteworthy. What did the Bedouin Hijazis accomplish? Was the Umar era a civilizational achievement or unparalleled animalization? What did the Qurayshe build compared to the Romans? The presence of the Bedouin Hijazis and the Ottomans in these lands for that long period was a disaster.