George Banna, Samir Sadek;
There are several ways to determine a person’s affiliation and identity, Affiliation is determined by the place of birth and is not subject to will, Whoever is born in Syria is Syrian by affiliation, 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, So I am Chinese by identity and born in Syria by affiliation, Whoever lives voluntarily in Syria and carries the Syrian personal identity, in addition to his acceptance or choice of the 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, nor is it French or Indian, etc. Identity has nothing to do with the will of others, as if Arabists impose an Arab identity on others, nor does it have anything to do with lineage, ancestry, race, or historical roots,The choice of identity is absolutely personal.
Julia Domna was a Syrian woman from the Syrian city of Homs. She is not known to have any connection with the Arabs; her connection was with Rome, Several emperors came from her family in Rome, meaning they were Roman citizens,None of this has anything to do with the Arabian Peninsula, She is like Zenobia, who was a queen in Palmyra, and Palmyra is located in Syria. Therefore, the Kingdom of Palmyra is Syrian, nothing more and nothing less.
America is American and France is French, and so on. Germany is German, Greece is Greek, and Egypt is Egyptian, and so forth, For example, there are 80 million Americans of German origin, and these are Americans and they do not want Germany to occupy America, nor do they want America to be considered German, because they 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 does not do this for the sake of Shukri al-Quwatli or others, but for the sake of Ibn al-Walid and Ibn al-Khattab, This group does this for well-known political goals. It is the colonization of the country from within as a continuation of the Arab-Ottoman colonialism from the outside, and this is in reality what the Arabists and Arabists did in conjunction with the Brotherhood in the last century.
There are those who want an Arab identity for Syrians, but many Syrians do not want that identity and are even ashamed of it, They do not want to be ruled by Arabs or Arabism, not because Arab rule is barbaric, which it is in fact barbaric, but because the personal choice is to want a Syrian identity, There is no shame in the Syrian identity, because the Syrian identity has offered many positive things to humanity for long ages. Whoever looks at Syria will find traces of a great civilization, regardless of the prestigious status of the material Syrian civilization, whose traces have remained proud to this day, There is the human civilization, which is manifested in the Syrians, their plow, and their alphabet. The matter has nothing to do with morbid pride; it is a neutral narration of history.
Some do not want the Arab identity, because this identity has brought nothing but humiliation: the humiliation of conquests, the humiliation of the culture of captives and thefts, the humiliation of the Bedouin concept of rights, the humiliation of subjugating many peoples by the sword, the humiliation of aggression against others, the humiliation of the occupation of Spain for seven or eight centuries, then the humiliation of turning east to India, the humiliation of killing Indians, and the slaughter of people in Iraq at the hands of Ibn al-Walid. Even the existence of Ibn al-Walid and others like Ibn al-Aas, Uqba ibn Nafi, and Saladin, and then the caliphs from the first to the last, is a humiliation, All of that was manifested in a greater humiliation, which is the colonization of Syria and then turning it into ruins after 1400 years, distributed between the Arabs of the Peninsula and the Ottoman sultans.
We say, it is not reasonable that the Caliphate ruled these lands for 1400 years without leaving any trace of accomplishing something beautiful, We do not find this thing, and we do not know if the Sulaymaniyah Tekke represents something noteworthy, The presence of the Hijazi Bedouin and the Ottoman Bedouin in these lands for that long period was a great disaster!