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3. Soldiers for Syria before World War I: The Free Syria Society
- University of Texas Press
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Soldiers for Syria before World War I: The Free Syria Society Chapter 3 Najīb Diāb, publisher and editor of Mirāt al-Gharb newspaper in New York City, reported in May 1913 about a formal request by student activists in France to hold a conference for Arab nationalists. The request was sent to the Higher Committee of the Ottoman Administrative Decentralization Party at its headquarters in Cairo. Diāb told his Syrian readers in the Americas that the students were alarmed by the “insinuations in the European press and winks in clubs by gentlemen [the polity]” concerning the fate of Syria. The insinuations were seen by the students as hints at adding Syria to European colonies extending from Egypt to the Far East. European ambitions were due “to the mismanagement of the Turks.”1 Diāb expressly sought the participation of the diaspora communities in America and Europe and set these agenda points: “nationalist life and resisting occupation,” the rights of Arabs in the “Ottoman Kingdom,” the necessity of reforms based on decentralization , and immigration to and emigration from Syria.2 Academic studies on the Paris conference have revealed that the signatories of the invitation were all members of either the Decentralization Party in Cairo or al-Arabi al-Fatāt (Arab Youth, often called al-Fatāt) in Paris. Two of them, Abdulghani al-Uraisi and Shukri al-Asali, served as Arab representatives in the Ottoman Parliament.3 Al-Fatāt’s involvement indicates that, in addition to the Decentralization Party’s known preference for superior organization, the call for the conference was ultimately a move toward independence from Ottoman rule. Because al-Fatāt remained a secret organization to the end, it is difficult to confirm that Jubrān Kuzma, Ameen Farah’s childhood friend from Nazareth , and others were actually members who may have borrowed the idea of the secret Free Syria Society from al-Fatāt. Members of al-Fatāt often chose death at the hands of the CUP before revealing the names of their comrades, and its very existence was not confirmed until after the collapse of Ottoman rule.4 However, by Antonius’s description, stipulations in al-Fatāt’s bylaws seem to match those implemented by the Free Syria Society in Flint. Savvy strategies began to take shape on the eve of World War I utilizing the De- 82 The Making of Arab Americans centralized Party’s highly developed organizational skills, the considerable experience of Az .m, Zahrāwi, and Uraisi in international affairs and Ottoman administration, and the vigor of al-Fatāt’s youthful nationalists. The nationalists gathered in Paris from June 18 to June 23, 1913, for the First Arab Conference. The endorsement of Najīb Diāb by the United Syrian Society is a sign that many Syrian immigrants chose him as their representative to the conference in Paris. Naūm Mokarzel attended and represented Lebanese separatism against demands for Syrian national and territorial integrity by nationalists from Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Istanbul, Iraq, Damascus , Mexico, and the United States.5 The convergence prompted the Syrian Druze nationalist Shakib Arslan to dub the event “the Syrian Conference .” Participants appear to have understood that they needed to define themselves on their terms at a critical moment in the region’s and their own history and to demonstrate a level of sophistication that would pave the way for statehood and future dealings with Turks and Europeans alike. A comprehensive definition of Arab nationalism by Abdulghani al-Uraisi opened the conference: Groups, in the opinion of political scientists, do not meet this right [nationalism ], unless they, according to the German scientists, share one language and ethnicity [unsur]; and according to the Italians, unless they share one history and one set of customs; and according to the French, a unified political goal. Hence, as we observe the Arabs from all political angles, we will know that Arabs share a unified language and a unified ethnicity and a unified history and unified traditions and unified political ambitions. . . . Based on this, I say the first right of groups of nations is the right of (national) citizenship [jinsīyah], whereby we are Arabs above political colors, and we preserved our shared attributes and distinctiveness for numerous centuries despite all we suffered at the hands of the Istanbul administration, such as political absorption or colonial subservience or racial intermingling.6 The eclectic attributes proposed by Uraisi as the basis for national Arab identity were meant...