Hezbollah

“ We, however, do not want Syria, but we do want to see a strong and settled Arab state in these strictly Arab regions, and I sincerely hope that our Statesmen will be wise enough, and energetic enough, to bring about such a desirable consummation. If we permit the Bolshevists and Turks to oust us from our friendship with the Jews and Arabs, and with King Hussein and his son the Emir Feisal (now the King of Irak) , upon whom we have alternately blown hot and cold, just as it pleased France to pipe the tune then we shall witness the beginning of the end of our power and prestige in the Orient. ”

“ She is independent in the fullest sense of the word, freed from the rule of strangers and purged of every foreign influence. Her principles are to defend the faith of Islam, to elevate the Moslem people, to found their conduct on Holy haw, to build up the code of justice on the same foundation in harmony with the principles of religion, to practise its ceremonies in accordance with modern progress, and make a genuine revolution by sparing no pains in spreading education among all classes according to their station and their needs. ”

“ More than this, separate states were carved out of the Turkish Empire, and mandated governments were set up in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Transjordania, with the British and French assigned to guardianship. But the final crushing blow came when in 1921 Turkey overthrew the monarchy, abolished the old regime, and became a republic, and finally in 1924 put an end to the Turkish caliphate.
Today Pan-Islamism is dead. There is no caliph of the Moslems. There is no symbol of unity, and no unifying force other than the spiritual influence of the faith and ritual of Islam. ”

“ But, as we have seen, at the beginning of the present century the Wahabis and not the Turks were the real rulers of Arabia. The Arabs have never taken kindly to the rule of the Turk, but the province of Hejaz, once snatched from the hand of the Wahabis, has ever since been held by the Sublime Porte. Plots of rebellion have been thick and Sherifs have succeeded Sherifs but the fort that frowns over Mecca has always a strong Turkish garrison and the Pashas eat the fat of the land at the expense of the people. ”

“ Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency. If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey. We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should as a neutral State remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence. ”

“ The peoples of the Arab part of the Ottoman Empire are a congeries of differing races, creeds, sects, and social systems, with no common bond except language. The physical character of their land compels a good third of them to be nomadic, predatory barbarians, feared by the other two-thirds. The settled folk are divided into Moslem and Christian (not to mention a large Jewish element) , the cleavage being more abrupt than in western Turkey and the tradition and actual spirit of mutual enmity more separative. Further, each of those main creed-divisions is subdivided. ”

“ In the Hejaz district—situated between fertile and more civilized Yemen, or Arabia Felix, in the south-west of the peninsula and the Sinaitic region,—and in Nejd to the east of Hejaz, which were the two districts in which Islam and the Arabian Empire took their rise, dwelt tribes whose common sanctuary was the Kaaba at Mecca, in the wall of which was the quadrangular black stone kissed by all devotees, and supposed to have been received from the angel Gabriel. The religion of the Arabs was polytheism in many different forms, in which idol-worship was prominent ”

“ Does not the word 'Ghazi' signify a hero who slays the infidel? Does not every Mollah, when he recites the Khuttab in the mosque, invoke divine wrath on the non-Moslem? What then? The establishment of an Arab Empire would mean the revolt of the whole Eastern world against the Western world, and a return to all the brutality, all the intolerance of the farrago of moribund nonsense known as the Sacred Law. ”

“ The inhabitants—Osmanlis, Arabs, Turkomans—of this part of the once great Ottoman Empire have so long lived under the theocracy established by Mohammed and his successors that every detail of their religion and civil life is regulated for them with a thoroughness that, outside of Islam, is quite unknown. The Sultan as well as the Mollah is both a religious and a civil functionary, and theocratic government prevails everywhere from the palace of the Padishah on the Bosphorus to the tent of the Bedouin in the Syrian and Arabian Deserts. ”

“ Across the sea, in Arabia, the country of Hedjaz has been freed from Germany's allies, the Turks. The people of Hedjaz also once enjoyed freedom and glory, their power in early history reaching all the way from France to China. Backed by the British in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Arabs revolted from the Turks, drove them out of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and at length broke their power completely. Mohammedans have always recognized the Mohammedan ruler who controlled Mecca and Medina, the birthplace and the burial place of the prophet, as their Kalif. ”

“ Almost all the Moslem population of the town or city are gathered in one place, dervishes with their drums and holy banners, large turbaned and wide-robed mollahs, with their yellow slippers, followed by a great multitude of men, women and children, some howling and singing, others talking and crying, some swearing, others trading, all on foot, forming a scene of Babylonian confusion and Sodomite rage. ”

“ We have sufficient proof of how they regard the religion and the Arab people in the fact that they shelled the Ancient House, the Temple of the Divine Unity, of which it is said in the word of God, "Purify my House for those that pass round it," the Kibla of Mohammedans, the Kaaba of believers in the Unity, firing two shells at it from their big guns when the country rose to demand its independence. ”

“ The population of the holy cities furnishes no elements for the formation of a military force, and in that population, Shereef Ali, whom the Turks now wish to use, will assuredly find some adherents. Arabia is still, as it was of yore, hopelessly divided by conflicting interests and by century-long feuds. ”

“ To envisage the State as separated from the Church, politics as distinct from religion, as we do in the West, is as alien to a Syrian or an Armenian patriot as it is to a Persian mollah or an Ottoman grand vizier. For this reason the Eastern Churches, like the theocratic government of Islam to which they have so long been subject, have always attributed so paramount an importance to everything that specially bears on their national life and character. ”

“ Are the Arab-speaking peoples, therefore, likely to revolt, or be successful in splitting the Ottoman Empire, if they do? The present writer would like to say, in parenthesis, that, in his opinion, this consummation of the empire is not devoutly to be wished. The substitution of Arab administration for Osmanli would necessarily entail European tutelage of the parts of the Arab-speaking area in which powers, like ourselves, have vital interests—Syria, for example, southern Mesopotamia, and, probably, Hejaz. ”

“ He was thus the forerunner of Pinsker, and of Herzl a decade later. Indeed, in the resurrection of the national hope he was the first to remove the shroud. According to him, "the eternal people" have every characteristic that goes to make a nation. Their common country is still Palestine, loved by them with all the fervor of patriotism; their common language had never ceased to be Hebrew; their common religion consists in the basic principles of Judaism, in which they all agree. ”

“ There is also a story, seemingly legend, and yet historical, of a people called the Khozars, whose king, Bulan, became a convert to Judaism, and who founded a Jewish dynasty and ruled long and happily by the shores of the Caspian Sea. But however much or however little of truth there may be in these traditions which treat of kings and dynasties, certain it is that, divided by the desert from the pursuit of persecutors all round, Arabian Jews did live, century after century, in their fertile valleys, secure in the possession of perfect freedom of faith. ”

“ This will show how they despised His House and denied it the honour given it by believers.
We leave all this to the Moslem world for judgment.
Yes, we can leave the judgment to the Moslem world; but we may not leave our religion and our existence as a people to be a play-thing of the Unionists. God (Blessed be He!) has made open for us the attainment of freedom and independence, and has shown us a way of victory to cut off the hand of the oppressors, and to cast out their garrison from our midst. ”

“ Eighty per cent. of this population believe, in their fanaticism, that the Sultan will again unfurl over them his flag and that the world will ultimately be converted to Muhammed. And if, entertaining such ideas, they are so rigorous towards their fellow-Moslems, what prospect is there that this 80 per cent. will assist the Orthodox and Catholic Albanians in building up a State? Their ferocity, in fact, is so profound that it thrives on a diet which is chiefly of milk.... ”

“ Islam it would seem means far less to them than nationalism. To a much less degree, of course, the same may be said of the other Moslem countries. Seeing no way in which Islam can again become politically all-powerful, the Moslems of Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Arabia, for instance, are doing all in their power to establish strong national governments, to develop their own national interests, and to take their rightful place in the League of Nations. ”

“ If it be admitted that the preliminary verses of Sura IX of the Koran were revealed or published for the first time in the last month of the ninth year of the Hegira, then they—the verses—become aimless, without being pregnant of any object in view. They contain injunctions for carrying hostile operations against those who had broken certain treaties, had helped others against the Moslems, and themselves had also attacked them. They proclaimed war against certain tribes, whose people did not regard ties of blood and good faith, and had been the first aggressors against the Moslems. ”

“ Its position between the East and the West, on the very high-road of marching armies and wandering tribes, has always made it one of the great battle grounds of the world. About one thousand years after Alexander's rapid invasion and short-lived conquest, the Arabs overran the country, and settled there, bringing with them a new civilization and the new religion given them by their prophet Mohammed, which they thought it their mission to carry, by force of word or sword, to the bounds of the earth. ”

“ At Taiz the Jews seemed to have grown content under long centuries of oppression and taxation. Many of the old Moslem laws against infidels, such as those forbidding them to ride, to carry weapons or wear fine clothes in public, are still rigorously enforced by custom if not by the government. The Jew is universally despised, yet he cannot be spared, for nearly all artisan work is in Jewish hands. The Moslem Arab has learned nothing from the Jew outside of the Koran; but, alas! the Jew has imbibed many foolish customs and superstitions foreign to his creed from Islam. ”

“ But on the other hand, because of its theocratic constitution, it is impossible for a Moslem State to accept reforms which seek to secure equality of rights among its subjects, on the ground of a common humanity. Nothing is more opposed to the deepest convictions of a genuine Moslem than the idea that men of a different faith from his own can be his equals. There is no one who can be more polite than a Turk; no one who can treat you in a more friendly and flattering manner than he. ”

“ But previous to the framing of a constitution, and during the creation of a new State, these principles assume great practical importance. We know and see for ourselves that States still continue to be created. Colonies secede from the mother country. Vassals fall away from their suzerain; newly opened territories are immediately formed into free States. It is true that the Jewish State is conceived as a peculiarly modern structure on unspecified territory. But a State is formed, not by pieces of land, but rather by a number of men united under sovereign rule. ”

“ And the author of a political plan became, in a day and a night, the leader of a Jewish party, which decided to use modern methods to attain their goal—Palestine. Rabbis might proclaim every city as Zion; the rich might frown and refuse support—the modern Zionist movement "leapt full bodied into being," and asserted its existence six months after the author had spoken face to face with the "poor and lowly," who offered him at once their loyalty and their enthusiasm, and who, linking his profession as writer to his doctrine as Jew, regarded him as a new Ezra. ”

“ There is something there dizzy as well as dark, a whirlpool in the very heart of Asia; and something wilder than our own worst oppressions in the peril of those men who looked up and saw above all the power of Asiatic arms, their hopes hanging on a rocking mind like that of a maniac. The tyrant let them go at last, avowedly out of a simple sentiment for the white hair of the consul, and the strange respect that many Moslems feel for the minister of any religion. ”