The Syrian Social Nationalist Party

by Salim Mujais

  He then extends this anthropological approach to the Patriarchal See:

  “The Patriarchal See has ancient traditions dating to the periods of the stone age or the early bronze age, certainly prior to the iron age or the industrial age, prior to the age of knowledge, science and specialization, traditions dating back to the age of complete ignorance and utter fear. In these ancient traditions, the Patriarchal See had a primary interest in managing the affairs of the religious group under its care. Religious groups had special issues, unique demands, and a semblance of political unity. Their political representation was religious and their religious representation political. Because religious groups constituted political entities, religious representatives acquired political power. This allowed the Patriarchal See to acquire grave influence that it continues to wield in our political and national affairs, and is primarily responsible for creating our current situation… The intervention of the Patriarchal See after the War in the name of the Maronites from a religious perspective led to the creation of the Lebanese question… The backwardness of social and political thought in the constituency underlies the gravity of the political positions of the Patriarchal See and explains the permanence of the political influence of religious authorities to this day on our national and political causes.”

  Of the Patriarch himself, Saadeh had this to say:

  “Patriarch Arida had a laudable stand on the issue of social unity between Lebanon and the hinterland and appeared to be aligned with the position of the national renaissance. He also had a firm stand on the issue of the tobacco monopoly, but it was unsuccessful because it was too late… he also had some nefarious attitudes such as his support of Jewish attempts to infiltrate Lebanon which drove Archbishop Mubarak to tell him: ‘We elected you a Patriarch of the Maronites not a Patriarch of the Jews’… On a personal level, the Patriarch has no clear balanced direction or a particular political doctrine. His political actions are erratic outbursts precipitated by passing events, directed by personal influence of close associates, and based frequently on primitive elementary views and immature understanding of the issues at hand… The Patriarch’s approach to the crisis in government in Lebanon is based on the same rule as his intervention in the affair of the tobacco monopoly: seeing disasters after they strike and errors after they occur.”

  Having established an ‘anthropological characterization’ of the religious authorities and their views and determined their inadequacy from a modernist approach, Saadeh then proceeds to interrogate each of the issues raised by the Patriarch to illustrate in specific details the veracity of his characterization. He proceeds to identify contradictions and inconsistencies in the speech. What interests us here, however, are not the failings of the Patriarch, but what views Saadeh presents that reflect elements of his political philosophy. One of the issues he tackles in detail is that of civil rights. In response to the Patriarch’s statement “Man is free to believe what he wishes but does not have the right to force others to adhere to his beliefs,” Saadeh points out the contradiction between this statement and the Patriarch’s call for the suppression of the SSNP by the government. He does take, however, this one-step further:

  “The issue is not as simple as it may seem because it relates to our political system. We should examine it not in the simplistic realm of the absolute but in the context of our society and the basic rights that safeguard it, namely civil rights enjoyed by members of the socio-political system. In a democratic system such as the one allegedly operative in this small country, there are sacred rights that afford every citizen of the Lebanese state the freedom of belief, expression and association, the freedom to hold and express views about the government and its forms. This freedom of exchange of ideas is required for the advancement of society. If elected officials were to abrogate these sacred rights, they would be labeled tyrants trampling the very rights that led to their election. The latter is precisely what his Holiness wishes and supports when he states ‘The government is free to suppress political creeds… and all that is harmful to the people.’ This is a dangerous statement for it releases rulers from any restrictions and allows for the establishment of tyrannical rule… From where would an ordinary government elected within a defined system to serve the interests of the people gain the divine wisdom to determine which political ideologies it should oppose and suppress and which ideologies it should support and encourage?... To release the hand of a government elected for a finite term returns us to the slavery of the dark ages.”

  Saadeh had raised this issue of civil rights before during his first trial, and again after the confrontations with the Lebanese government in February of 1937 that led to his second imprisonment, and he would continue to raise it throughout his life.92

  The message of this rebuttal is clear: the perpetuation of the interference of religious authorities in the political and national affairs of Syria is incompatible with national unity, the integrity of the state, and the equality of citizens under a common law. Secularism is a prerequisite for modernity and anti-secular formulations are obscurantist and anachronistic.

  THE FIRST OF MARCH 1938

  The tradition of public celebrations of Saadeh’s birthday was formally inaugurated in 1938. The First of March 1938 celebrations were to become the prototype of such meetings for many years to come. A special issue of an-Nahda and meetings in many cities were to become the norm for such celebrations.

  The Lebanese government was wary of such meetings, and freedom of assembly was not a principle the local governments or the French Mandate cared to honor. On Monday February 28, the Minister of Interior summoned Saadeh to his office to discuss the scope of the planned celebrations. Saadeh assured the minister that no street demonstrations would take place and that the plan called for a series of receptions of delegations coming to congratulate their leader on his 34th birthday.

  The plans for the meeting in Beirut involved receptions and speeches at the house of SSNP leadership member Nehmeh Thabit, the location of the June 1, 1935 meeting. Receptions were held in the morning starting at 10am, but the meeting venue was changed because of impending rain to a location in Burj Abi Haydar where the full meeting and speeches were delivered. Around three thousand individuals attended the afternoon meeting in Beirut.

  Saadeh arrived at the meeting venue at 4pm and his speech lasted two hours. The text of the speech had been printed in a pamphlet of 29 pages and distributed to the branches of the SSNP so it could be read concurrently with the meeting in Beirut. In his speech, Saadeh offered a panoramic view of political events in Syrian politics since the First World War to provide context for his review of the early history of the SSNP. The narrative of this history has become a classic and adopted by most authors. Saadeh did not offer this narrative to be merely documentary, but to be evocative of future expectations.

  Saadeh's speech of March 1st, 1938 was to become a landmark document. In this speech, Saadeh endeavored to provide an interpretation of the recent history of Syria and its national movement and to crystallize their narratives for coming generations. “The sounds of our chains continue to resonate in our ears and will continue to resonate in the ears of future generations so that our grandchildren will understand and appreciate the meaning of the life of the nation and how much it will cost of our lives we who then would be grandfathers.” While briefly anticipatory of things to come, the speech is mainly informative and interpretive of things past. “After all these trials and tribulations, it behooves us to cast an examining look at our past, our present and our future and determine exactly where we are in reference to our goal and our world.”

  The speech can be divided into two broad parts addressing two distinct narratives: the first is the narrative of the contemporary political history of Syria and the second the narrative of the recent history of the SSNP. Saadeh introduces the first narrative with an encapsulation of the historical eras that led to modern time in Syria. This encapsulation gives us a glimpse of his understanding of the evol
ution of Syrian history:

  “No nation has succumbed to as momentous and as prolonged grave historical developments with long lasting effects as befell our great nation. Barely had Syria re-affirmed its character during the Roman Empire [including its Byzantine phase] that it encountered the Arab Conquest that required it to change its language. It then succumbed to the Mongol invasion that ravaged the land and ruined Damascus to be followed by the oppressive Turkish conquest. This sequence of events to which also belong the Crusades have interrupted the cultural direction of Syria and made its destiny subject to the interactions of these factors powers and their struggle for supremacy. This engendered social and economic chaos and caused havoc in the civilization of this beautiful land. The convergences of invading hordes from the south, north and west threatened the survival of the Syrian character responsible for the great cultural revolutions that dotted the Mediterranean with its cities and carried forth to its shores the arts of Syrian civilization…”

  Saadeh chronicles the political events of more recent times in detail. He specifies that the independence seeking activities that arose during the later decades of the Ottoman period were directed principally at ending Turkish rule and contained no clear direction on establishing solid foundations for national revival and progress. He is putting the so-called “Great Arab Revolt” and all associated movements in perspective. This directly leads him to tackling the “Arab Cause” and its religious associations.

  “This idea was known under the influence of religious factors as the Arab Cause and it gathered under its banner political activists from Syria, Egypt and later Arabia when it sought a religious symbol to rally around. These activists thought that religious power, the power of descendence from the Prophet and religious zealotry, as a sure path to success… Some imagined the Arab Cause as a reactionary movement to establish an Arab empire and a return to the unfortunate age of Haroun al-Rashid… Others conceived the Arab Cause as a return to religious approaches with a Caliphate or Imamate. Some built an ethnic framework around the Arab Cause while others assumed it a true national cause eliminating in the process the various nations of the Arab world and replacing them with an imagined single nation. Others still considered the Arab Cause as a question of an alliance between Arab nations and were thereby closest to reality.”

  The narrative of the Lebanese Cause also lays bare its sectarian nature.

  “The Arab Cause was not the only manifestation of conflation of national issues with religious issues prior to the advent of the SSNP. The Lebanese Cause was another such manifestation. The origins of this cause go back to the bloody sectarian events of 1860, the fighting that took place between the Druzes and the Christians and ended with the intervention of the Great Powers that had interest in weakening Ottoman control and spreading their influence in these parts. A special system was created for Mount Lebanon to ensure the security of the Christians who represented the majority of its inhabitants… The perpetuation of this system for half a century… engendered in the largest Christian sect that benefited from the system an eagerness to perpetuate the status quo and to create the Lebanese Cause. The collusion of this will to preserve the status quo with foreign political interests led to the creation of the Grand Liban and subsequently the institution of the Lebanese Republic. The latter is a political entity finding its reason to exist in the sectarian strife of the last century.”

  The narratives of the Arab Cause and the Lebanese Cause included in this speech were to become constant ideological foundations. Future restatements in numerous writings by Saadeh and his colleagues in the next decade would enlarge on the detail but remained faithful to the framework delineated therein. Saadeh chides the protagonists of the Arab Cause and the Lebanese Cause for their hypocrisy in thinking that they could dissimulate from each other the flagrant sectarian basis of either of their causes. The closing section of the speech is likely the one that the enemies of the SSNP listened to most attentively:

  “Now that we have vanquished these early difficulties and established our institutions, we see a clear path and have complete faith in our victory… The old political school must be eliminated and be replaced by the national political school capable of achieving reform.”

  The events of 1st March, 1938 were a wake-up call to the Mandate and local governments that the truce with the SSNP was no longer tenable. Why would the Mandate and its proxy the Lebanese government seek to re-initiate their persecution of Saadeh and the SSNP? In the spring of 1938, the SSNP accelerated its efforts to provide basic military training to its membership and to create a cadre of trained officers as a backbone for a provisional army. The SSNP undertook this step despite its meager resources and was determined to execute this plan in 1938 no matter the hardship and sacrifices.93

  News of these developments reached the mandate and the Lebanese proxy government via an informer. The Mandate would have seen the crowds in Beirut on March 1, 1938, the incursion of SSNP members into the government offices in Damascus on the same day, and learned through its informers of the plans for the general meeting of 72 party branches from the hinterland, all evidence of the mounting strength of the SSNP.

  To foil the spies of the French mandate, the day of his departure appeared the most ordinary one. Saadeh visited the Maaluf household in Beirut, as he was accustomed to do, and even participated in a simple card game. A restricted number of SSNP leaders came to see him there. He then “took leave in his usual day to day manner” and headed immediately out of Lebanon.94 The day before his departure, the Attorney general of Lebanon had issued a subpoena requiring Saadeh to be present at a meeting to look into a case brought against him by Gabriel Munassa, a failed candidate in the parliamentary elections. The government would have used the pretense of fact finding in the case to expand the search into the existence of the SSNP and level additional charges accordingly.

  SEEKING INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

  TRANS-JORDAN

  Evidence of the SSNP’s presence in Trans-Jordan surfaced March of 1938 in an editorial on the pages of an-Nahda whose authorship was previously attributed to Saadeh. Trans-Jordan had always been considered by the SSNP as a part of the Syrian homeland. The editorialist of an-Nahda wrote “In this state invented to satisfy British colonial interests, administrative and governmental forms evolved seemingly as an independent state, but in reality totally subservient to British influence, under the jurisdiction of the British Commissioner in Jerusalem, and controlled in all its branches by British functionaries directly responsible to the Government of Palestine.” After surveying the implications of the 1927 treaty, the editorialist describes the situation east of the Jordan, “an area isolated from the modern world, deep in the grip of social backwardness, intellectual decay and crushing feudalism.” He finally declares that the SSNP is actively pursuing an active role in the political and social life of the region. By the time of Saadeh’s visit, the SSNP had established a small branch in the Emirate.

  Saadeh stayed in Amman with Nayef Qa’war.95 Visits with Nayef’s family and acquaintances meant that secrecy could not be maintained. Nayef had suggested visiting Emir Abdallah with the hope of reaching a political understanding with him that may facilitate SSNP activity in the Emirate. Due preparations for such a meeting were not possible as events were precipitated by the spreading public awareness of Saadeh’s presence in Trans-Jordan. On a visit to as-Salt on June 18, a close associate of the Emir knew of Saadeh’s presence in the city and came to welcome him. Al-Shanqiti 96 offered to approach the Emir’s son who was to visit him that afternoon with a request for an interview with the Emir, an offer that could not be refused. However, when al-Shanqiti called the Emir’s office, the information about Saadeh’s presence in Trans-Jordan without the knowledge of the security forces raised the ire of the Emir who thereupon reprimanded his police commanders.

  Saadeh returned to Amman on that Friday afternoon and on Saturday, June 18 went to visit the Emir at the assigned time. Present were the Chief Minister of T
rans-Jordan (Ibrahim Hashim 97) and the Chief of Police. After the customary polite introductions, the Emir told Saadeh that he did not favor the organization of political parties in his domain and that he had heard that such was Saadeh’s purpose in Trans-Jordan. Saadeh offered a non-committal diplomatic answer and took his leave.

  After the interview, the Emir and his associates conferred and clearly reached a decision that Saadeh was persona non grata in the Emirate. A mechanism, however, had to be found to effect his extradition. On Monday evening, two days after the interview, a corporal and a uniformed police officer appeared at Saadeh’s place of residence and asked to inspect his papers hoping to find a pretext for his arrest and deportation. Finding his papers in order, the officers impressed on him the need to leave the country the soonest as his presence was causing undue anxiety in government circles. On Tuesday, June 21, Saadeh left Trans-Jordan heading to Tiberias where he visited with the Sayegh family and then continued to Haifa.

  The failure of the interview needs to be viewed in the context of the political struggles of the time. Emir Abdallah had been firmly pursuing a policy of strict control of all political activity in his realm and it is understandable that a political dissident from Lebanon would be considered undesirable.