by Salim Mujais
This principle is intended to safeguard the unity of the Syrian nation, the integrity of its homeland, and the elimination of any ambiguity from a legal perspective. The Syrians are a nation upon whom alone devolves the right to own, dispose of, and make decisions concerning every inch of Syrian territory. The homeland belongs to the nation as a whole and no one, not even individual Syrian citizens, may dispose of any part of its territory in such a way as to destroy or endanger the integrity of the country, which integrity is a necessary condition for preserving the unity of the Syrian nation.
Every Syrian who wants to see his nation free, sovereign and advanced should inscribe this principle deeply in his heart.
Those who deny that Syria is for the Syrians and that the Syrians are a complete nation are committing a crime that deprives Syrians of their sovereignty over themselves and their homeland. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party declares them criminals in the name of millions of Syrians yearning for freedom, life, and progress.
THE SECOND BASIC PRINCIPLE
The Syrian cause is an integral national cause completely independent from any other cause.
This principle signifies that all the legal and political questions that relate to any portion of Syrian territory, or to any Syrian group, are part of one indivisible cause distinct from, and unmixed with, any other external matter which may nullify the conception of the unity of Syrian interests and of the Syrian will. This principle follows from and is complementary to the first principle. Since Syria is for the Syrians and the Syrians are a complete nation endowed with the right to sovereignty, it follows that this nation’s cause, that is its life and destiny, belongs to her alone and is independent from any other cause that involves interests other than those of the Syrian people.
This principle reserves to the Syrians alone the right to expound their own cause and to be their sole representatives, determine their own interests, and shape their own destiny. It renders theirs an all-inclusive and indivisible cause.
From the spiritual point of view, this principle entails that the will of the Syrian nation, which represents its interests, is a general will and that the ideals that the Syrians seek to realize emanate from their own character, temperament, and talents. The Syrian nation cannot tolerate the disintegration of these ideals, or its dissociation from them or their mingling with other aims in which they may be forfeited. These ideals are Freedom, Duty, Discipline, and Strength, abounding with Truth, Good, and Beauty in the most sublime form to which the Syrian spirit can rise and which the Syrians must attain through their own endeavors, since no one else but themselves can represent or realize those ideals for them.
In accordance with this principle, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party declares that it does not recognize the right of any non-Syrian person or organization to speak on behalf of Syria and its interests either in internal or international matters. The Party does not recognize the right of anybody to make the interests of Syria contingent on the interests of other nations.
The millions of farmers, workers, artisans, and professionals in trade and industry, which comprise the Syrian nation, have a will and an interest in life that must remain their own.
The Syrian Social Nationalist Party does not recognize the right of any non-Syrian person or organization to thrust its own ideals upon the Syrian nation in substitution for its own.
THE THIRD BASIC PRINCIPLE
The Syrian cause is the cause of the Syrian nation and the Syrian homeland.
This principle unequivocally defines the Syrian cause and emphasizes the indissoluble bond between the nation and its territory. Nations arise in distinct territories that sustain their lives and national character. The concept of the unity of the nation and its homeland embodied in this principle enables us to understand the nation as a social reality and frees the concept of nationhood from such historical, racial, or religious misconceptions as are contrary to the nature of the nation and its vital interest.
The interdependence between the nation and its homeland is the only principle whereby the unity of life can be achieved. It is within a national territory that the unity of national life and participation in its activities, interests and aims are attained. The national territory is vital for the development of the social character of the nation and forms the basis of its life.
THE FOURTH BASIC PRINCIPLE
The Syrian nation is the unity of the Syrian people which developed through a long history.
This principle defines what constitutes the nation mentioned in previous articles and requires close examination from an ethnological perspective. The purpose of this principle is to negate the concept of a single ethnic origin for the Syrian nation and to declare the reality of the nation, as the outcome of the long history of all the people that have settled in Syria, inhabited it, interacted with each other, and finally became fused in one people. This process started with the people of the Neolithic age who preceded the Canaanites and Chaldeans in settling this land, and continued through to the Akkadians, the Canaanites, the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Arameans, Amorites, and Hittites and led to the emergence of one people. Thus, the principle of Syrian nationhood is not based on race or blood, but rather on the natural social unity derived from homogeneous intermixing. Through this principle the interests, the aims and the ideals of the Syrian nation are unified and the national cause is guarded against disharmony, disintegration, and strife that result from primitive loyalties to blood ties.
The alleged racial purity of any nation is a groundless myth. It is found only in savage groups, and even there it is rare. All existing nations are composed of ethnic mixtures. The Syrian nation consists of a mixture of Canaanites, Akkadians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Arameans, Hittites, and Mitanni as the French nation is a mixture of Gauls, Ligurians, Franks, etc. . . and the Italian nation of Romans, Latins, Etruscans, etc. . . the same being true of every other nation.
The Syrian nation denotes this society unified in life. Though of mixed origins, this nation has come to constitute a single society living in a distinct territory known historically as Syria or the Fertile Crescent. The common origins, Canaanites, Chaldeans, Arameans, Assyrians, Amorites, Hittites, Mitanni, and Akkadians etc. whose existence and mixing are an indisputable historical fact constitute the ethnic-historical-cultural basis of Syria’s unity, whereas the Syrian Fertile Crescent constitutes the geographic-economic-strategic basis of this unity.
This ethnic and geographical reality was distorted and lost due to successive historic events which destroyed documentation and led to the substitution of various foreign accounts for authentic facts and distorted through various interpretations of our national history. A large number of historians have confined their definition of Syria to Byzantine or late Hellenistic Syria, whose boundaries extended from the Taurus range and the Euphrates to the Suez, thus excluding the Assyrians and Chaldeans from Syrian History. Other historians have further confined this definition to the region between Cilicia and Palestine, thus leaving out Palestine. All these historians were foreigners who were unable to grasp the reality of the Syrian nation and its environment and the process of its development. Moreover, most of the Syrian historians who derived their information from foreign sources without adequate criticism, have followed their lead. Thus, the truth was falsified and our genuine cause was lost.
The history of the ancient Syrian states (Akkadian, Chaldean, Assyrian, Hittite, Canaanite, Aramean, Amorite) indicates the same trend: the political, economic, and social unity of the Syrian Fertile Crescent. This fact should enable us to view the Assyrian and Chaldean wars, aimed at dominating the whole of Syria, in a new light. These were internal wars, a struggle for supremacy among the powerful groups and dynasties within the nation which was still in the making and which later attained its full formation.
This principle is not in the least incompatible with the fact that Syria is one of the nations of the Arab World, or one of the Arab nations, nor is this latter fact at variance with the statement th
at Syria is a complete nation with sovereign rights over its territory and consequently with a distinct and independent national cause. It is the neglect of this principle that has given the religious sects in Syria the means of disuniting the country into a Muslim-Arab faction on the one hand and a Christian-Phoenician one, on the other, so that the unity of the nation is thereby destroyed and its energies dissipated.
This principle would redeem Syria from the blood bigotries which are apt to cause the neglect of national interests. For those Syrians who believe or feel that they are of Aramaic extraction would no longer be driven to fan Aramaic blood loyalty, so long as the principle of Social Nationalist unity and the equality of civic, political, and social rights and duties are guaranteed, and no ethnic or racial discrimination in Syria is made. Similarly, those Syrians who claim to descend from a Phoenician (Canaanite), Arab, or Crusader stock would no longer have allegiance but to their Syrian community. Thus, would genuine national consciousness arise. The unity of the Syrian nation arose from the mixing of multiple elements which have formed in the course of history the Syrian people and the character and traits of the Syrian nation.
This principle cannot be said to imply that Jews are a part of the Syrian nation and equal in rights and duties to the Syrians. Such an interpretation is incompatible with this principle, which excludes the integration in the Syrian nation of elements that maintain exclusive racial loyalties. Such elements are not part of the unified people.
There are large settlements of immigrants in Syria, such as the Armenians, Kurds, and Circassians, whose assimilation is possible given sufficient time. These elements may dissolve in the nation and lose their special loyalties. However, there is one large settlement which cannot in any respect be reconciled to the principle of Syrian nationalism, and that is the Jewish settlement. It is a dangerous settlement, which can never be assimilated because it consists of a people that, although it has mixed with many other peoples, has remained a heterogeneous mixture, with strange stagnant beliefs and aims of its own, essentially incompatible with Syrian rights and sovereignty. It is the duty of the Syrian Social Nationalists to repulse the immigration of this people with all their might.
THE FIFTH BASIC PRINCIPLE
The Syrian homeland is that geographic environment in which the Syrian nation evolved. It has distinct natural boundaries and extends from the Taurus range in the northwest and the Zagros mountains in the northeast to the Suez canal and the Red Sea in the south and includes the Sinai peninsula and the gulf of Aqaba, and from the Syrian sea in the west, including the island of Cyprus, to the arch of the Arabian desert and the Persian gulf in the east. (This region is also known as the Syrian Fertile Crescent).
These are the natural boundaries of the Syrian homeland, which has housed the elements of the Syrian nation and provided them with the basis of their lives and the opportunity of contact and collision, then mixture and fusion, which resulted in the formation of the distinct character of the Syrian nation. The Chaldeans and Assyrians were alive to the internal unity and integrity of this country and sought to unify it politically, interested as they were in the idea of the territorial state. Similarly, all the other people who inhabited this region were conscious of the internal unity of the country and sought to build up confederations between decentralized governments to avoid internal dissension and for protection from external incursions.
The secret of Syria’s persistence as a distinct nation despite the numerous invasions to which it succumbed lies in the geographic unity of its homeland. It was this geographic unity that ensured the political unity of this country even in ancient times when it was still divided among the Canaanites, the Arameans, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Assyrians, and the Chaldeans, a political unity that manifested itself in the formation of alliances in the face of threats from Egyptians and other invasions. That unity reached its culmination with the formation of a Seleucid Syrian state which grew into a powerful empire, dominated Asia Minor, and extended as far as India.
Syria’s loss of sovereignty because of the major foreign invasions resulted in its partition into arbitrary political units. In the Byzantine-Persian period, the Byzantines extended their rule over western Syria and applied the name “Syria” to that part only, while the Persians dominated the eastern part, which they called “Irah”, later Arabicized as Iraq. Similarly, after the First World War the condominium of Great Britain and France over Syria resulted in the partition of the country according to their political aims and interests and gave rise to the present political designations: Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Cilicia, and Iraq. Natural Syria consists of all those regions, which constitute one geographic-economic-strategic unit. The Syrian Social Nationalist cause will not be fulfilled unless the unity of Syria is achieved.
The partitioning of Syria between the Byzantines and the Persians into Eastern and Western Syria and the creation of barriers between them retarded considerably, and for a long period, the national growth and the development of the social and economic life cycle of the country. This division resulted also in distorting the truth about the borders of Syria. Additional factors contributing to this distortion were: the incursion of the desert upon the lower arch of the Fertile Crescent, the decrease in population, the recession of urban areas (by virtue of constant wars and invasions), and deforestation, all of which made vast areas of the country desolate. The lack of reliable studies pertaining to the cause of this ever increasing drought, which has caused deepening of the arch, has contributed to the view that the expansion of the desert has been a permanent phenomenon. In my studies, I have demonstrated the indisputable unity of the country and examined the arbitrary grounds for its present condition and its partitioning and established that all the territory to which the term Mesopotamia refers, as far as the Zagros Mountains that form the natural boundary separating Eastern Syria from Iran, falls within Syria.
The Syrian homeland is an essential factor in Syrian nationalism. Every Syrian Social Nationalist must be conversant with the boundaries of his beautiful country and keep its image in his mind. In order to safeguard his right and the rights of his descendants in this wonderful country, he should grasp well the unity of his nation, the community of its rights, and the indivisible unity of its country.
I have indicated in Book One of The Emergence of Nations that the dynamism and vitality of a nation may lead to adjustments of its borders. A strong and ever-growing nation will transcend its frontiers and expand beyond them, whereas a weak and weathering nation will shrink within those frontiers. After the decline and fall of the great Syrian states, the Syrian nation was reduced to impotence and recession. It lost the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and Cilicia to Turkey, and shrank within its own natural boundaries, and was finally broken up by the powers which invaded and occupied its territory in whole or in part.
The Syrian Social Nationalist Party symbolizes the resurgence of the Syrian nation, which is determined on recovering its power and vitality and reclaiming its dismembered parts.
THE SIXTH BASIC PRINCIPLE
The Syrian nation is one society.
On this fundamental principle are based some of the reform principles to be expounded later, such as the separation of religion and state and the elimination of social barriers between the various sects and creeds. This principle is the basis of genuine national unity, the mark of national consciousness, and the guarantee of the life and endurance of the Syrian character. One Nation-One Society. The unity of society is the basis of the community of interests and consequently the basis of the community of life. The absence of social unity entails the absence of common interests, and no resort to temporary expediency can make up for this loss. Through social unity, the conflict of loyalties and negative attitudes will disappear to be replaced by a single healthy national loyalty ensuring the revival of the nation. Similarly, all religious bigotries and their nefarious consequences will cease and in their stead national collaboration and toleration will prevail. Moreover, economi
c cooperation and a sense of national concord and unity will be fulfilled and pretexts for foreign intervention will be abolished.
Real independence and real sovereignty will not be fulfilled and will not endure unless they rest upon a genuine social unity that is the only sound basis for a national state and Social Nationalist civil legislation. This unity forms the basis for citizenship and the guarantee of the equality of rights for all citizens.
THE SEVENTH BASIC PRINCIPLE
The Syrian Social Nationalist movement derives its inspiration from the talents of the Syrian nation and its cultural political national history.
This principle asserts the spiritual independence of the nation in which its national character, ideals, and aims are grounded. The Party believes that no Syrian revival can be affected save through the agency of the inborn and independent Syrian character. Indeed, one of the major factors in the absence of Syrian national consciousness or its weakness is the overlooking of the genuine character of the Syrian nation as manifested in the intellectual and practical contributions of its people and their cultural achievements, such as the enactment of the first civilized code of law and the invention of the alphabet, the greatest cultural intellectual revolution in history; let alone the material-spiritual effects of Syrian colonization and culture and the civilizing influence Syria exercised over the whole of the Mediterranean, and the immortal achievements of such great Syrians as Zeno, Bar Salibi, St John Chrysostom, Ephraim, al-Maari, Deek-el-Jin of Emessa, al-Kawakibi, Gibran, and other great figures of ancient and modern times. To this list way be added the names of Syria’s great generals from Sargon the Great to Esarhaddon, Sennecharib, Nebuchadnezzar, Assurbanipal, and Tiglat-pilasser; from Hanno the great to Hannibal (the greatest military genius of all times) and Yusuf Azmeh, the hero of Meyselun.
