Remembering Antoine

Antoine (Antun in modern Lebanese colloquial) Saadeh was the founder of the Syrian Social National Party (SSNP) in the 1930's in Lebanon, which advocated the creation of a greater Syria. For him, the newly established Republic of Lebanon was an anathema, the creation of the French mandatory power, through the direct complicity of the Maronite Patriarchate. Saadeh, himself a Christian (although not a Maronite) never looked into the issue from a pure religious perspective. He was more interested in the ideological and geopolitical framework of the Greater Syria he advocated as a complete entity. Saadeh was condemned by a military court and shot to death in 1949. This translation represents some reminisces about him through the eyes of some of his friends. This translation is one of several that I have been doing over the last months with the intention of later joining them together under a single volume. I hope that its on-line publishing and the comments I might get from the several installments will help me in my editing of the final product.

At the Maqasid College

I was a naughty boy as school teachers would usually say. I loved demonstrations, turning over trams, and stoning the Senegalese and French “missionaries of civilization” with stones and other objects. That is until I was injured in my hip one day by one of their spears. On another occasion it was the butt of a respectful rifle on my head. It had a sound that still buzzes in my ears until today. From that day on I became a troublesome person, I mean a nationalist. I used to wait for events. Those were occasions for demonstrations and protests against all the countries of the world. If, for example, an Egyptian fell of the roof of a house in the depths of Al Sa'id We called for a populous demonstration in Beirut, during which we would turn over trams in protest of English occupation [in Egypt]. Or if a Tunisian or an Algerian cried fowl in the Arabic Maghrib, we would be in the midst of a battle on the boulevards of Bab Idris, Al Burj, and other places. This was the battle of hurrahs, pitiful life, and the fall of the government. Let those of us who fell fall, so that our free leaders live with wreaths of bay leaves and clay on their heads.

Finding an Ideology

Omar Ibn Al Khattab [later the third Caliph of Islam] did not go to the Prophet Muhammad Bin Abd Allah to swear his allegiance to Islam and tell him “I submit” until he visited the heathen statutes of his former gods and knelt before them to weep like a child. It was as if Omar was saying farewell to them and to a piece if his youth that he had spend believing in them.

Therefore, ideology for the believer is neither luxury, nor a council of friendship. It is not trading or playing the role of a middle man. It is also neither a clothing nor paint that covers the body.

It is the ultimate bread of life. By this I don't mean that it is the bread that is grabbed by the teeth every day to be digested. It is not with this latter bread alone that one lives.

So, haw was it that I left this religion not to say the party? Yes, the party was almost a religion with its rubrics, initiations, principles, rules, philosophy, and beliefs. It is easier to swear at an adamant member of the Syrian Social National Party (Hizb Al Qawmi Al Suri Al Ijtima'i] (SSNP hereafter), and his family then to ridicule any of his party's ideas or theories.

This is so because these ideas and theories are treated like God given rules that accept no discussion whatsoever, let alone being criticized.

My story dear reader is the story of tens of thousands of youth like me who opened their eyes on the negative reality of their fatherlands that had been bitten internally and externally by the sharp teeth of colonization.

The dictate of government is in the hands of the colonizers in Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Sophocles, Tatwan, Egypt, and the Sudan. Few collaborating Apes and monkeys have worn the robe of government and are ruling these nations.

This was even before the seeds that were planted by Balfour in Palestine, which mushroomed into Israel at the end.

Therefore, I was more than just a mere Arabian nationalist. I was one of those who believed that an Arabian Empire must be created. . In this sense, bilateral unifications such as unifying Lebanon to Syria was so logical that I did not allow my mind to discuss it even internally. Arab, Arabism, Nationalism, Freedom, and Empire were words that kept dinging in my ears while I was at home, on the street, on my student seat, and all anyplace else. This thinking was so intense that I thought I was a student of a Mawlawi Dervish Order whose students would internalize anything by swirling, dancing and repeating things indefinitely.