READ: The Making of Arab Americans: Chapter 2
The Making of Arab Americans
Bawardi, Hani J.
Published by University of Texas Press
Bawardi, Hani J.
The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014.
Project MUSE. Web. 8 Feb. 2015h. ttp://muse.jhu.edu/.
For additional information about this book
http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780292759930
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Chapter 2
The Syrian Nationalism of the Mahjar Press
The content of the Arabic-language press is beginning to attract some at- tention, however disjointed, by a few of scholars of Arab American history. This is no surprise given that the journalistic output is one of the only pri- mary sources outside a scattering of original records and letters of the first arrivals. This chapter presents translations from the early immigrant press in proper historical context to explain the political orientations of immi- grants. The Arabic-language press in the United States offers unambiguous and copious evidence of subtle strategies for achieving Syria’s complete in- dependence before World War I. Immigrant activists, especially Najīb Diāb of Mirāt al-Gharb, agreed with nationalists active in Cairo and Paris on the strategy of using the Ottoman Empire as a shield from European ambitions while working for independence. The conversations in various newspapers advanced differing perspectives such as rejecting participation in an Otto- man coalition, accepting residual Ottomanism, and attaining administra- tive autonomy. World War I ended talk of coalitions with the Turks, and prospects of European encroachment effected a pragmatic strategy by the Syrians of finessing a transitional period to autonomy, but only as a prelude to independence. The nationalists understood that an abrupt end to Otto- man rule would invite European domination.
The press played a pivotal role in introducing activists to each other in the 1910s, for example, Ameen Farah to the famous authors Mikhail Naimy and Nasib Arida and activists in New York such as Fuad Shatara and Habib Salloum to countrymen across the United States. The press faithfully pub- licized the activities of the United Syrian Society and other collectives; pro- moted publications by seminal Syrian literary figures who, like Gibran, lived in the New York area; and kept immigrants apprised on news from Geographic Syria.
Despite the abundant information in the surviving issues of the major newspapers and especially given the dearth of manuscripts and personal pa- pers of Syrian pioneers, translations for research purposes are scant. Effec- tive interlibrary loan services do not seem to alleviate a critical deficiency
in language fluency. The lack of specialized studies on the U.S. Arabic- language press, save for Henry Melki’s survey for his doctoral dissertation in 1972, obscures the press’s centrality to the political aspirations of the im- migrants and their literary pursuits. The sample I utilize in this chapter, a fraction of the available issues of Syrian newspapers in the United States, addresses immigrants’ awareness of and reaction to specific political devel- opments in Syria.
The immigrant press was an extension of the Arab cultural nahd. ah and its thrust toward self-awareness. Therefore, my examination begins with viewing the press as stimulating political action and establishing links be- tween U.S. nationalists and their comrades in Syria. The press I have read il- lustrates long-standing and basic agreement of the Maronite clerical hierar- chy with French interventionist policies. Na’ūm Mokarzel, editor and owner of the newspaper Al-Hoda, left an enduring impression that he represented a constituency with a defined political agenda. I found no evidence of wide- spread agreement with his views, only anecdotal commentary in the form of personal diatribes usually by Mokarzel himself.
Distance from Europe and the Middle East and relative inexperience in international affairs shielded the United States from intra-European fight- ing over Ottoman territories, but many Arabic-speaking immigrants no doubt wondered about the fate of their former homelands and expected the Ottoman Empire to collapse, with unforeseen results. The activists who at- tempted collective action were extremely committed and sought some role in the impending changes. Arabic-language newspapers and magazines performed double duty by serving the intellectual literary needs of immi- grants while also providing news of the old country. The main newspapers often featured writings by Ameen al-Rihani, Khalil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy, Nasib Arida, ‘Abdulmassīh Haddād, Amin al-Gharib, Elia Madey, William Catzeflis, and other well-known authors.
Rihani came to the United States at age twelve, in 1888, before many of the activists in this study were born. He introduced Voltairian critiques of religious zeal in his 1903 book, Al-Mu‘allafah al-thulathīya fi-al-mamlakah al-hayawanīyah (The trilateral treaty in the animal kingdom), which led to his excommunication by the Maronite Church. Rihani followed this book with dozens of reformist essays and short stories; the first Arab American novel in English, The Book of Khalid in 1911; and Al-Luzūmīyāt, transla- tions of the poetry of al-Ma’arri. His essays in Al-Rih. āniyāt (1910) estab- lished him as a writer and philosopher of note in Cairo and the diaspora. In the 1920s Rihani turned his attention to exploring Arab dynasties on the Arabian Peninsula in his two-volume Mulūk al-‘Arab (Kings of the Arabs,
published in English in 1930 as Around the Coasts of Arabia). His early writ- ings for Mirāt al-Gharb, Al-Muhājir, Al-Bayān, and Al-Hoda newspapers and later the English-language Asia magazine, among many others in both languages, added to his Americanist views and his skills as a speaker and made him an ideal choice to be a frequent guest of the Foreign Policy As- sociation, founded in 1918 to educate the public on U.S. international af- fairs, and to deliver a keynote address at the Arab National League gather- ing in New York in May 1937. Rihani advocated a universal love of country that was free of political prejudices and religious intolerance. With his pub- lic stature well established, he made himself available to give speeches and reveled in dealing with the media, but he remained aloof from the mundane organizational affairs of political collectives. Rihani was not the only im- portant writer with nationalist leanings. Literary analysis all too often fo- cuses on Gibran’s humanist genius, Naimy’s prose, and Arida’s poetry and overlooks the Syrian Arab political and nationalist aims they expressed. All of these literary giants received their elementary education in parts of Geo- graphic Syria as the Arab awakening unfolded.
Many eventually prominent Syrians obtained their education in one of the thirty-three schools Americans established by 1860, including the first all-girls school. By 1891 Muslim and Christian students enrolled in American-run missionary schools alone numbered 7,117.1 In 1865 American missionaries established the Evangelical Syrian College, which eventually became the American University of Beirut (AUB). Dozens of newspapers appeared in Syria beginning in Beirut and Damascus in the mid-1850s. In Jerusalem, a short distance south of Beirut, thirty-six Palestinian news- papers appeared between 1908 and 1928. In Beirut, many newspapers were attached to foreign missions aimed at proselytizing and were run by mis- sionaries who endeavored to use printing and Arabic to reach wider audi- ences among Syrians. By the late nineteenth century American missionary publications included Akhbār al-Injīl (News of the Bible), Kawkab al-subh. al-munīr (Shining morning star), and Al-Nashrah al-usbū‘īyah (The weekly bulletin), and Jesuits published Al-Bashīr (The good message). This type of educational support by various missionaries, especially Americans, en- abled one of the most influential figures in the annals of Arab literature, Butrus al-Bustāni, to publish Nafīr Sūrīya (Trumpet of Syria), an Arab anti- Ottoman newspaper.
A small number of Arabic-language newspapers in Syria and Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, targeted the Arab subjects of the em- pire and served as mouthpieces for the central government in Istanbul. Some papers catered to specific readerships; however, most newspapers,
including those published by Druze, addressed nationalist affairs of the larger Syrian community, while Southern Syrian (Palestinian) papers, ob- serving the affairs of Syria generally, expressed concern about the rise of Zionism and Jewish immigration. In Palestine, socialist-driven attention to workers’ conditions was advocated by Filast.īn (Palestine), published by ‘Īsa al-‘Īsa, and Lisān hāl al-‘ummāl fi Filast.īn (Reporter on the workers in Palestine), published by Ittihād al-‘ummāl (Workers Union).2 The Khalidi family library in Jerusalem houses bound issues of a wide range of publica- tions: Al-Jawā‘eb, established in Istanbul in 1860 by Syrian nationalist Ah- mad Fāris Shidyāq; Al-Jinān, edited by Butrus al-Bustāni in Beirut in 1870; Al-Muqtataf, founded in Cairo in 1877 by Faris Nimr; Al-Manār, edited by Rashīd Rida in Cairo in 1897; Al-Muqtabas, established in 1906 and edited by Muhammad Kurd Ali in Cairo; and Al-Mufīd, published in Beirut by ‘Abdulghani al-‘Uraisi.3
Palestinian papers that reached Syrian Palestinian immigrants in the United States include Al-Karmel, published in Haifa by Najib Nassar; Al- Quds, published in Jerusalem beginning in 1906 by Jurji Hananiya; and Filast.īn. Private libraries belonging to the Budairi family published books and other materials despite Jerusalem’s relatively small population then. When the political situation shifted after World War I due to British and French occupations, the Budairis issued Sūrīya al-Janūbīyah (Southern Syria), its name a sign of impending political changes and a reminder of the historic and cultural contiguity of Syria.4 Likewise, a passing glance at articles reprinted in Mirāt al-Gharb in 1911 through 1913 suggests a com- mon appeal among the major newspapers to all Syrians—Damascenes, Bei- rutis, and Jerusalemites, many of whom read news of each other’s economic developments, social affairs, and most significantly, political responses to Ottoman decay and to Ottoman Turkish propaganda. Economic and social reforms (islāh. āt, plural of islāh. ) remained a dominant topic in the news- papers, and their potential was reinforced by recounting ancient Arab glo- ries and Western scientific and intellectual feats. Syrian intellectuals, among them Rafīq al-‘Az. m and Rashīd Rida, recognized the value of appealing to the economically stable Syrian American audiences to hasten the reforms as part of a larger political agenda of seeking autonomy.
The reformers thus contributed regularly in the Arabic press in the United States, especially in 1912 and 1913 over the fate of the Ottoman Em- pire when it lost almost all of its European territories in the Balkan wars. Dissemination to the United States of newspapers published by Syrian exiles in Cairo was aided by British rule in Egypt beginning in 1882 but did not al- ways escape Sultan Abdulhamid’s paranoia during his reign (1876–1909).
When Turkish nationalists restored the constitution in 1908, overlapping the Ottoman sultanate, they too monitored correspondence and publica- tions, forcing closures and deletions of names, as the letters between Ameen Farah and his friends in Nazareth and France will illustrate.
In Part 4 of Tarīkh al-sah. afah al-‘arabīyah (History of the Arab press, the first installment of which appeared in 1913), Viscount Philippe de Tarazi provided a rare tally of all known Arabic-language newspapers and mag- azines worldwide through 1933, and a good number of them continued to publish for another fifty years.5 De Tarazi categorized the publications ac- cording to sectarian orientation, likely in order to differentiate Ottoman Turkish official newspapers and French-supported publications from na- tionalist ones. In his accounting, Muslim publishers issued 451 periodi- cals with either an Arab nationalist or Ottomanist current, compared with 412 publications by Christian nationalists or missionaries. However, one should not read too much into these contrasts based on religion or sect, as many “Christian” and “Muslim” papers expressed nearly identical Arab na- tionalist and sometimes anti-Ottoman sentiments, while many “Muslim” newspapers rejected Ottoman domination regardless of the Islamic factor.
Classifying newspapers according to their editors’ and publishers’ sec- tarian orientations is problematic in discussing the often-recalled divisions in New York. Revisiting this issue from the perspective of professed stances on Syria’s nationalist cause by each of the editors will reveal that most major editors and their newspapers agreed on maintaining Syria’s territorial integ- rity, with one exception, Al-Hoda. Circulation as a measure of acceptance of a newspaper’s orientation, too, is difficult to ascertain due to a lack of empir- ical information on the Syrian press in the first four decades of emigration from Syria. However, it is possible to piece together a coherent picture of the overall political attitudes of the papers’ readers by combining circulation figures during World War II with their political orientations. The figures are listed in declassified surveillance reports by the Foreign Nationalities Branch of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS).6 One highly accurate list of publications in the Americas and various parts of Syria and Egypt was supplied to Walter L. Wright Jr. of the OSS by professor Philip Hitti, who at the time was chairman of the Department of Oriental Languages at Prince- ton University. Hitti was the source of Wright’s report dated November 4, 1941, stating that the immigrant press in the United States reached audi- ences in the Middle East and South America and provided stories and anal- ysis on “items of interest” all over the world. He described both Mirāt al Gharb and Al-Sa‘eh as pan-Arab, As-Sameer as Syrian nationalist, and Al- Hoda as “opposed to the Pan-Arab Movement.”7
One year later another brief report accurately described the nationalist tendencies of each of the major publications based on a partial list of news- papers and magazines accompanied by the religious and sectarian affilia- tions of their editors. These were supplied to the OSS Foreign Nationali- ties Branch by Defense Service Section employee Habib J. Awad. The initial list includes editors’ names, addresses, and orientations. Salloum Mokarzel, who succeeded his brother Na’ūm as Al-Hoda’s editor, and J. G. Raphael, ed- itor of Al-Akhlāq, are listed as Maronites. The Orthodox editors and their papers in the report are Elia Madey, As-Sameer; ‘Abdulmassīh Haddād, Al- Sa‘eh; Nasib Arida, who succeeded Najīb Diāb, Mirāt al-Gharb; and Najib Badran, Al-Nisr. The report lists Ameen David, who succeeded Suleiman Baddūr in Al-Bayān, as Druze.8 A subsequent report adds the Detroit Al- Sabah without naming an editor and describes it as “nationalist.”9 The in- complete tally of editors alone puts the number of Orthodox and Druze with known nationalist sentiments at six compared to two Maronite news- papers, one of which, Al-Akhlāq, regularly published articles by Habib Sal- loum and Fuad Shatara when they publicly expressed nationalist views and therefore can hardly be considered antagonistic to the nationalist cause of Syria. The circulations according to the OSS reports ranged from 800 to 2,000, while Al-Hoda’s circulation may have been much larger, according to its owner. Al-Hoda published a variety of views outside of its editor’s known preference for Lebanese separation and opposition to Syrian nationalism; nationalist newspapers and editors outnumbered those edited by Maronites, although not all Maronites were antagonistic to Syrian nationalism. A sim- ple deduction dictates, then, that most Syrian immigrants who read news- papers and magazines were accepting of the publications’ nationalist tone and information.
Information in the OSS reports does not preclude almost universal loy- alty to and love for Lebanon, yet it does challenge the implication that po- litical support for separating Lebanon from Syria was popular or based on religious and sectarian affiliations. Na’ūm Mokarzel may well have champi- oned Lebanese separatism when the idea of a Syrian nation enjoyed consid- erable support. His divergence is different from disagreements over the visit by the Druze Syrian leader Shakib Arslan, who drew opposition by Maro- nites and Orthodox alike due to his consistent strategy of propping up Otto- manism as a shield from colonialist agendas longer than any of his compa- triots. Aside from that, the picture is far more complex than one of inherent animosity between two camps, one Maronite and one Orthodox, or even divisions over spiritual matters of marriage, communion, and ecumenical worship.
Admittedly, passions were stirred for a long time over ecclesiastics. For example, Al-Hoda published a directive by the Maronite patriarch Anton ‘Arīdah (aka Anton Butros) in Syria discouraging exogamy and mixing with non-Maronites or offering them communion, and it drew a response in Al-Nisr from the Orthodox archpriest and author Basil Kherbawi.10 How- ever, the issue of national affiliation was not confined to church as was reli- gion and therefore appears to have represented a wider source of immigrant identification. Syria’s cause attracted many Maronites alongside activists from other sects. His brother Salloum was more nuanced and open to in- teraction with others, while the often volatile Na’ūm Mokarzel maintained close associations with French officials, among them George Picot, an au- thor of the Sykes-Picot pact between France and England that ultimately di- vided Syria into several states,11 associations that deserve attention beyond the scope of the present study. Here, a background on the immigrant press is intended to explore the extent of agreement on the Syria idea beyond recy- cled claims of sectarianism.
The official publications that were either Ottoman (later Turkish) or foreign-backed through the start of World War I numbered fifty-one, and twelve of those, de Tarazi discloses, were “Israelite,” that is, Zionist and non-Zionist Hebrew newspapers supported by European coreligionists.12 These semicomplete accounts of Arabic-language periodicals are helpful in tracking some of the immigrants responsible for nationalist rhetoric in the Arabic-language press in the United States. De Tarazi listed Muham- mad Muhaisen, a childhood friend of Farah who wrote in Mirāt al-Gharb as early as 1914 and 1915, the editor of Al-Difā‘ al-‘Arabi, which was distrib- uted in Detroit beginning October 1, 1921.13 He listed the Druze ‘Abbas Abu Shaqra’s newspaper, Al-Burhān (The evidence), as starting on October 1,
1920.14 I have not yet found issues of either newspaper.
A 1913 study of Syrian immigrant communities across the United States at that time suggests that Syrians’ literary pursuits matched their procliv- ity for economic success from the beginnings of U.S. Syrian immigrant life. Basil Kherbawi performed the study for his Arabic-language book Tarīkh al-Wilāyāt al-Muttah. idah (History of the United States).15 Their economic stability in turn aided newspaper sales early in the Arab immigrant experi- ence. The first Arab immigrant newspaper in the United States was Kawkab Amreeka (Star of America), begun in 1892 and published in both Arabic and English by Ibrahim and Najīb ‘Arbili, Orthodox Christian brothers from Arbil, Syria. Ibrahim and Najīb were the sons of Yousef ‘Arbili, a learned physician and expert in classical Arabic texts and Islamic philosophy, as most educated Arabs often were. The nine ‘Arbili siblings and their parents
Figure .. Muhammad Mu- haisen, circa 1913. On the back of this portrait Muhaisen wrote this dedication to Farah: “Let my picture bear witness to our brotherhood, Ameen.” Farah Papers, Bawardi Collection.
are remembered by Arab American scholars as the first Syrians to immi- grate as a family, in 1878. Nearly nothing is known of their fate.
Najīb ‘Arbili likely took advantage of good relations between the United States and the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century—when Amer- ican Civil War veterans served as military trainers in Egypt and elsewhere in the empire—to obtain printing presses and Arabic typeset for the news- paper. The ‘Arbilis used their connections as former students of an Ameri- can missionary to overcome Sultan Abdulhamid’s prohibition against the export of Arabic type and printing equipment as a means of censorship.
Nonetheless, Kawkab Amreeka initially published glowing accounts of Ab- dulhamid due, I suspect, to the need for printing equipment and safe pas- sage to Syria if needed and in keeping with the good relations between the Ottoman and American governments. Kawkab Amreeka’s publishers de- fined its role as to “develop good relations and understanding between East and West,” defend Syrian immigrants facing discrimination and physical attacks, encourage Syrian immigration, foster commerce with the United States, and promote the Chicago World Expo in 1893.16 Shortly after the founding of Kawkab Amreeka, two more Arabic-language newspapers were established in the United States, Al-Hoda (Guidance) in 1892, published by Na’ūm Mokarzel in Philadelphia before the paper was moved to New York in 1902, and Mirāt al-Gharb in 1896, published in New York by Najīb Diāb, an Orthodox Christian and former apprentice of the ‘Arbilis. The uncom- promisingly critical tone of both papers regarding Ottoman decay may have been the publishers’ response to the conciliatory tone of Kawkab Amreeka toward the Ottomans. Nearly all Syrian Arab newspapers in the United States called for reforms; however, in his writings Na’ūm Mokarzel progres- sively championed separating Beirut and the surrounding area of Mount Lebanon from the rest of Syria, especially after the Ottoman Constitution was restored briefly in 1908. The Orthodox Najīb Diāb joined the Druze, Sunni, and Shi’a editors and contributors to newspapers in the United States and in Syria who consistently supported the eventual independence of all Syria under one Arab flag.
The immigrant press suffered strange bouts of exchanging insults, often between Na’ūm Mokarzel and other editors of all persuasions. Al-Hoda’s editor and publisher baffled his contemporaries by lashing out with venom and vigor against anyone who opposed him. The specific cause and timing behind Na’ūm Mokarzel’s belligerent attitude toward his peers, particularly his hostility about any mention of Syria and Syrians, is difficult to deter- mine without dedicated biographical research. Unfortunately, these dia- tribes became a basis for scholars to ignore otherwise ideologically balanced content in the Syrian press on a host of issues. Challenging the discrepancy is the first line of defense in this study against contemporary constructions of Lebanese exceptionalism based on a romanticized Phoenician past. I sur- mise, however, that Na’ūm Mokarzel’s sectarian prejudices were motivated by a political agenda. His diatribes drew reciprocal rhetoric from Diāb and others, and their exchanges hindered meaningful debates and collective ac- tion among the immigrants for a time. They did not go without eloquent and dignified rebuttals. Suffice it to mention for now that Na’ūm Mokarzel’s Al-Hoda professed to speak for Lebanon, although his provocative remarks
were unaccompanied by any perceptible political plan of action for indepen- dence, perhaps because he felt assured of French support.
The heated exchanges also invited belligerent responses in Mirāt al- Gharb. When news spread that the respected writer Amin al-Gharib, a member of the illustrious Pen Bond, intended to publish the newspaper Al- Muhājir (The immigrant) in New York in 1903, Syrian readers welcomed the news warmly because they were fed up with occasional epithets and per- sonal insults on the pages of newspapers large and small. Na’ūm Mokarzel did not share the overall sentiments of welcoming Al-Muhājir because of its nationalist tinge. Before establishing his own paper, al-Gharib made a name for himself as a level-headed and prolific writer in the pages of Al-Hoda and Al-Sakhra. In the first issue of Al-Muhājir published on July 25, 1903, its masthead reads, “a Syrian nationalist newspaper” issued every Saturday to “address the immigrants’ concerns” and strengthen connections between the homeland and the diaspora “without taking the side of any party or be- ing led by any agenda.”17
Al-Gharib, a Maronite who did not succumb to Na’ūm Mokarzel’s sec- tarian rants, urged other papers to “promote the Syrian cause and to el- evate the nationalist cause by putting an end to sectarian division.”18 Al- Muhājir contributed to arresting the slump in literary quality by featuring Gibran’s first works, including the celebrated “A Tear and a Smile” (in Ar- abic, Dam‘ah wa ibtisamah),19 and it helped exchange innovative prose and poems with the homeland along with other news. Despite Al-Muhājir’s ap- peal among Syrians, Mokarzel cast al-Gharib as one of three enemies of Al- Hoda, the other two being Mirāt al-Gharb and the nationalist Orthodox archpriest Rafael Hawawini.20 Hawawini established the Orthodox Archdi- ocese of North America and published and edited Al-Kalimah (The word; still in circulation), the Syrian Orthodox official magazine.21
Mokarzel’s behavior may not be a simple matter of cantankerous person- ality. His actions often appear to have been calculated. He lashed out against Syrian nationalists at pivotal times such as during the formation of various aid and later political collectives, which suggests that he actively wished to undermine their agendas. He launched verbal assaults as well when France implemented a policy of devising spheres of influence for itself and cultivat- ing allies to that end.22 Mokarzel’s vehement opposition to expressions of nationalism during this period corresponded with overtures Zionists made to the Maronites of Lebanon as the former sought to purchase land along the Litany River, delineating the borders between modern Lebanon and Pal- estine. Muhammad Zu’aitir draws connections between backing Maronite separatism and regional colonial ambitions (for example, British public in-
vitations to carve up the Middle East among European powers as early as 1907),23 and the French “Cambou declaration” on June 4, 1917, promised the establishment of a Jewish state five months before the British made a simi- lar declaration.24 These designs, Zu’aitir argued, cemented Maronite Zionist collaboration on the basis that establishment of a national home for the Jews would help Maronites achieve the same for Christians.25
When the disputes on the pages of newspapers peaked in 1906, Syrian in- tellectuals intervened by urging all to tone down the rhetoric. One exam- ple is a poem published that year in Mirāt al-Gharb by the widely respected medical doctor and writer Rizk Haddad titled “Tool al-Lisan” (Belligerent language). Between 1901 and 1910 it was Ameen Rihani, “the Voltaire of his time” and one of the diaspora’s ablest and most respected scholars,26 who challenged Na’ūm Mokarzel, his former editor and the husband of his sis- ter.27 In “Nahnu wa jara’eduna” (Us and our newspapers), a lengthy critique of the state of the Arabic-language press in a letter to a friend, Rihani faults both Al-Hoda and Mirāt al-Gharb for “useless attacks,” “denigrating women and men’s honor,” “deceitfulness,” “incendiary” and “malignant” diatribes, and the uncritical attitudes of their readers.28
In the letter to his friend about the state of the press Rihani recounts a re- port in the New York press on a street brawl among Syrians caused by dis- agreements over competing Syrian newspapers. He rejects Na’ūm Mokar- zel’s claim to be a dedicated Maronite Catholic when in fact he had “but a shadow of piety”; Rihani admonishes Mokarzel for being among the “guilty ones, whose guilt is multiplied by his command of the language, which he uses to plant the seeds of ignorance and superstition in the hearts of the simple ones,” presumably immigrants from the Lebanon area with modest education.29 Rihani was at a loss in reconciling Mokarzel’s literary prowess with a “filthy vocabulary” and “extreme zeal for Lebanon’s independence while denying others [nationalist Syrians] independence.”30
Rihani’s indignation in the face of Mokarzel’s threats of “crushing,” “pulverizing,” “smashing,” and “destroying” his opponents may have been caused by the political motivations behind Mokarzel’s diatribes; Mokarzel incessantly claimed that he represented Lebanese sovereignty and that Syr- ia’s independence was a threat to Lebanese separatism. Of course, hostil- ity toward those who did not subscribe to his opinion may have been his only course of action because nationalist activism in Beirut itself was ecu- menical. The secret Beirut Reform Society established in 1876, if that was the inspiration for Na’ūm Mokarzel’s Lebanese League of Progress, had a mixed membership of Orthodox, Maronites, and Muslims in that city and may have been the impetus for the anti-Ottoman Beirut Reform Society es-
tablished in the United States in 1911. Mokarzel, however, expended a great deal of effort to convince readers that he alone represented Lebanese in- dependence and made similar claims during the First Arab Conference in Paris, where he attempted to capitalize on the superior numbers of Maronite immigrants.
Lebanon’s separation became a tool for challenging Syria’s sovereignty within its natural boundaries. The Beirut Reform Society spearheaded ef- forts to rid the Lebanon of Turkish rule. It was founded by Faris Nimr, Ibrahim al-Hourani, and Jacoub Sarouf—all Orthodox Christians—and a Catholic, Ibrahim Yāziji, in addition to Shahin Macaris, whose sectar- ian orientation I have not been able to determine. All of these pioneering nationalists were graduates of the American Evangelical Syrian College.31 Overall, the religious strife between Druze and Maronites in the 1860s cre- ated animosity, but that episode of Syrian history, however painful, cannot be traced to disparate political ideologies, one Syrian and one Lebanese, in the lives of Syrian immigrants until French policies made this division im- possible to overlook. That occurred when Lebanon was separated from Syria by the French, who seized on Ottoman collapse and the Syrians’ weakness. Turkish nationalists led by the CUP dashed hopes of autonomy by sus- pending the 1908 constitution, and a chaotic period ensued through the first phase of Syrian immigration to the United States. The removal of Sultan Abdulhamid in 1909, coupled with news of reportedly countless hangings of Syrians by Turks during World War I, solidified Christian and Muslim re- solve to work together for independence. Hence, Na’ūm Mokarzel’s prefer- ence for statehood for Lebanon separate from the rest of Syria should be un-
derstood in the context of foreign intrigue, not domestic developments.
Acknowledging the exaggerated sectarian divisions at this point provides a context for Mokarzel’s renewed and intensified attacks in favor of French colonialism during the mandate period. Whether Zionist and French aims converged in Lebanon is beyond my focus, mainly because immigrants would soon turn their attention to the larger Arab cause and Zionist en- croachment in Palestine proper. The point here is that Mokarzel’s possible collusion with Zionists and certainly with French officialdom should not be mistaken for generic intra-Syrian sectarianism.32
Rihani, Gibran, and their circle of formidable friends, thanks to their rep- utations in the Syrian press in the diaspora and Cairo, rescued the Arabic- language press in the United States from infighting, helped transform it into a model for rehabilitating archaic classical style, and in the process became known as nationalist figures throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Their literati prowess drew responses from Beirut and Cairo to Gibran’s series of
articles under the title “A Tear and a Smile” in Al-Muhājir. The exchanges of insults were not without effect; they caused serious altercations during the first decade of the twentieth century that culminated in the death of a mem- ber of the Estefan family in which the Orthodox priest Rafael Hawawini and Na’ūm Mokarzel were implicated.33 This period marked the height of ani- mosity between the Maronite clergy’s mouthpiece Al-Hoda and the Ortho- dox Mirāt al-Gharb allied with Hawawini. Amin al-Gharib opposed Mo- karzel before distancing himself from the affair. The immigrant press was not stuck in this rut for long and provided a sophisticated medium for news, reports, and analysis of local and important distant events such as when the CUP suspended the constitution. However, more complex political develop- ments caused zealous individuals to continue to weed out mention of Syria and replace those with the term “Lebanese.”
Khalil Gibran’s book The Prophet is available in some forty languages and is one of the best-selling books of all time. Published in 1923, it became synonymous with Gibran’s esoteric and spiritual philosophy, which attracts seemingly endless discussion, much of it extolling Gibran’s pacifism. But his spiritual writing shows only one side of the Gibran who, according to his cousin and namesake, “could not conceal his nationalistic leanings, and he had committed himself to war long before 1914.”34 Tread “poetically with the Turkish government,” Gibran told his confidant Mary Haskell, advocat- ing a “general Allied attack.”35 John Daye’s book Lakom Jubrānakom wa li Jubrāni (You have your Gibran and I have mine, 2009) provides additional ammunition for assessing a Lebanonization of Gibran.
The point regarding Gibran’s nationalist sentiments was made in my dissertation by relying on one of the few studies on the Syrian press in the United States by aforementioned Henry Melki. In 1911, according to Melki’s Arabic-language study, Gibran was asked to address a gathering of Boston’s Al-Halaqāt al-Dhahabīyah (Golden circles). This is my translation of Gi- bran’s Arabic comments:
The hopes held by the delirious from the parliamentary government re- semble those by the patient’s kin when their patient revives before death claims him. The band called “Freemen” [the CUP], though capable of de- claring a constitution and removing Abdulhamid and running after re- forms, does not want to give up even a single link in the chains with which successive sultans led processions of Ottoman nations. All that the Turk’s ahrār [Freemen, the CUP] seek is establishing a constitutional government for themselves and absolute rule over the Arabs and all who speak Arabic.
You say what, then, can the Syrian do if you rob him of his hope of a reformed future in the lands of his birth and childhood? Does he become a naturalized citizen of the country to which he immigrated? Or does he seek help from foreign countries throwing his weakness [at the mercy of] European powers—the Druze clinging to England, the Orthodox [Chris- tians] to Russia, and the Maronite to the French—as our fathers did?
He who empties his heart from the illusions and false dreams of the Ottoman state only to fill it with the promises and ambitions of the for- eign states resembles one who runs from fire to hell. The Syrian only has self-reliance and his talents, intelligence and excellence to rely on.
The money earned by a solitary peddler is money earned by all Syri- ans. Every word a pupil learns in the American schools is a word learned by all Syrians. . . . Free your children from the slavery of [abhorrent old] traditions and old customs, and they will remain free even in chains and jails.36
A copy of this address can be found in the Jafet Memorial Library at the American University of Beirut. It was republished in Mirāt al-Gharb on March 3, 1911, and in Al-Barq in Beirut some weeks later as it appears above. Melki published an altered version of the address that can be found in the Jafet Memorial Library in the January 31, 1982, issue of Al-Anwar magazine in Beirut.37 Daye’s study lists eleven examples of “Syria,” “Syrians,” or both being changed to “Lebanon” and “Lebanese” or omitted altogether in the 1982 version published in Al-Anwar. The result is that Gibran’s commitment to the Syrian cause is turned on its head, suggesting that he was committed to Lebanon’s cause of separation from Syria. The alterations, although un- der a different social climate in Lebanon, create the impression that being a Maronite automatically means favoring Lebanese separation from Syria. An extensive though not exhaustive survey of the Arabic-language press does not suggest intractable animosity between the Maronite Gibran and the Or- thodox ‘Abdulmassīh Haddād or that writers or editors were split into two distinct camps along a sectarian divide. Gibran’s work appeared in Al-Sa‘eh magazine and in Al-Funūn, which was funded by an Orthodox Christian and co-edited by Naimy. When Na’ūm Mokarzel and Najīb Diāb traveled to Paris for the Arab Conference in 1913, Gibran deeply regretted not at- tending as well with his friend Najīb Diāb, who represented the “emigrant Lebanese.”38 Any hesitation on Gibran’s part to aid countrymen ravaged by World War I due to his pacifist views vanished, and he “actively solicit[ed] funds for his beleaguered country,”39 encouraged, perhaps, by Rihani.
Post–World War I intra-European territorial compromises forced the
Palestinians to make some references to “Southern Syria” and even to found a newspaper carrying the same name, Sūrīya al-Janūbīyah. However, polit- ical coverage by Syrian newspapers in the diaspora made little distinction in various provinces and districts in Syria. Intellectuals like Mikhail Naimy shared Gibran’s attitude, although Naimy was more interested in literature than politics. In 1915, two years before the British issued the Balfour Decla- ration granting “a national home” in Palestine for Jews, Naimy astutely ob- served that Palestine was vulnerable to mass Jewish immigration and Brit- ish colonialism. Considering land acquisition by European Jews in northern Palestine while he was studying at the Muscovite seminary in Nazareth, Naimy wrote:
In whose brain did this idea [of settling Jews in Palestine] sprout and grow before it traveled like lightning from one end of the globe to the other? I don’t know or care. This war filled the land with prophets and dream readers, but the prophet of the Israelites’ independence and return to their ancestors’ land found millions of followers among the Hebrews who are moved by religious feelings and others who are moved by politi- cal and economic benefits.
It is Christianity’s misfortune that you can find thousands who deny His [Christ’s] teachings . . . [who] told them that he came to pour new wine in a new goblet. Instead they see in the Torah only the dead letter and attributing every event that happened to a prophecy by Ezekiel and his fellow travelers.
Russia makes promises to the Jew of helping him attain this end not because he is liked but to be rid of him. England has a political aim out- lined in the press numerous times: to keep Palestine, which is close to its colonies in Asia and Africa, under its control by giving a people indepen- dence in name only.
Did the strong in this world agree on how to manage the politics of this world? So have we and our press learned and heard. And thus we and our press remain silent. . . . We are deaf and mute as if this matter does not concern us, as if Palestine is part of Mongol lands or one of the Phil- ippine islands.40
Despite scholars’ tendency to attribute sectarian affiliations to the vari- ous newspapers, their services overlapped to benefit all Syrian readers. Al- Bayān, described as a Druze newspaper, was instrumental in publicizing among Syrian immigrants the need for aid relief during World War I when starvation was the primary concern in Syria; Mirāt al-Gharb and Al-Hoda did so as well. Subtle differences among the newspapers existed, though,
such as the uncompromisingly nationalist stance of Jurāb-ul-Kurdi edi- tor and publisher Anton Anastasias Zraick in paying no attention to Euro- pean trepidations toward Arab independence and arbitrarily proclaiming alliances and economic policies. In contrast, Mirāt al-Gharb recognized the dangers inherent in political uncertainty and left the door open, however slightly, for using remnants of Ottomanism against the Europeans if need be. Al-Hoda led a repudiation of Syrian nationalism and offered instead un- wavering support for France’s colonialist policies of carving out the Mount Lebanon area.
A survey of newspapers and their leanings provides irrefutable evidence that sectarianism was checked by much larger concerns, such as the ap- proaching war and the future of Syrians’ relationship with their homeland. Immigrant activists understood that they were in a position to respond to events in their places of origin and that their responses would inform their standing in their adopted country. These considerations and not being at odds with U.S. interests went into the decision some made to launch formal political collectives with nationalist agendas. The impact of World War I is important to understand but not as the watershed some claim it represented in immigrants’ lives. The war itself did not end immigrants’ feelings of con- nectedness to Syria because Syria did not disappear and the national cause gained some steam after Ottomanism and Turkism were no longer factors of consequence. Rather, immigrants saw an opportunity of a peace div- idend encouraged, albeit prematurely, in Woodrow Wilson’s ideas of self- determination, on the victors’ terms, especially since the U.S. role in the war was viewed as benign and noncolonialist.
The positions of Druze and Muslim editors did not differ from those of most non-Muslims on social and political affairs overall. Established in New York City in 1911 by Suleiman Baddūr and ‘Abbas Abu Shaqra—both Syrian Druze—the newspaper Al-Bayān counts among the pioneer Arabic- language newspapers. In its very first issue the editors declared that they aimed to “serve the national cause and literature to the best of our abil- ity.” By the end of World War I, Al-Bayān editors did not consider its na- tionalist orientation an impediment to professing allegiance to the United States: “No protection is left for us save that which the United States can of- fer.”41 The nationalist fervor of Al-Bayān became apparent during the Syr- ian Druze revolt against the French in 1925, and it found ample support from all other newspapers save Al-Hoda. Another New York newspaper that combined literary works with political analysis was Al-Sa‘eh (The traveler), first published in 1912 by ‘Abdulmassīh Haddād, a member of the famed Pen Bond, al-Rābitah al-Qalamīyah. During a year at the Russian Ortho-
dox seminary in Nazareth he met two other would-be members of the Pen Bond, Mikhail Naimy and Nasib Arida. ‘Abdulmassīh Haddād’s prosperous brother then lured him to the United States in 1907.
Despite resolving to avoid episodes of exchanging insults, the editors and contributors at Al-Sa‘eh soon found the periodical pulled into unseemly polemical exchanges with Al-Hoda simply because they, like most of their counterparts, opposed Mokarzel and favored Syrian independence. Being an Orthodox Christian was sufficient to be on the opposite side of the fence from the mouthpiece of the Maronite clergy, Al-Hoda. Covering the First Arab Conference, in Paris in 1913, Al-Sa‘eh editorials urged Syrians to seek independence under such headlines as these: “The Syrians’ National Zeal,” “Syria Demands Her Rights,” “What Would Syria Need in Order to Achieve Independence?” “Syria and Reforms,” “Syria for the Syrians,” and “When Will the Muslim and the Christian Become Brothers?” Ameen Rihani, a Maronite, came under attack by Al-Hoda during a spike in mass efforts to collect aid for Syrians at the close of the Great War, and the Greek Orthodox ‘Abdulmassīh Haddād of Al-Sa‘eh defended him.
In addition to newspapers, early immigrants also published magazines, most of which were political in nature. Nasib Arida, whom ‘Abdulmassīh Haddād and Naimy met at the Russian Orthodox seminary in Nazareth, intermittently issued Al-Funūn (The arts) in New York between 1913 and 1918. Arida had come to the United States in 1905 and worked in retail while writing for Al-Hoda and Mirāt al-Gharb. In his writings Arida often expressed his pain over the generally decaying climate in Syria and repres- sion under Turkish rule. In this poem he expresses his frustration over his countrymen’s lack of action:
No, by my God a heartless people receive only death as a gift. Let history turn a page of failure and settle its accounts.
Perhaps rage, perhaps shame, perhaps fire may move the heart of a coward.
All these are in us, but all they move is the tongue.42
Al-Funūn is still considered one of the most influential magazines in Arab literary history despite its constant financial troubles during its short life. The magazine’s nationalism accounted for much of its influence. In June 1918 its inside front cover featured an image of a “New Arab Flag” above a line of poetry by fourteenth-century Iraqi poet Safi al-Dīn al-Hilli that im- mortalized its colors, along with a list of the names of luminaries hanged by the CUP. Al-Funūn published writings by most of the period’s literary gi- ants before they were identified as members of the Pen Bond in 1920.
The first English-only magazine published by a Syrian immigrant was The Syrian World. Founded in New York City by Salloum Mokarzel, Na’ūm’s brother, the publication lasted from 1926 to the mid-1930s. Salloum took over publication of Al-Hoda when Na’ūm died in 1932. Unlike his brother Na’ūm, Salloum was considered a gentle person. He intended the magazine to help New York’s Syrian parents in rearing their U.S.-born children, in- stilling in them “self-respect, and educating them on [their] honorable lin- eage and the glories of their nation.”43 Young people’s alienation from their parents drew the attention of Khalil Gibran, who wrote this much-quoted message to Syrian American youths on the pages of The Syrian World:
I believe in you.
I believe in your destiny.
I believe that you are contributors to this new civilization. . . .
I believe that you can say to Emerson and Whitman and James, “In my veins runs the blood of the poets and wise men of old,
and it is my desire to come to you and receive, but I shall not come with empty hands.”44
The importance of The Syrian World is twofold. First, it is a ready re- source for non-Arabic-speaking researchers. Second, it featured writings by the nationalist H. abīb Ibrahīm Kātibah, who was born in Yabrud in Syria in 1892, the same year Kawkab Amreeka was first published. Salloum grad- uated from the American University in Beirut in 1912 and from the Har- vard School of Theology in 1918. He championed the Palestinian cause at the early signs of Zionist settlement in 1916 and had a great deal to offer The Syrian World because he worked as a correspondent for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the Detroit News, and Al-Ahram in Cairo. Salloum assumed the di- rectorship of the Arab National League in 1936 and worked as the secre- tary of the Institute of Arab American Affairs from 1945 until his death in 1951; during those years Salloum’s political arguments against Zionism ap- peared frequently in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. It is not clear if his regular contributions to The Syrian World, along with those by Philip Hitti, signaled a new pathway in the political lives of Syrian immigrants; this topic demands separate investigation. During the life of The Syrian World, compatriots Fuad Shatara and Khalil Totah would join Salloum on the pages of the magazine. Together they would continue building their constituency among Syrian Americans through the pages of the Syrian press before directing their focus toward the American populace, thus marking a shift in immigrant political activism.
Syrian intellectuals living in Egypt left an important imprint on the Syr-
ian press both in Egypt and the United States. Syrian immigrant nationalist writer Farah Anton was among the first to embody Western modernism and apply it uncompromisingly in his calls for a strictly secular and free Syria and to develop a discourse on the compatibility of Arab culture and secular- ism. Anton’s philosophical beliefs underpinned the modernist national as- pirations of many of the early immigrants in this study, especially Ameen Farah, a prominent figure in the organized political activities in southeastern Michigan between 1915 and 1939. One of the many who escaped the reach of Sultan Abdulhamid in Syria to British-occupied Egypt in 1897, Farah An- ton advanced his criticism of religious intolerance by both Christians and Muslims from Cairo. He chose the name Al-Jami‘ah al-‘Uthmānīyah (Ot- toman college) for his magazine, in which he launched one of the most en- during transnational arguments for unifying and elevating “the Orient” through translating and explicating Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus, a book that accompanied many Syrians to the Americas and elsewhere. Anton brought his readers the modernist socialism of Friedrich Nietzsche and Leo Tolstoy as well. Anton was seduced by Enlightenment-laden definitions of the na- tion and by a humanist interpretation of religion. As a Syrian nationalist in Egypt he was at odds with Egyptians who wanted to preserve a semblance of Ottomanism as a response to British oppression and military occupation. The source of his intellectual disagreement with Egyptian nationalists was his view of the British as the lesser of two evils when compared to the Otto- mans. In 1906 he left Cairo for New York, taking with him the skills at po- litical maneuvering he had acquired in the Western-dominated Middle East. Anton Anastasias Zraick, an Orthodox Christian from Tripoli, published and edited the newspaper Jurāb-ul-Kurdi beginning on May 2, 1902. The innocuous description below the title of Jurāb-ul-Kurdi categorizes it as a “political, literary, entertaining, critical, independent daily newspaper” with the address of 74 Greenwich, New York City. On its pages, Zraick was one of the most ardent critics of the Ottomans, and his attacks only intensified after the CUP took charge in 1908 and banned his paper from Arab pop- ulation centers in Syria. Zraick rejected finessing a political path that left the door open for anything but complete independence and an end to Ot- toman Turkish rule in any form over Arabs. He did so amid cross-currents of unionism (ittih. ādīyah) with the Turks as advocated by the CUP and co- alitionism (i‘tilāfīyah), the main idea behind decentralization, and certainly he rejected Ottomanism in any context. While on a visit to his hometown in 1914 he paid with his life for his nationalist philosophy, which actually en- capsulated what Diāb, Baddūr, and other advocates of Syrian independence
ultimately wanted. Zraick, his brother, and numerous anti-Turkish Syrians were arrested, tortured, and executed by Turks.45
Examining small newspapers and magazines of the time makes it pos- sible to identify many other nationalists, several of whom became closely connected to the political organizations that developed within Syrian im- migrant communities in the United States. Among them were editors and publishers Nasif Damous of Al-Islah (The reform), New York, 1898; Jouseph (Yusef) Nu’man Malouf of Al-Ayyām (The days), New York, 1897; Salim Sar- kis of Al-Rāwi (The narrator), New York, 1902, and Al-Bustān (The garden), Boston, 1903; Maroun Khalil al-Khouri and Philip Faris of Al-Jihād (The struggle), New York, 1904; Shukri Bakhkhash of Al-Fatāt (The youth), New York, 1917; Naseem Khouri of Sūrīya al-Jadīdah (New Syria), Boston, 1910; and Naseeb Amer Wahbeh of Al-Hurīyah (Liberty), 1921, and the maga- zines Sāhat Ali (Ali’s arena), 1913, and Al-Hurīyah, 1920, respectively, all in Detroit.
Neither the chaos of 1909 when the Turkish CUP deposed Sultan Ab- dulhamid and suspended the constitution nor infighting among editors de- tracted from the gravity of the Balkan wars. Immigrants began to echo the same fears in their newspapers as expressed by Farah and his friends in their correspondences to and from Cairo, France, and Nazareth that Europeans were poised to pounce on the “sick” Ottoman state. The urgency of events propelled inquiry by activist editors and other U.S. Syrians into democratic precepts and self-rule in an Arab state in Syria. Anti-Ottoman, anti-Turkish secret societies devised a measured strategy of reforming the Ottoman state as a prelude to independence. Their strategy centered on delicately discour- aging European domination by using Ottomanism as an umbrella under which plans for complete independence were drawn. Events and newspaper coverage of 1911–1913, examined briefly in the remainder of this chapter, help explain the assertive Arab nationalism of the Free Syria Society and the New Syria Party despite only limited successes.
Events in Europe unfolded in a manner that signaled ominous escalation that seemed increasingly likely to engulf the Ottoman Empire. Like Arabs, the Albanians, Bulgarians, and Greeks sought to wrest free from Turkish control, encouraged by the Young Turk revolution and the restoration of the Ottoman Constitution of 1908. While the dominant European powers ma- neuvered to extend their control across the Arab Middle East, Italy occupied Libya in 1911, alarming Syrians about territorial dismemberment of Geo- graphic Syria under a similar occupation. When the Balkan nations banded together in an attempt to purge the Turks, France and Austria-Hungary be-
came wary of Russian influence as the guardians of the Orthodox in the Balkans and tried to avert war with Russia. In the Second Balkan War, in 1913, Romania joined the Turks and both lost to Serbia, which became a re- gional power. The turn of events reaffirmed Austrian fears of Russian ex- pansion, this time through alliance with Serbia. The die was cast, and astute Syrians anticipated the entry of France and Britain into the melee to defend routes to their rich colonies in the Far East. Many Syrians were inspired to heed the Balkans’ example of banding together against the Ottomans.
In the December 1912 issue of Al-‘Ālam al-Jadid al-Nisā‘i (The new world for women), an early magazine especially for Syrian women, editor Afifa Karam likened the heroism of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian “hero of free- dom,” to the anti-Turkish heroism of the people of the Balkans.46 Karam’s account was sandwiched between articles extolling the virtues of U.S. First Lady Ellen Wilson and of the renowned Native American Pocahontas. While tension and military losses piled up, the Turks used all their resourcefulness to muster a fighting force and quell dissent. They employed conscription and spying and invoked their historical status as guardians of Islam’s sacred places in Mecca and Medina and the seat of Shaikh al-Islam, the highest au- thority on Islamic jurisprudence. The Turkish officers’ revolt and constitu- tional reforms over the course of 1908 and 1909 expanded conscription to non-Muslims, who experienced harsh conditions, especially when the Bal- kan wars escalated. Official Ottoman newspapers spread propaganda, called for jihād (struggle), and published one-sided and often inflammatory news of atrocities against hapless Muslims by their Russian-backed Orthodox Serb enemies. The tactics did little to sway the Syrian populations either in Syria or in the United States regardless of religion. They did, however, fuel the anti-Muslim rhetoric in Al-Hoda.
A call to arms in the Balkans was issued in the name of Sultan Mehmet V, a Shaikh al-Islam puppet who replaced Abdulhamid. Jurāb-ul-Kurdi editor Anastasias Zraick mocked the call to join the “bloodbath” as a ploy by the CUP; a translation of his article title is “The Muslim Caliph Calls for War. Then on to War.” Zraick wrote, “If all quarters obeyed [Ottoman authority in the name of Islam], Syria will not obey, nor will all the Arab provinces [that] will not stoop to the level of wild animals. If they [Arabs and Syrians] fight, they will fight in the cause of humanity . . . yes, they will unite with Christians to break the chains of slavery and Turkish oppressive control.”47 In the same article Zraick criticized attempts at inciting sectarian divi- sion among Ottoman subjects as a means of mobilizing the masses against the predominantly Christian Balkans, labeling the provocation as a cam-
paign to avenge Ottoman losses to the “Christian nations” there. The latter, wrote Zraick, “lost their property in battle and regained them with the edge of the sword.” The implications of Zraick’s response are far-reaching. The rebuke of Turkish posturing in the name of Islam would not have been pos- sible had the traditional loyalty to the Muslim Ottoman Turks among the masses not eroded to reveal an ecumenical Arab ethos. Its appearance here is further indication that immigrant readers in the United States agreed that Arabism, Islam, and Christianity were not mutually exclusive. Zraick’s rhetoric supports the Arab nationalist analysis by historians George Anto- nius and Zeine Zeine that after a period of religious strife due to the erosion of civil laws and effects of the millet system, Turkism quickly began to lose hold on the Arab provinces. From the safety of Greenwich, New York, Arab Christian Zraick addressed his remarks to Muslim readers, telling them Turks “slaughter the children, violate the girls, burn the elderly and hand- icapped by setting their houses on fire. They pillage the churches and de- stroy them.”48
On the pages of Jurāb-ul-Kurdi Zraick reported accurate translations of the latest agreements signed by the CUP, among them the concession of Sa- lonica to Greece and similar concessions to the Serbs and Bulgarians.49 Un- der the calculatedly facetious subtitle “Rejoice! Reforms after These Pre- ludes: Religious Decrees Chain Down Reforms,” Zraick mocked any chance of a coalition with the Turks:
We argued that reform [under Turkish rule] is a mirage, a dream. And we argued that its benefits will not extend beyond the circle of the Turkish race. . . . Months have passed and now the dreams came crashing down. Did we not say that the victory of the Unionists [the CUP] will finish these hopes? Overnight, telegrams came from the capital warning gov- ernors, notables, and newspapers not to say anything that would “scratch the ear.” Now the press is caught between two fires, the fury of public opinion if it obeys the orders of silence and the sword of vengeance if it practices its freedom.50
Zraick went on to list newspapers closed by the CUP, among them Al- Mufīd for reporting that dysentery spread in frontier towns and Al-Thabat for publishing posthumously an address by anti-CUP officer Nathem Pa- sha that had previously appeared in another publication, Lisān al-Hāl.51 He published the article in November 1912, and the situation in Syria be- came even more dangerous when war broke out. Zraick was killed when he visited family in Syria in 1914. His and others’ deaths and the need for se-
crecy, like Farah’s carefully removing names from letters, suggest that the CUP monitored Syrians and their press in the United States through spies in New York.
In this volatile political situation, with the Ottoman Turks suffering mas- sive territorial losses and Europe awaiting an opportunity to expand into Turkish territory, Syrian nationalists in the relative safety of Cairo stepped in. In May 1913 Jurāb-ul-Kurdi published a series of articles by the head of the Ottoman Administrative Decentralization Party, Rafīq al-‘Az. m, a Syr- ian nationalist leader living in Cairo. In the series ‘Az. m explained constitu- tional government and decentralization. He likened the state to a “compas- sionate father” and the subject to a “good son: the former is nurturing and the later obedient.”52 ‘Az. m methodically laid out the events behind the Syr- ian quest for autonomy but appealed to the masses in Syria by presenting an alternative and virtuous rendition of Ottomanism. This strategy, largely misunderstood as Ottomanist loyalty if noted at all, followed the fine line of seeking autonomy within a reformed umbrella state without raising the ire of Europeans.
The cornerstone of this disposition by ‘Az. m and his compatriots across continents was the keen awareness that the Ottoman Empire histori- cally served as a buffer to keep Europe’s powers and Russia off each other’s throats. ‘Az. m defended decentralization against critics who were bought with titles by the CUP or who succumbed to jealousy. He criticized the CUP’s New Provinces Law, which employed “racial origin as a weapon [with which] to kill any semblance of national life.”53 Syrians’ astute reading of geopolitical affairs motivated the nationalists to find a delicate balance be- cause of the powder keg Europe had become. But that was not the only om- inous sign of conflict. On May 1, 1913, an editorial in Jurāb-ul-Kurdi titled “Will the War Take Place?” illustrated Syrians’ anxieties over U.S.-Japanese relations surrounding the California Alien Land Law enacted that year that prohibited land ownership by Asians. The interest in Japan was due to the victory scored by the small Japanese state against the Russian giant in 1905, although the article exhibited no sympathy for Japan over the United States. The implication was that if Japan could defeat the Russians, then Syrians, Serbians, and others could repel the Ottomans or, for that matter, the ap- proaching European threat.
In the third part of ‘Az. m’s explication of the Syrian nationalist strategy he implied that Ottomanism, a nonbinding federation with the Ottoman state, could be replaced with open confrontation if the CUP—and those who either held hopes of combining forces with the CUP or were bribed by its agents—did not make good on promises of constitutionalism. Note-
worthy is that ‘Az. m may have intended his political commentary in the U.S. Syrian press to convey uniform respect for American democratic ideals among the immigrants. He also surely knew that writings in the New York press could bypass Turkish censors so news could reach the Syrian prov- inces,54 in part because foreign mail services from the United States were not subject to censorship by the Turks. Similarly, articles in Cairo news- papers Al-Muqattam and Al-Manār may have been intended for the Syrian diaspora because they were reprinted by the largest immigrant newspapers, Al-Hoda and Mirāt al-Gharb. ‘Az. m regularly rebuffed his critics, usually cronies of the CUP, who warned against criticizing the Ottoman state dur- ing such turbulent times. Still, the gravity of a possible collapse of the Otto- man Empire was an overwhelming concern given the weak position of the Arab provinces. ‘Az. m wrote: “We made clear to all that time is of the es- sence. Our country was the first to be proposed aloud for partition,” a refer- ence to statements by European pundits.55 The third part of ‘Az. m’s analysis in the Syrian press offers a carefully crafted argument of Arab worthiness of sovereignty as a replacement to Ottomanism without overplaying his hand and alienating those with residual loyalty to the seat of the caliph in Istan- bul or powerful Europeans, hence the Ottomanist disposition.56
Al-Hoda and Mirāt al-Gharb, too, covered events of the Balkan wars; ex- pectations of war with Japan, which Japan would surely lose, according to both papers; U.S. policy in the Philippines; and the Ottoman Reparations Treaty, one of the many economic concessions dictated by European pow- ers to the Ottomans. The newspapers’ opposition to the Ottoman Turks had a subtle difference from each other: Mirāt al-Gharb took a clear stance be- hind ‘Az. m’s strategy and that of the Ottoman Administrative Decentraliza- tion Party of achieving independence in stages, while Al-Hoda was satis- fied with diatribes against the Turks without a clear political agenda beyond Lebanese independence under French guidance. Mirāt al-Gharb dedicated more columns to a variety of news than did Jurāb-ul-Kurdi with its detailed political analysis.
Before the war Mirāt al-Gharb covered news of Iraq, Palestine, and seem- ingly mundane events from Arab parts of the empire. The newspaper’s ar- ticles reported that Cairo newspapers circulated in Syria under the noses of the Turks. Under the headline “Palestine: A Description of Current Affairs. Jaffa. Bethlehem. Jerusalem,” a correspondent reported that people circum- vented the Turkish CUP’s ban of Al-Muqattam by asking the French postal service, which was not subject to Ottoman scrutiny, to obtain it. Other news items in the same article were the founding of a sports club in Jaffa as a way to skirt a ban on assembly and “jubilation” and support for the Syrian na-
tionalist Shukri al-‘Asali for refusing the CUP’s offer of governorship of the Latakia province in Syria. Such offers of positions were a common tactic the Turks used to silence criticism. Readers could learn about condemnation of the Turks by the people of Jaffa for assaulting an Armenian soldier who was beaten and taken to Jerusalem for trial.57
Mirāt al-Gharb kept close watch on papers serving as mouthpieces for the CUP. It published a letter by Rafīq al-‘Az. m, a Muslim, in which he chal- lenged Al-Haqq Ya‘lu, one of the CUP’s official Arabic-language newspapers, for calling on the population to slaughter Christians to avenge atrocities at- tributed to Christians in the Balkans. ‘Az. m noted that official newspapers received protection from Istanbul, while most independent dailies were cen- sored and their owners jailed and even executed.58 Several newspapers, in- cluding Al-Hoda, covered the political assassination of Shawkat Pasha, the Arab Ottoman army officer who was instrumental in ousting Abdulhamid on behalf of the CUP, for which he was criticized by Zraick. Only this time, the press reclaimed Shawkat as a brave Arab Iraqi soldier despite his service in the Ottoman army.59
The political urgency expressed in most papers was not always shared in Al-Hoda, whose owner felt assured of French support for Lebanon’s separa- tion and therefore reacted to a different political reality. Nevertheless, Al- Hoda was not completely indifferent to the fluid political situation after the wars in the Balkans or to readers’ apparent interest in what Cairo Syrians had to say about the future. Al-Hoda called for islāh. , reforms, in Beirut and incessantly reported on the affairs of the Lebanese Renaissance Society. But news of the United Syrian Society, which seemed to enjoy the widest appeal to a diverse segment of the U.S. Syrian population at the time, was far more frequent in Mirāt al-Gharb because of the ecumenical society’s nationalist leanings. Mirāt al-Gharb also sought to emphasize Muslim-Christian rec- onciliation, reminding its readership that reforms hinged on unity.
As a call to unity, Mirāt al-Gharb noted “two important leaps forward” taken by Syrians: “One is closing the ranks among Muslims and Christians after the Muslims realized that the Christians reject foreign [European] rule. The second is that all lost confidence in the rule of the Turks.”60 The ar- ticle’s plea summarized the grievances of the nationalist political leadership in Cairo, which sought to preserve the Ottoman state in name while using the Arabic language in public life and closely watched the ever-looming Eu- ropean encroachment. But the article also appealed to Ottoman Turks to draw lessons from their mistakes before all was lost to European colonial- ism: “Can you not see the wolf waiting to pounce on this sheep [Syria] in the same manner he kidnapped your previous [Balkan] flock?”61
‘Az. m’s reformist agenda and masked calls for independence from the Turks by calling for autonomy drew attention to the dire consequences of the Ottoman Reparations Treaty. In the treaty, Germany secured railroad concessions in Anatolia in exchange for surrendering similar contracts in Kuwait to the British, the French touted their interest in Syria, and Russia threatened the Ottoman state over the Armenian problem. All, ‘Az. m ex- plained, are “ominous omens” of expanding conflicts that “foretell of im- pending calamity” for the weak Syrians.62
Given immigrants’ anxieties about the future, nationalists among them felt a need to act. Their strategy of extracting independence from the Ot- tomans in stages was complemented by nuanced efforts to relate their de- sire for independence to Europe. After all, many Arab nationalists were educated in the West, and articles by leading intellectuals and editors like Muhammad Kurd Ali, editor of Al-Ra‘id and Al-Muqtabas, were laden with news of science and technological inventions. But the Arab national- ists across the Americas, Europe, Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere understood that their keen desires for progress alone would not lessen European appe- tite for expansion, given Europe’s colonialist track record of gaining coerced capitulatory agreements like ownership of the Suez Canal in Egypt by Brit- ish and French investors. The added worry of rising tensions in the Balkans among Europe’s big players convinced Arab nationalists that it was time to pitch their case for independence forcefully. This is the background for their plans for making their aspirations clear in what became known as the First Arab Conference in Paris, in 1913.
The invitation to American Syrians to attend the planned conference in Paris was extended by Najīb Diāb, editor of Mirāt al-Gharb. He worked closely with ‘Az. m, who in turn coordinated with Syrian nationalists in France. Diāb’s relationship with ‘Az. m was a natural outgrowth of several factors, not the least of which was the high value ‘Az. m and the Decentral- ization Party placed on the “science of organized efforts.”63 Another factor was the rigorous practice of reprinting literary and political commentary by and in the Cairo, Beirut, and U.S. Syrian press. He announced the con- ference in Mirāt al-Gharb on May 5, 1913, appealing to the widest audience possible under the title “Da’wa ila abna’ al-ummah al-arabiya” (An invita- tion to the children of the Arab nation). Diāb’s invitation on the pages of his newspaper explained the reasons for the conference. Among the reasons he listed “three problems in Turkey”: “The Ottomans’ debt to Europe, which can be solved only by an infusion of money in exchange for contracts to build railroads and irrigation projects; the ‘Arabic problem,’ and the ‘Arme- nian problem.’” The convergence on Paris of Syrian nationalists from sev-
eral continents for the conference would mark a defining moment for Syrian nationalism and for immigrants’ potential as lobbyists. The call itself is in- dicative of immigrants’ grasp of impending changes and awareness of their value in an attempt to influence the course of events. Conference attend- ees may have perceived themselves as emissaries of progress on a mission to bring the promise of sovereignty and long-sought reforms to Syria.