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The Syrian Christians and Early Socialism in the Arab World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
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Few of the Egyptian schoolboys who now memorize the principles of Arab socialism have heard of Farah Antûn, Shiblî Shumayyil, or Niqûlâ Haddâd. Yet in the opening decades of the twentieth century this trio of Syrian Christians living in Egypt — along with the Coptic intellectual Salâmah Mûsâ — were among the foremost advocates of socialism in the Arab world. What was the connection between these Christian pioneers and the widespread but as yet ill-defined Arab socialism of today? The answer will fully emerge only as the roots of Arab socialism are probed. A beginning can be made by examining these writers themselves, why they were attracted to Western socialism, what they understood by it, and how they proposed to adapt and apply it to the Middle East. A correct evaluation of their positions depends to a considerable extent on understanding the precarious, but not entirely hopeless position, of the Christian minorities in a Muslim world which had long despised them.
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page 177 note 1 Jaber, Kamel S. Abu, The Arab Ba'th Socialist Party (Syracuse, N.Y., 1966), pp. 1–5Google Scholar, has some brief observations on early socialism in the Arab world. See also Kerr, Malcolm, ‘Notes on the Background of Arab Socialist Thought’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. III (1968), pp. 145–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I have not yet been able to see a copy of Hanna, Sami A. and Gardner, George, Arab Socialism (Leiden, 1969).Google Scholar ‘Syria’ in this study refers to geographical Syria, the area included in present-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.
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page 178 note 1 For similar reasons other minority groups – including Armenians, Jews, Kurds, Italians, and Greeks – have been prominent in socialist and communist movements in the Arab world. A language barrier as well as a religious barrier separates some of these groups from Muslim audiences, a problem the Syrian Christians did not have. On the role of these groups in the communist movements, see Laqueur, Walter Z., Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East (New York, 1956), pp. 221–35 et passim. Laqueur does not comment on the role of the Copts in leftist movements.Google Scholar
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page 187 note 7 Ibid. pp. 175–6.
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page 193 note 1 On ‘Aflaq and the Ba'th see Abu Jaber, Ba'th.Google Scholar
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