“I was astonished to learn, first of all, that members of the secret Arab nationalist group Fatat had read President Woodrow Wilson’s political textbook, The State. Second, I was also fascinated to discover how closely Prince Faisal worked with Sheikh Rashid Rida. His presence in Damascus and his central role in drafting a democratic constitution have not been previously studied. Third, I realized that the constitution drafted at Damascus disestablished Islam eight years before Ataturk did so in Turkey. Syrian Arabs did so through peaceful negotiation, not by crushing the religious class. Finally, I was horrified to learn that the French deliberately mistranslated the constitution to make Article 1 read “Islam is the religion of the state” and so to suggest that the Syrian Arab Kingdom was a theocracy intolerant of Christians. In fact, Article 1 read “Islam is the religion of the King,” not the state, precisely because Congress delegates rejected an Ottoman-style religious state. T
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51