ثورة فلسطين - أسبابها ونتائجها
The Palestine Revolt: Its Causes and Consequencesby Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā

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اللغة العربية لغة هذا الدين وشريعته وناشريه بمحض الرغبة، لا بدعاية الجمعيات ولا بإلزام الحكومة أو نفوذها (كما يفعل الإفرنج في هذا العصر) .

المانع من استيلاء العرب على العالم كله

(4) لقد كان مقتضى هذا الإصلاح الإسلامي العربي أن يعم الأرض ويملك أهله من العرب، سائر ممالك الشرق والغرب؛ ولكن حال دون ذلك تعارض المانع والمقتضي، أما المقتضي فقد عرَّفناه إجمالاً بما تقدم، وأما المانع الذي حال دونه فهو (على قاعدة تقابل العدم بالملكة) عدم الاستقامة على ذلك المنهج الإصلاحي الذي شرعه الإسلام وسار عليه الرسول وخلفاؤه الراشدون، وكان أول من سنَّ الخروج عنه معاوية بن أبي سفيان، ببغيه على أمير المؤمنين علي عليه السلام والرضوان، ثم بإكراهه الناس على بيعة ولده الفاسق يزيد، واحتكار السلطان لبني أمية، فهدم بذلك الحكم الإسلامي الشوروي المبني على أساس سلطة الأمة، وأقامه على الأساس الوراثي المبني على تغلب القوة، فما زالت القوة تعمل عملها حتى سلبتهم هذا المُلك المغصوب، وتغلغل نفوذ أعاجم الفرس في الدولة العباسية، ثم قضى عليها همج الشعوب التركية، فتفرقت السلطة، وتمزقت الوحدة، وزلزلت العدالة، وزالت الخلافة.

من ثم قال أحد علماء الألمان المتعصبين لجنسيتهم أنه ينبغي لنا أن نقيم لمعاوية تمثالاً من الذهب في أعظم ساحة من عاصمتنا (برلين) وينبغي مثل ذلك لجميع شعوب أوربة، إذ لولاه لكانت هذه الشعوب كلها عربية تدين بالإسلام، وبين ذلك بنحو ما قلناه آنفًا؛ ولكن قال أحد أحرار فرنسة ما معناه: لقد كان من سوء حظ أمتنا أن كان أكثر الجيش الذي فتح به العرب القسم الجنوبي من بلادنا من بربر أفريقية الذين لم يتمكن الإصلاح الإسلامي من أنفسهم فكانوا ينقضون العهود ويعتدون على الكنائس وغيرها، حتى أثاروا العصبية والنخوة في أنفسنا، وراجت دعوة الاستنفار العام لقتالهم وإخراجهم من ديارنا، ولو كان أكثرهم من العرب الذين عرفنا سيرتهم العادلة في الشرق والأندلس لما وقع من ذلك العدوان شيء، ولما راجت الدعوة إلى قتالهم وإخراجهم، وإذًا لسبقنا أوربة في الحضارة بضعة قرون.

English
translation

the Arabic language, the language of this religion, its law, and those who spread it, entirely of their own desire, without the propaganda of associations or government compulsion or influence, as Europeans use in this age.

What prevented the Arabs from taking over the whole world

(4) This Arab Islamic reform should have spread across the earth and given its Arab people dominion over all the kingdoms of east and west. But a conflict between the enabling cause and an impediment prevented it. We have described the enabling cause in general terms above. The impediment, on the principle that privation is opposed to possession, was the failure to remain on the reforming path set out by Islam and followed by the Messenger and the rightly guided caliphs. The first to set a precedent for departing from it was Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan: he rebelled against the Commander of the Faithful, Ali, peace and God's favor be upon him; compelled the people to pledge allegiance to his dissolute son Yazid; and reserved power for the Umayyads. He thereby destroyed consultative Islamic government, founded on the authority of the community, and established hereditary government founded on the dominance of force. Force continued its work until it stripped them of this usurped rule. The influence of non-Arab Persians then spread through the Abbasid state, and the barbarian hordes of the Turkic peoples brought it down. Power divided, unity broke apart, justice was shaken, and the caliphate disappeared.

For this reason, one German scholar fiercely devoted to his nationality said that Germans should erect a golden statue of Muawiya in the greatest square of their capital, Berlin, and that all the peoples of Europe should do the same. Without him, he said, all those peoples would have been Arabs professing Islam. He explained this much as we have done above. But one French liberal said, in effect, that his nation's misfortune was that most of the army with which the Arabs conquered southern France consisted of Berbers from Africa who had not absorbed Islamic reform. They broke treaties and attacked churches and other places, stirring French solidarity and pride and helping a call for general mobilization to fight and expel them. Had most of them been Arabs, whose just conduct the French knew from the East and Andalusia, none of those attacks would have occurred. The call to fight and expel them would not have gained support, and France would have preceded Europe in civilization by several centuries.

Analysis

Riḍā says converts learned Arabic willingly, then explains why Arab Islamic rule did not spread over the whole world. He blames Muawiya's hereditary rule and later Persian and Turkic influence. He also gives opposing remarks from unnamed German and French figures to support his theory. Targeted Arabic, English, German, and French searches did not recover an independent pre-1929 source for either statement. Later reproductions found in the search cite this Al-Manār passage rather than identify either speaker. This page records a selective argument about political decline and broad judgments about peoples; it does not verify the quotations or the counterfactual claims.

The claim that Arabic spread without government pressure or influence is too broad. Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot records that under ʿAbd al-Malik Egypt's public registers were changed from Coptic to Arabic, and Coptic officials who did not learn Arabic were replaced by Arabs. That is direct state influence over language in administration. It does not show that every population adopted spoken Arabic by force, since language change took different forms over a long period.

Andrew Marsham's account does support the core succession change. Muʿāwiya made Yazīd the focus of plans to keep power within his family, built his prestige through public commands, and obtained pledges from powerful figures, often through large payments, while confronting opponents. This supports a planned dynastic succession secured through patronage and coercion. Riḍā's claim that this act destroyed consultative government and caused later political decline remains his wider moral and causal argument.

The campaign in Gaul had both Arab and Berber participants, and medieval accounts include attacks on churches and monasteries. That broad setting is compatible with part of the unnamed French speaker's description. It does not establish that Berbers formed most of the army, that their incomplete religious reform caused treaty breaking, or that Arab leadership would have prevented the conflict.

Modern scholarship also limits the speech's civilizational counterfactual. The battle commonly called Tours or Poitiers did not end Muslim raids into Gaul, and its later presentation as a single event that saved Christian Europe grew well beyond what the immediate record can prove. No historical comparison can demonstrate that continued Muslim rule would have placed France centuries ahead of the rest of Europe.