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

Page 467

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Printed page 467

أحد يغار على الإسلام غيرك؟ والله إننا نغار مثلك؛ ولكنك أنت مطلق ونحن مقيدون، وأنت تعلم أننا ممنوعون من كل شيء يتعلق بالسياسية ‍!

مستقبل العرب مع الإنكليز

(12) إننا نرجو أن يحيط الشعب الإنكليزي العاقل بما ذكرنا وذكر غيرنا من الحقائق، فنجد منه عونًا على حكومته بتغيير سياسته مع الأمة العربية، والجلاء عما تحتله من بلادها الحجازية واليمنية وغيرها، والاتفاق مع حكوماتها على ما يضمن له مصالحه الاقتصادية ونفوذه الأدبي في جميع بلادها، فوالله لو أن في الشعب الفرنسي من الروية والتدبير مثل ما في الشعب الإنكليزي لأمكنه إكراه دولته على تأليف دولة سورية واحدة تقضي على نفوذ الدولة البريطانية في الأمة العربية كلها، ثم في سائر الشعوب الشرقية المتصلة بها.

كان من آفات الظفر في هذه الحرب أن الغرور قد استحوذ على عقول الظافرين، وإن كان ظفرهم بقوة غيرهم لا بقوتهم، فلولا الولايات المتحدة لاستولت ألمانية على جميع ممالكهم، وكان من آفات هذا الغرور أن الدولة البريطانية ظنت أن قوة السلاح خير لها من قوى التدبير والعقل والإصلاح، وأنها قد ورثت جميع السلطنة (الإمبراطورية) العثمانية باحتلال القسطنطينية، وأنها ستملك بلاد إيران والأفغان بالأساطيل الجوية، كما رسخ قدمها في مصر وسائر البلاد العربية، وأنه قد تم ما كانت تحلم به من امتداد إمبراطوريتها من حدود برقة إلى حدود الصين من الغرب إلى الشرق، ومن الإسكندرية إلى الكاب من الشمال إلى الجنوب، فبدا لها من جميع هذه البلاد ما لم تكن تحتسب، بل بدا لها من الهند ينبوع ثروتها الثرور، وسوق تجارتها التي لا تبور، ما لم يكن يخطر لها ولا لغيرها ببال، إذ هب مئات الملايين فيها يطلبون الاستقلال، وينذرون الدولة قرب الزوال، وطفق الباحثون من علمائها يبحثون في هِرمها، ويقدرون ما بقي من عمرها، على قاعدة قول الشاعر:

إذا تم شيء بدا نقصه ... ترقب زوالاً إذا قيل تم

English
translation

who cares about Islam besides you? By God, we care as you do, but you are free and we are bound. You know we are forbidden from everything that concerns politics!”

The Arabs' future with the English

(12) We hope the sensible English people will learn the facts we and others have set out. We may then find their help against their government in changing its policy toward the Arab nation, withdrawing from the Hijazi and Yemeni lands and other Arab lands it occupies, and agreeing with Arab governments on terms that secure its economic interests and moral influence throughout their lands. By God, if the French people had the deliberation and judgment of the English people, they could force their state to establish one Syrian state that would end British influence over the whole Arab nation and then over the other peoples of the East connected with it.

One evil of victory in this war was that arrogance took hold of the victors' minds, although their victory came through others' strength rather than their own. Without the United States, Germany would have taken all their kingdoms. One result of this arrogance was that the British state thought armed force served it better than judgment, reason, and reform. It thought that by occupying Constantinople it had inherited the whole Ottoman sultanate, that air fleets would win it Iran and Afghanistan as its foothold had been secured in Egypt and the other Arab lands, and that its dream of an empire running from Cyrenaica to China, west to east, and from Alexandria to the Cape, north to south, had come true. Yet in all these lands it encountered what it had not expected. In India, the abundant source of its wealth and an unfailing market for its trade, it encountered what neither it nor anyone else had imagined: hundreds of millions rose to demand independence and warn the state of its approaching end. Its scholars began to investigate its old age and estimate how much life it had left, according to the poet's saying:

When something is complete, its decline begins to appear ... Expect it to pass away when it is said to be complete.

Analysis

Riḍā completes his remembered exchange with the earlier al-Azhar shaykh, who says official limits prevented him from speaking on politics. This is Riḍā's later account of the conversation, not a transcript from the shaykh. Riḍā then calls on the English people to change policy, withdraw from Arab lands, and make agreements with Arab governments. His account of British arrogance and decline after the war is a political forecast; the quoted verse ends this page and the response begins on p. 468.

Three checks separate the historical core from Riḍā's forecasts. Allied forces led by Britain occupied Istanbul from November 1918, with formal military occupation from March 1920 until 1923. United States manpower made a crucial contribution to Allied victory in 1918, but official military history describes a multinational victory and cannot prove Riḍā's counterfactual that Germany would otherwise have taken every Allied kingdom. The Indian National Congress had declared complete national independence its goal in 1927 and formalized that aim at Lahore at the end of 1929. This supports a major organized independence demand, but not the literal claim that hundreds of millions had actively risen when Riḍā wrote.

Britain did employ air power against Afghanistan in the Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919, including raids on Jalalabad and Kabul. The war ended with Afghanistan recovering control over its foreign affairs. This supports the immediate military image behind Riḍā's reference to air fleets, but it contradicts the idea that Britain thereby won or possessed Afghanistan.

The 1919 Anglo-Persian Agreement proposed British advisers for Iranian administration, British officers and equipment for a reorganized army, and a British loan. Had it been ratified, it would have created extensive British control, but the agreement failed and was never ratified. It supports Riḍā's picture of a far-reaching British project in Iran, not a completed conquest by air power.

The Cape-to-Cairo railway and telegraph scheme was a real British imperial vision for a north-south corridor through Africa. It was tied to colonial expansion, transport, commerce, and resource extraction, but it was never completed as planned. This supports Riḍā's reference to an imperial dream from Alexandria toward the Cape. It does not establish his separate east-west line from Cyrenaica to China or show that either span became one continuous possession.

The 1921 census counted 318,942,480 people in India. This gives a literal population basis for Riḍā's phrase “hundreds of millions,” while the Congress records establish an organized independence movement. Neither source shows that all, or even most, of those hundreds of millions had personally risen and demanded independence at the time of writing.