{"id":4931,"date":"2026-09-13T19:27:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T16:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/?p=4931"},"modified":"2026-09-13T19:27:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T16:27:10","slug":"michel-aflaq-and-the-baath-the-truth-between-the-text-and-the-opinion-dr-abdo-shehitly-vanguard-of-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/?p=4931","title":{"rendered":"Michel Aflaq and the Baath\u200e. The truth between the text and the opinion\u200e \u200eDr. Abdo Shehitly \u2013\u00a0 Vanguard of Lebanon \u2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u200eMichel Aflaq and the Baath\u200e.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The truth between the text and the opinion\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eDr. Abdo Shehitly \u2013\u00a0 Vanguard of Lebanon \u2013\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eIn \u200e\u200ethe past weeks, the Best Arabic Podcast has published testimonies of a group of Baathist writers, journalists, politicians, and intellectuals who were once associated with the Baath Party or who had a close relationship with Mr. Aflaq(\u200e\u200eDr. Burhan Ghalioun, Saqr Abu Fakhr, Hassan Al-Alawi, Iyad Allawi, Muayyad Abdel Qader, Dr. Hassan Qassar, Assem Qanso, and Maan Bashour\u200e\u200e). \u200e\u200eThe \u200e\u200eaim of this documentary, based on these testimonies, is to shed light on the life and personality of the professor, the limits of his leadership role, and his position in Arab thought and politics since the 1940s\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eThese testimonies were generally based on impressions formed by their authors, which became highly valued opinions because of their owners’ deep experience and extensive knowledge of Arab thought and politics. However, these opinions, whether true or only approaching the truth, were sometimes driven by whims and personal impressions; to a certain extent, one should distance oneself from them.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eIn this article, we do not aim to discuss what is stated in these testimonies about Mr. Aflaq and the opinions they contained, but rather to reveal some facts through the texts he wrote, which clarify to those interested the truth of some of the contents of the testimonies that were received in the context of answering the questions posed by the documentary\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eThe texts documenting the professor’s writings, lectures, interviews of all kinds, and speeches, with their exact dates, were published in a five-part collection entitled “For the Sake of the Baath”, published by Dar Al-Hurriya in Baghdad in the 1980s. His intellectual and political experience spanned more than sixty years, from completing high school until his death in 1989. \u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eThere is no disagreement between the researchers of Aflaq’s personal biography and his intellectual and political experience in the first phase of his life, which preceded the decision to establish a political movement that embodies the ideas and aspirations that he and his comrade Salah al-Din al-Bitar worked to proselyte, after their return from Paris and education became their profession at the first school of preparation in Damascus, and what accompanied this experience from the first initiatives to propagate the Arab idea through dialogues, discussions, and writing, which was predominantly literary in nature, which Aflaq started early in several Magazines, including the magazine “Vanguard”, which was issued by agreement between Aflaq and some Syrian communists and Marxists, before the dispute with them after the signing of the Syrian-French treaty in 1936, which was welcomed by the communists, while opposed by Aflaq and al-Bitar, who participated in the famous fifty-day strike in Syria (The Baath from the Schools to the Barracks, Al-Nahar Supplement, issue 18-25, 1969), before turning entirely to intellectual and political writings aimed at creating an intellectual-political movement that seeks to advance the renaissance of Arab society and fight tribalism Sectarianism, corruption, and various forms of reactionary support from colonialism\u200e\u200e. \u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eThree important texts that the researcher should rely on in the biography of Aflaq to confirm unquestionable facts regarding the intellectual foundations of the political movement on which Professors Aflaq and Al-Bitar called the “Arab Revival” before the change to the name “Arab Resurrection” in the years preceding the founding conference of the Baath held in the lobby of the Al-Rashid Hotel in Damascus from 4 to 6 April 1947\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eThese texts are as follows\u200e\u200e:\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200e1- \u200e\u200eThe statement addressed by Mr. Aflaq to the Syrian people on the occasion of the parliamentary elections that were decided to be held after the agreement between the British and the French on the one hand, and the National Bloc on the other. These elections, an important event at the time, were an attempt to take away sovereignty and independence and to secure an alliance with national leaders to gain the tools of governance as representatives of the people.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eIn this text, Aflaq says, “We in the role of the national renaissance and the Arab Ba’ath and the opening of the Arab mind, we know that Arabism is a word on the tongue, and we want to enter it into the depths of the conscience” (For the Sake of the Baath, vol. 4, p. 16), and in it he discusses the necessity of reviving a warm faith in the cause of the Arab nation, and the appropriate national education to resist the intellectual invasion that aims to embezzle the loyalty of the Arab mind, and the sectarianism that has distanced citizens from the “spirit of their country”, and calls on the elected team to remember before performing His electoral duty is “to which nation he belongs. Freedom is the essence of Arabism, and freedom of opinion is one of its most prominent characteristics. The cause is the cause of the homeland and the future of generations” (M.N., p. 17). We measure it by the scale of our basic idea: one Arab nation with an eternal mission \u200e\u200e.”\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eThis text confirms the following\u200e\u200e:\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200e \u200e\u200eIn 1943, the name “Arab Baath” was adopted for the political movement founded by Professors Aflaq and Al-Bitar, along with several cadres who responded to the idea of Arabism with its new content. In this context, Baath refers to revival, meaning “the national renaissance and the opening of the Arab mind \u200e\u200e.”\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eA- In this year, the phrase mentioned in this election manifesto was adopted as the slogan of the party: “One Arab nation with an eternal message for the party.” This slogan represents perhaps the most prominent Arab party slogan of the twentieth century\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eTherefore, there is no doubt that one of the testimonies in the documentary, which attributed this slogan to the Arab thinker Zaki Al-Arsuzi, lacks objective justification and completely distorts the truth. If we pause for a moment when Mr. Aflaq says that this phrase represents the basic idea of the Baath, it would show us the line between what Aflaq means and what Al-Arsuzi has said\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eThere is no doubt that Al-Arsuzi is a great thinker and his writings deserve appreciation and respect for their intellectual and academic value. However, his “Rahmaniya” philosophy and understanding of Arabism differ from the ideas and concepts of the Baath that Aflaq created, and he worked to crystallize them clearly and persistently, based on the constants of the new Arab idea.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200e”Rahmanism” is a model of the intellectual output of Al-Arsuzi, which gives language metaphysical connotations that lead, as some researchers say, to “nationalism”; If a woman’s womb is the source of life for the individual human being, then the Most Merciful is the source of all life, and the relationship between the womb and the Most Merciful is one of similarity on the one hand and complementarity on the other. Rahman symbolizes the connection between the Creator and the creatures, and the fetus, in its relationship with its mother’s womb, symbolizes that relationship between the creatures and their Creator. If the fetus is part of the mother, and yet it is independent of her, then this is the case of all creatures in their relationship with the Most Gracious, for it is an extension of Him, but it is independent of Him, and it is from Him, but it is not Himself. (Ziadeh, Ma’an, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy, Journal of Arab Thought, No. 57, p. 7)\u200e\u200e. \u200e\u200eBased on this methodology of thinking, the idea of Arabism according to Al-Arsuzi was based on considering “the genius of the Arabs in their language”, and on giving the Arabic language existential and metaphysical dimensions to become the most important national link, and to make the pre-Islamic era the golden age of the Arabs\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eThis theory of language has its own thing, and there is no room here to address language in its internalized and idiomatic dimensions. However, this understanding of Arabism differed from Aflaq’s ideas, which formed the basis of his Arab nationalist theory, grounded in his belief that history has reached the truth that “nationalism is a living reality\u200e\u200e.”\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eIn his book, Jalal Al-Sayyid Takween Al-Arsuzi describes the Arab Ba’ath Party as \u200e\u200e”\u200e\u200edefinitive” (p. 8). Dr. Maan Ziadeh, a professor of modern Arab thought, says in a lecture that I was able to follow when I was a graduate student in philosophy in 1987 at the Faculty of Arts, first branch, that he attended a seminar at a Canadian university on the subject of “The Racism of Arab Nationalism”; all of the lecturer’s citations were from Al-Arsuzi’s writings\u200e\u200e. \u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eBut Aflaq went to another doctrine on which the Baathist concepts of Arabism and the nationalist theory on which it is based are based, because the statement that nationalism is a living fact applies equally to all human societies. Nationalism, in this sense, represents the fate human history has reached in its development, and the same applies to the Arabs as well as to other\u200e\u200e peoples.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eBased on this conviction, Mr. Aflaq predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in his speech to the Intellectual Committee of the Tenth National Congress held in Baghdad in 1970\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eAflaq adopted the philosophy of human nationalism, apparently influenced by the idea of the end of history, and apparently benefited from his study of Hegel during his specialization in history and from his interest in the philosophy he studied alongside history after his return to Damascus. In this context, one of the testimonies in the documentary was untrue when she claimed that Aflaq was influenced by the existentialist Kierkegaard, which is far from Hegel. \u200e\u200eAflaq’s connection between nationalism and humanity is what explains the connection between the two sides of the party’s slogan: the unity of the nation and the humanitarian message it carries for humanity, as is the case with every nation that finds the way to its unity and the message that achieves its renaissance and serves humanity instead of being dependent on it. Perhaps, in the second text we address, we can gain something useful by expanding this idea to the extent it fits within this research.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eFinally, it \u200e\u200eremains to point out that the slogan of the Baath was adopted before the founding conference, in which among the attendees were some who were influenced by the ideas of the Arsuzi and descendants of the Iskenderun District9 Part of yria occupied by Turkey), and the proof of this is that the founding conference of the party was inaugurated when it was held at “ten o’clock in the morning on Friday, April 4, 1947, by chanting the slogan of the Baath: One Arab nation with an eternal message” (Nidal al-Baath, vol. 4, p. 16).\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200e2- \u200e\u200eIn the same year that Mr. Aflaq published his election manifesto, in which the party’s slogan was mentioned for the first time, i.e., in 1943. About three months ago, in one of the auditoriums of the Syrian University, the professor gave a lecture that represents the most famous of his writings, namely “The Memory of the Arab Prophet”, in which he laid for the first time the foundations of his theory related to Arabism in its cultural and civilizational dimension, and which he used to refer to some of what he repeatedly stated in his later writings, stressing that he put in it the summary of his ideas He even returned to quote a text of it in his last speech on the anniversary of the founding of the Baath Party about two months before he died in 1989\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eIn this text, Aflaq established Arabism, in its cultural and civilizational dimensions, as the core of the national theory, based on the view that national thought is an authentic expression of the nation’s living reality. With this text, the connection is made between the philosophical basis from which Aflaq started about the idea of human nationalism and its translation at the Arab national level with the nationalist theory based on the triad of unity, freedom, and socialism, which aims to embody the Arab nation into a state, as is the case of all human societies that have achieved this transformation in modern times. This is what he and his comrades did in the framework of the preparation for the Constituent Congress, and this is clearly reflected in the party’s constitution approved by the congress, which is the third text to which we have referred\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200e3- \u200e\u200eIn the second session of the Constituent Conference, Mr. Aflaq presented \u200e\u200e”\u200e\u200ethe stages through which the formulation of the party’s constitution was drawn up and the philosophical and nationalist foundations on which this constitution was based” (Nidal Al-Baath, vol. 4, p. 17).\u200e\u200e \u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eThe constitution began with its first principle, affirming that the Arabs are one nation with a natural right to live in a single state. In the second principle, it affirmed that this nation has a personality that can be renewed and resurrected through successive renaissances in freedom of expression, the economy, society, and art, and that these freedoms are sacred and cannot be diminished by any authority. The third principle concerned the nation’s message as an eternal one that appears in integrated forms across the stages of history and aims to renew human values. It stimulates human progress and develops harmony and cooperation among nations. \u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eAfter carefully defining the meanings of colonialism and humanity, the constitution moves on to the general principles related to the nature of the party’s nationalism, linking nationalism and socialism as a necessity emanating from the heart of Arab nationalism, and then defining various other distinctive features of the Baath, before moving on to the party’s internal policy, where it calls for a constitutional representative system of government based on the separation of powers, the party’s foreign policy based on interest, and the party’s economic, social, and education-related policy. These principles and policies are distributed across 48 constitutional articles that form the basis of a full-fledged democratic civil state. Anyone who reads its content today is sure that this vanguard of militants was ahead of its time in its thinking and aspirations, and has enough knowledge, determination, and will to build the Arab future.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eThis group of activists’ involvement in political life preceded the Congress. It became more institutionalized and effective after it. The party’s slogans and national orientation were translated into action by volunteering under the leadership of the party’s dean in the Salvation Army in the face of the Zionist gangs, to begin a long history of interaction between the leadership and the masses based on honesty, clarity of vision, and the embodiment of words into actions\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eMuch has been said in the aforementioned documentary about the issue of Mr. Aflaq’s leadership of the Baath Party in the period before the Egyptian-Syrian unity, and what accompanied this unity about the dissolution of the parties, including the Baath Party in Syria and Egypt, and the relationship between the party and power, especially at the stage of the military’s advancement to the forefront of the scene\u200e\u200e. \u200e\u200eWhat has been said in this context does not contradict the truth in general. Still, it is useful to shed light on some facts that do justice to the professor and his relationship with the authority, because the belief of some that he did not have a leading personality, or that he was appeasing the authority that seeks to make the party attached to it, and justifying its shortcomings instead of being an authority for the party, this belief needs to be reviewed and scrutinized\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eDr. Abdulmajeed Al-Rafi’i describes Mr. Aflaq as a “hermit of Arab nationalism”; this accurate description applies to Aflaq’s personality, his approach to family and social life, and his philosophical, creative, and idealistic understanding of leadership.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eEarly on, in 1935, Professor Aflaq wrote the era of heroism, at that time he was a young man of twenty-five years old studying history and philosophy and working tirelessly to create an intellectual-political movement that seeks to turn a page on the history of our Arab renaissance to begin a serious page, which is “the page of those who face the general dilemmas with the coolness of mind and the flames of faith, and who speak out their ideas, even if all the people of the earth stand against them, and walk in life naked.” These are the ones who inaugurate the era of heroism” (For the Sake of Resurrection, vol. 1, p. 15).\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eAflaq, who \u200e\u200ehad recently arrived from Paris after completing his university studies, was imbued with Nietzsche and Bergson’s ideas related to heroism in its deep human sense, based on which the concept of the hero differs from the concept of the leader; the leader has no value except in the presence of those who lead them, so he looks for all the means that make the masses respond to him, even if they are Machiavellian and at the expense of lofty moral values, because the end justifies the means. Leadership here is the end itself, and the realism on which it is based means understanding reality and using it in a way that achieves leadership is far from all forms of moral idealism. As for the era of heroism, which Aflaq says he almost calls the “era of childhood” because he has “the honesty and frankness of children, he does not understand what they call politics, and he does not believe that the truth needs a burqa”, he opens it with the role of the hero who does not like to hear “that person is patriotic, if not at the same time humane, chaste, generous of character”, and who asks for independence and freedom because they are right and justice above all, and because they are a means of unleashing our high talents. and our creative powers, to achieve on this part of the earth, which is our country, our goal and the goal of every human being \u2013 the full humanity” (M.N., p. 16).\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eThe leader seeks power by gaining the masses’ consent and supporting or subjugating them, while the hero aspires to truth, justice, and the like of full humanity; his presence becomes a call and an invitation to emulate him, as it draws people to him like light draws a butterfly.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200ePower was available to Aflaq for most of his life. Still, he accepted it only once, in Al-Hinnawi’s government, when he served as Minister of Education for several months.\u200e\u200e \u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eAt the beginning of the 1970s, after returning from Brazil, where he had gone after rejecting the party’s authority in Syria, he famously said, “This is not a Baathist, and this army is not my army.” The professor lived in Beirut even though the party ruled Iraq. During this period of time, Saddam Hussein, who was the vice president of Iraq, came to meet with him on a secret visit to address the partisan problems arising from the Iraqi army’s failure to support the fedayeen. The Palestinians in Jordan were in conflict with the Jordanian authority because they did not allow guerrilla action from Jordanian territory. When he met him in the house where he lived, he was surprised by the simplicity of his furnishings, which were not worthy of the position of the professor. When the vice president reprimanded the Iraqi ambassador, thinking he did not care about his financial situation, the ambassador said that no one had dared to discuss such a subject with the professor. Even after moving to Baghdad, Dr. Abdul Majeed al-Rafi’i recounts that in early 1975 he refused all forms of luxury.\u200e\u200e \u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eHe was keen to make his family similar to him in all their behavior, so the children were in the father’s good faith. They presented a model that differed from the behavior of some sons of officials in power, far from the sense of responsibility and morality those who claim to be connected to the Baath and its authority should have.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eAfter returning from Brazil, he lived in Beirut from 1969 to 1975. However, he regained his party position as secretary-general after the Ninth National Congress, and his leadership of the party was consolidated after the Tenth National Congress held in Baghdad in 1970. \u200e\u200eHe wanted to maintain distance from authority in Baghdad to objectively assess how closely its policy aligned with the party’s directions at the national and humanitarian levels. He decided to move to Baghdad only after the party’s authority there took and implemented three major decisions: Kurdish autonomy, oil nationalization, and rapid participation in the October War. \u200e\u200eThis stay in Baghdad as secretary-general of the National Command arose from a special relationship with many symbols of power, especially President Saddam Hussein, in which he quoted what the documentary quoted from his speech on the anniversary of the founding of the Baath in \u200e\u200e1986\u200e\u200e, in which he praised President Saddam’s leadership and described it as “the gift of the Baath to Iraq and the gift of Iraq to the nation\u200e\u200e.”\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eSaddam and Iraq at that stage were Sunwan in Aflaq’s eyes. Iraq, with its universities, educational system, industry, agricultural reform, health system, and all the manifestations of renaissance in this pivotal country in its geostrategic position and the great energies of its people that were awakened by the Baath, was the focus of Mr. Aflaq’s great hopes, in addition to that military capability that allowed Iraq to stand as an impregnable barrier to the dangers that threaten it and the Arab world from the north and east. Iraq\u00a0 was present on two levels: The first is the official Arab system, and in this context, it is enough to remember what King Hassan II said about the Arab summits, where Ghassan Charbel is quoted as saying: “When Saddam Hussein attended these conferences, we were as if we were flying on our heads.” The second is Iraq’s presence, which is balanced and, to a great extent, influential in supporting Arab national movements across many Arab countries.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eHowever, the major flaws in the relationship between the professor and the authority were related to another aspect, which is related to political democracy, which does not fit with the concept of the leader, necessity, as well as the issue of the rotation of power, and the political freedoms that the Baath Constitution, mentioned above, considered sacred\u200e\u200e.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eHowever, to complete the picture and to understand Mr. Aflaq’s position on this issue, it is necessary to look at the texts that he used to write and deliver on Baghdad Radio on the anniversary of the party’s founding in April of every year, where the issue of releasing political freedoms was always present. Mr. Aflaq believed that the conditions of the war being waged in Iraq justified some tolerance in this issue because the regional countries surrounding the Arabs tend to invade and aggress against them in their weakness. Therefore, after the Iraq-Iran war ended and the professor reassured Iraq of its strength and its ability to prevent it, he made democracy a central focus in his 1989 farewell speech, treating it as a matter of historical necessity.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u200eBut what Aflaq expected and anticipated showed signs of seriousness in the two years following the war, before events developed in 1990 in a direction not commensurate with this foresight and did not satisfy the hopes and aspirations of the professor and all those who followed his example. This certainly requires scrutiny, criticism, and review to draw lessons and advance the national work under the banner of democratic Arabism.\u200e<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u200eMichel Aflaq and the Baath\u200e. The truth between the text and the opinion\u200e \u200eDr. Abdo Shehitly \u2013\u00a0 Vanguard of Lebanon \u2013\u200e Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid. \u200eIn \u200e\u200ethe past weeks, the Best Arabic Podcast has published testimonies of a group of Baathist writers, journalists, politicians, and intellectuals who were once associated with the Baath …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4932,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4933,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4931\/revisions\/4933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}