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Michel Aflaq |
Michel Aflaq - Michel Aflaq
(or Aflak) (Arabic: ميشيل عفلق Misil Aflaq,) was born in Damascus
1910, and died in Paris on June 23, 1989. Aflaq was the ideological
founder of the
Pan-Arab Ba'ath
party, a quasi-secular movement with both fascist and "anti-imperialist"
leanings.
Aflaq was born in Damascus to middle class Greek Orthodox Christian
parents.
He was educated in the westernized schools of French mandate
Syria
and then went to university at the Sorbonne in Paris about 1928 or 1930. There,
he studied Marxism, proto-Nazi thinkers and the works of other nationalists, he
attempted to combine socialism with Pan-Arab nationalism.
Aflaq returned to Syria, where he became a school teacher and was active in
politics. Some time after September 1940, following France's defeat in World War
II, Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar set up the nucleus of what was later
to become the Ba’ath Party, evidently founded "officially" in 1943. The first
conference of the Ba’ath Party (in full, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party), was
held 1947.
Aflaq briefly served as Syria's education minister in 1949. In 1952, he
fled Syria to Lebanon to escape government persecution and returned in 1954. Aflaq was
influential in the formation of the short lived "United Arabic Republic of Egypt
and Syria" in 1958. Aflaq may have met Saddam Hussein at this time, or perhaps a
bit later in 1963.
Aflaq was forced to flee Syria by the Syrian Baath party. He escaped to
Lebanon in 1966, then to Brazil in 1967. In 1968 he was invited to Iraq, by
Saddam Hussein after his coup. There, Aflaq became something betwee a symbolic figurehead
and a leader of the Iraqi Baath party, to the extent that anyone besides Saddam
Hussein could have any authority in Iraq.
Apologists insist that Aflaq had no real influence in Iraq.
Nonetheless he was head of the Baath party from 1974, he supported the regime and gave speeches in support of its
policies, including suppression of the
Kurds.
It is a mistake to conceive of Aflaq's pan-Arabism as divorced from or
opposed to
Islam
or religion. Aflaq believed that Islam provides Arabs with "the most
brilliant picture of their language and literature, and the grandest part of
their national history."
Aflaq stated:
"A day will come when the nationalists will find themselves the only
defenders of Islam. They will have to give a special meaning to it if they
want the Arab nation to have a good reason for survival." (In memory of the
Arab Prophet, 1 April 1943)
"The connection of Islam to Arabism is not, therefore, similar to that of
any religion to any nationalism. The Arab Christians, when their nationalism
is fully awakened and when they restore their genuine character, will
recognize that Islam for them is nationalist education in which they have to
be absorbed in order to understand and love it to the extent that they
become concerned about Islam as about the most precious thing in their
Arabism. If the actual reality is still far from this wish, the new
generation of Arab Christians has a task which it should perform with daring
and detachment, sacrificing for it their pride and benefits, for there is
nothing that equals Arabism and the honor of belonging to it." (In memory of
the Arab Prophet -April, 1943)
Aflaq had no tolerance for any nationalism that conflicted with pan-Arabism.
He stated:
The Kurdish national movement cannot contradict the Arab revolution and when
it does, imperialism must be behind the contradiction, whether by creating
agent leaderships for this movement or by involving reactionary or
secessionist Arab governments in order to provoke this movement in ways
which aggravate it.
(The Kurdish question and the Arab revolution, 3 - June 10, 1969)
The road of the Arab revolution is the natural and essential one for
every liberation and progressive revolution in all the Third World. The
Kurdish national movement is a legitimate and genuine part of the Arab
revolution against imperialism, Zionism, class exploitation, backwardness
arid fragmentation. Everything that deviates the Kurdish national movement
towards meeting and colluding with imperialism and Zionism and puts it in
the ranks of the feudal class and secession should be laid bare and unmasked
as a conspiracy against both the Arab revolution and the Kurdish national
movement. The response to the demands of the Kurdish national movement
should be within the framework of this harmony between its movement and the
march of Arab revolution.
(The Kurdish question and the Arab revolution, 3 - June 10, 1969)
We were one people in the past. If the Kurdish people have any
grievances, they are in countries other than the Arab lands, as there was no
segregation or discrimination between them and the Arabs. They were treated
in the Arab homeland the way Arabs treat Arabs. There is another fact, which
is ignored only by those who lack a historical view, and this fact is that
the Arab revolution is the revolution of this age. It is the measure of
every revolution and every progressive movement in every country in the
world. He who stands against it cannot be progressive or revolutionary. He
who opposes it must be falling prey to imperialism, reaction arid Zionism.
How could a national movement of a small people be in opposition to the
march of the Arab revolution? How could it maintain the minimum degree of
safety, remain intact with no foreign and imperialist intervention and
manipulation if it does not recognize the obvious fact that it cannot be in
opposition with the mother revolution, the Arab revolution?
(The Baath experience in Iraq is the starting point for the Arab revolution.
A speech to the advanced cadres of the Arab Baath Socialist party in Baghdad
- June 24, 1974)
According to the above view, anything that conflicts with Pan-Arabism is a
tool of the West and of imperialism.
The regime of Saddam Hussein gave Aflaq an elaborate
Muslim
funeral in 1989, claiming that he had secretly converted to Islam. A large tomb
and mausoleum were erected to form a shrine for him, within the Iraqi Baath
party pan-Arab headquarters, which are currently part of a US Army base. The
tomb has been carefully preserved by the Americans.
Ami Isseroff
October 14, 2008
Synonyms and alternate spellings:
Michel Aflak
Further Information: Ba'ath
Pan-Arabism
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