Negib Azouri: The Program of the League of the Arab Fatherland

"...There is nothing more liberal than the League's program. The league wants, before anything else, to separate the civil and religious power, in the interest of Islam and the Arab nation, and to form an Arab empire stretching from the Tigris and the Euphrates to the Suez Isthmus, and from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea.
           The mode of government will be a constitutional sultanate based on the freedom of all the religions and the equality of all the citizens before the law. It will respect the interests of Europe, all the concessions and all the privileges which had been granted to her up to now by the Turks. It will also respect the autonomy of the Lebanon and the independence of the principalities of Yemen, Nejd, and Iraq.
          The League offers the throne of the Arab Empire to the prince of the Kedivial family of Egypt who will openly declare himself in its favor and who will devote his energy and his resources to this end. 
           It rejects the idea of unifying Egypt and the Arab Empire under the same monarchy, because the Egyptians do not belong to the Arab race; they are of the African Berber family and the language which they spoke before Islam bears no similarity to Arabic. There exists, moreover, between Egypt and the Arab Empire a national frontier which must be respected in order to avoid the introduction, in the new state, of the germs of discord and destruction. Never, as a matter of fact, have the ancient Arab caliphs succeeded for any length of time in controlling the two countries at the same time."

Translated by Sylvia G. Haim