(1869-1946)

A druze prince from a powerful family in Lebanon, Arslan was influenced by the ideas of al-Afghani and Abduh and became a strong supporter of the Pan-Islamic policy of Abdul Hamid. As a journalist, poet, and local political figure, Arslan advocated the proposition that the survival of the Ottoman Empire was the only guarantee against the division of the ummah and its occupation by the European imperial powers. For him, Ottomanism and Islam were closely bound together; the reform of Islam would naturally lead to the revival of the Ottoman Empire.

Exiled from his homeland by the French mandate authorities, Arslan passed most of the interwar years in Geneva serving as the unofficial representative of Syria and Palestine at the League of Nations and writing a constant stream of articles for the periodical press of the Arab countries. Arslan advocated a militant Islam charged with political and moral assertiveness. He sought to reconstruct the bonds of Islamic solidarity by reminding Muslims from Morocco to Iraq that despite their diversity, they were united by virtue of their common adherence to Islam; if they would but recognize this bond and act on it, they would achieve liberation from their current oppression and restoration of their splendid past.

His Islamic inspires anti-imperialist propaganda campaigns were a constant irritant to British and French regions in the Arab Islamic world of their common cause.

Arslan defended Islam as an essential component of social morality. His message, with its call to action and its defence of traditional values at a time of great uncertainty, was well received and attracted widespread attention during the 1920s and 1930s.