RISE OF THE SECULAR MODERNISTS 311also suggested creating a neutral "League of Nations" to adjudicate interna-
tional issues, such as the fate of Arab-inhabited lands formerly ruled by the
Ottomans. At Versailles, the "peacemakers" had set up just such a body.
But stunningly enough, the United States refused to join this body!
And once the League set to work, the European victors of World War I
quickly turned it into an instrument of their will. In principle, for exam-
ple, the League endorsed the idea of self-rule in the Arab world, but in
practice, it implemented the Sykes-Picot agreement, dividing the area into
zones called "mandates," which were awarded to Britain and France. The
document setting up these mandates called them territories "inhabited by
peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions
of the modern world" and said "the tutelage of such peoples should be en-
trusted to advanced nations who by reason of their ... experience ... can
best undertake this responsibility." In short, it spoke of Arabs as children
and of Europeans as grown-ups who would take care of them until they
could do grown-up things like feed themselves-such was the language di-
rected at a people who, if the Muslim narrative were still in play, would
have been honored as the progenitors of civilization itself-and who still
retained some such sense of themselves.^2
France got Syria for its mandate, and Great Britain got pretty much
everything else in the "Middle East." France divided its mandated territory
into two countries, Syria and Lebanon, the latter an artificial state with
borders gerrymandered to ensure a demographic majority for the Maronite
Christians, whom France regarded as its special clients in the region.
Great Britain had clients to satisfy as well, beginning with the
Hashimites who had led that helpful Arab Revolt, so the British bundled
together three former Ottoman provinces to create a new country called
Iraq and made one of their Hashimite clients king of it. The lucky man
was Faisal, second son of the sheikh of Mecca.
Faisal, however, had an older brother named Abdullah, and it wasn't
seemly for a younger brother to have a country while his older brother had
none, so another country was carved out of the British mandate and given
to Abdullah, and this was Jordan.
Unfortunately, the boys' father ended up with nothing at all, because in
1924 that other British client in the region, Aziz ibn Saud, attacked Mecca
with a band of religious troops, took the holy city, and ousted the