Fazl-e-Umar — Page 363
Fazle Umar 363 It is their country and they should be its rulers. They should not be governed by foreigners. The injustice is further polarised because the people of Syria helped the Allied Forces in the last war. They helped under the precondition that they would be given the freedom to govern their own country…Hence, it is not the right of the British nor of any other power to rule over the Syrians and neither is it the right of the French to forcefully occupy this country. ” (Al-Fazl, 12 Nov 1925, pg 8). In 1935, a British company signed a mining agreement with the Saudi government. The Saudis were not a wealthy nation; this was before the discovery of Black Gold (oil). In India there was a great uproar against this agreement and it gave the Mullahs opposed to the Saud regime a chance to carry out propaganda against them in the Indian press. Hadhrat Musleh Mau’ood [ra] , because of his deep love and respect of the lofty principles of Islam took a position based on wisdom and far-sightedness. He stated: “An agreement has been signed between a British firm and Ibn Saud. Sultan Ibn Saud is a sensible monarch but because he is not acquainted with European history, he does not understand European terms and expressions. Once before when he was about to sign a treaty with Italy, I advised the Sultan through a member of his team to be very careful when making the treaty. The Europeans have a habit of using very soft words, however their meanings are very harsh. The agreement with the British has now been published. I have read the agree- ment and I think some mistakes have been made. The conditions agreed to mean that some outside governments could interfere with the affairs of the Arabs. Allah Almighty knows that after reading this I was very distressed even though we had good cooperation with the British…However, whether it is the British or another government we cannot be lenient when it comes to affairs of the