Muhammad ‘Abduh and his followers had taken the commonplaces of European thought and applied them to their own society. The effect had been more drastic than ‘Abduh himself perhaps had expected: an attempt to restate the principles of Islamic society had led to the idea of a secular national society where Islam was tolerated, was honoured, even helped to strengthen the affective links between fellow citizens, but no longer provided the norms of law and policy. A similar idea was being taught at the same time by another group of writers from among the Syrian Christians, although, being Christians and a minority, they gave it a rather different twist.

Shidyaq and Bustani had been the forerunners of a school of writers who found new scope for their talents through the growth of the Arabic periodical press. In the 1870's two new types of publication began to appear in Arabic: the independent political newspaper, giving news of world politics and expressing political opinions, and—what most concerns us here—the literary and scientific periodical, with the double purpose of revealing to the Arab mind the ideas and inventions of Europe and America, and showing how they could be written about in Arabic. The greater number of these, whether they were published in Cairo or Beirut, were written by Lebanese Christians educated in the French or American schools; and since for a whole generation they provided almost the only popular reading-matter in Arabic, they gave the Lebanese an influence over the Arabic-reading public great although short-lived.