It was under these conditions that a group of students living in Paris called for a Congress to be held to discuss proposed Arab reforms.

According to Najib Azouri, the real organizers of the congress were Chekri Ganem and the Moutran brothers, the rest were moutons de Panurge.

[4] While the Congress was not ultimately successful in its proposed aims, it was a reflection of events taking place and dynamics that shaped the early 20th century for three continents before World War I began.

Al-Hoda Editor and Lebanese League of Progress President, Naoum Mokarzel started cautiously by saying that: “The Revolution must be literary and reformist”, he continued more aggressively “only the last resort should it be bloody, because the political systems of free nations have been constructed by martyrs and not with printers ink.”[5] The Ottoman Empire was in a state of decline at the beginning of the 20th century.

Scholar David Thomas[6] contends that many of the reform groups that participated in the conference "...were more suspicious of the intentions of Britain and France in the Levant than afraid of and hostile to the Ottoman Porte..." The Congress was held under the auspices of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Arab nationalism that came about after World War II is attributable to factors such as the decline of colonial influence, rather than reforms debated back in 1913.