Influenced by the ideas of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh, Arslan became a strong supporter of the pan-Islamic policies of Abdul Hamid II.

[4]: 131 Exiled from his homeland by the French Mandate authorities, Arslan spent most of the inter-war years in Geneva, where he served as the unofficial representative of Syria and Palestine to the League of Nations and wrote a steady stream of articles for the periodical press of Arab countries.

[8] Amir Shakib proposed an interpretation of Islam imbued with a sense of political power and moral courage.

Arslan's work inspired anti-imperialist propaganda campaigns, much to the irritation of the British and French authorities in the Arab world.

His message, with its call to action and defence of traditional values in a time of great uncertainty, was well received and attracted widespread attention in the 1920s and 1930s.

[9] It was during this period that he wrote his most famous work, Our Decline: Its Causes and Remedies [ar], which described what Arslan believed to be the reasons for the weakness of existing Muslim governments.