Thus, from its inception the new society contained representatives of the majority of the traditional clan divisions within the nation, and of men of religion as well as laymen, united in the desire to abolish the wasteful clan rivalries of the past and to establish a new conception of nationhood. These aims had always been present in Somali Islam, and forty years earlier, at the time of Sayyid Muhammad 'Abdille Hassan, this was the only means by which national patriotism could be expressed coherently. Now, however, these religious aims were married to a modern consciousness of nationhood, and strengthened by a desire for progress in general expressed through the new vehicle of the Somali Youth Club.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 334