Pan-Islamism
The evolution of the contemporary nation states across the entire Arab world is an interesting, yet, distressing process. Almost a century ago, a majority of the Arabs were part of the Ottoman Caliphate or the Ottoman Empire, which is actually a vast multi-ethnic state based out of Istanbul. Currently, the Arab political map appears more like a highly complicated jigsaw puzzle.
A manifold and convoluted course of incidents that took place during the early 1910s brought the Ottomans Empire to an end, while also resulting in the emergence of many new states whose borders apparently spread throughout the Middle East. This eventually resulted in Muslims being divided from one another.
While there are a myriad range of factors that resulted in the above scenario of the Muslims, the role played by the British Empire was extremely pivotal in comparison to the role of any other Empire in that region.
Three distinct agreements made by the British Empire was encompassed with contradictory assurances to which they were to fulfil. The final outcome was a political confusion and disorder that eventually divided up a majority portion of the Muslim dominion.
The Epidemic of the First World War
During the summer of the year 1914, Europe saw the outbreak of the First World War. A multifaceted and complicated alliance system, a bellicose arms battle, colonial motivations, and an overall maladministration at the highest levels of the government is attributed as being the root cause for such a devastating war like the First World War to have taken place, which ultimately claimed the lives of more than 12 million innocent people between the years 1914 and 1918. The “Allied” side had the Kingdoms of Great Britain, France, and Russia, while the “Central” powers comprised of Germany, Hungary and Austria.
Initially, the Ottoman Caliphate decided to take a neutral position and refrain from taking any of the sides – neither the Allied nor the Central. The Ottoman Caliphate was actually not as strong as any of the other empires involved in the war, and thus were confronted with several threats – both internal as well as external.
The Sultan of the Ottoman Caliphate was merely a figurehead at that particular juncture, with Abdulhamid II, the last powerful sultan, having been conquered in the year 1908. He was eventually substituted with a military regime that was headed by the “Three Pashas.” They belonged to the Young Turks, a secular Westernized assembly. In terms of financial health, the Ottomans Caliphate was massively bound, as it owned high levels of debts to the European super powers and they were not in a position to repay such huge debts. After their failed pursuit of collaborating with the Allied side and having been rejected by them, the Ottoman Caliphate joined hands with the Central Powers in October, 1914.
Immediately after this, the British Empire started conceiving plans for dissolving the Ottoman Empire and further extend their foot hold in the Middle Eastern region. By then, the British had controlled Egypt and India, since 1888 and 1857 respectively. The Ottoman Middle East was placed exactly in between these two most significant British colonies, and the British Empire was highly resolute in exterminating the same in the course of the First World War.
Islam in the Ottoman Empire
The history of the Ottoman Caliphate can be traced back starting from the 1300 and ending of the Ottoman Empire in the year 1923. At its largest degree, the Ottoman Caliphate covered a massive terrain, “including Anatolia, the Balkan region in Europe, most of the Arabic-speaking Middle East, and all of North Africa except for Morocco.”
While a massive pile of scholarly literature is available about the origins and legacy of the Ottoman Caliphate and their rulers, astonishing very little information, which is quite general, is available in relation to the account of Islam in the Ottoman Caliphate. The little literature and general information is often constricted in terms of their scope and are often lack the theoretical support.
The earliest era of the Ottoman history comprises of the belligerent aspects pertaining to the role of Islam in the expansion of the Ottoman rule spreading beyond the small province in the northwestern part of Anatolia, where it initially originated. Regardless of a the lack of trustworthy sources, a number of highly valuable studies have emerged in the recent past, which alter the former notion that instigating holy war against the Christians was the primary movie behind the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. Yet, the Ottoman sultans did call for political rightfulness on the basis of their funding of several Islamic structures, organizations, religious foundations, as well as judicial establishments.
In addition to the British, another group that strived for getting a share in the political backdrop of the Middle East were the Zionists. "Zionism is a political movement that calls for the establishment of a Jewish state in the Holy Land of Palestine.” This movement started in the 1800s as a drive that worked towards finding a motherland away from Europe, for the Jews. Eventually, these people decided to bring about immense pressure upon the British government during the Second World War for getting a go ahead, for settling in Palestine after the war culminated. There were a number of people within the British government who were extremely sympathetic towards this political movement of the Zionists.
Pan-Islamism
Al-Afghani, an activist and nomadic scholar, is known as the father of Pan-Islamism. Although he was born in Persia, his education happened in India, and after this he travelled to several global destinations like Paris, Istanbul, and Egypt among others. His travel to all these and many other places in the world offered him a unique perception and understanding about the contemporary circumstances affecting the Muslims living in various parts of the world. This unique situation is characterized by Afghani as being an outcome of social uncertainty, political feebleness and cultural unfamiliarity. According to him, it is not the interaction that Muslims had with the Westerners, which has resulted in such a situation, but the same had certainly brought in immense relief as Muslims were alerted about a crucial, yet long-quiescent facet of their own culture and traditional legacy. Afghani strongly believed that the “power and success of the modern West rested on its rejection of the stultifying restrictions of Christianity and its turn toward reason; since Islam, by contrast, was rooted in rationalism, Muslims need only return to the essence of their faith to overcome the developmental asymmetry that had come to differentiate Western and Muslim societies.”
Mushir Hosain Kidwai, the secretary of the Pan-Islamic movement in London had been writing on behalf of this cause and in his 1906 article, he was known to have stated that Pan-Islamism was not an obsessive or a clandestine movement, but is rather a struggle that is devoted towards protecting Islam from being inflicted or influenced by the Christian colonies.
In his article titled ‘Pan-Islamism,’ which was written in 1906, Kidwai had apparently mentioned that the Muslim powers had never shared a mutual cause, and several weak Muslim Kingdoms fail to unite and present themselves as a united group before the heartless Christian rulers.
He further went on to state that the success of the Pan-Islamic movement needs a perfect structure and territorial civilizations in each and every single Muslim nation in order to make the Muslim community and also the governments to be cognizant of their situation of them lagging behind many other advanced nations in terms of a plethora of aspects.
The Ottoman Empire is credited to be the first Caliphate to have implemented Pan-Islamism as an administrative policy that had imperialist objectives instead of nationalist ones. “As early as the 1860s, the then-sultan, Abdul Aziz (r. 1861–1876), tried to extend his political authority beyond the Ottoman Empire by casting himself as the caliph, the designated ruler of all Muslims and the defender of the faith. His successor, Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909), adopted the same mantle of authority.” This appeal of Pan-Islamism was associated with the increasing influence of the Western civilizations upon the Muslim Kingdoms, the reforms of which were facilitated by the Ottoman rulers themselves. The impending and rather immediate requirement of a reform had become more and more obvious as the Europeans started winning back the terrain during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, which they had formerly lost to the Ottoman Caliphate as part of the Ottoman expansion into the European territory between the 15th and 16th century. The same intensifying wave of technological development that had enabled the Europeans to conquer the Ottomans in Europe also allowed them to portray their power in various foreign lands.
Having become cognizant and almost certain about their limiting power, the Ottoman Caliphate embarked upon a rather exhaustive series of reforms on various fronts like for instance, military, social, and administrative, through the entire first half of the 19th century, and they even obtained technical support and guidance from the very Europeans that jeopardized the territorial sovereignty of the Ottomans. While being drastic and expansive, the series of reforms implemented by the Ottomans were rather delayed in preventing them from becoming popular as the ‘Sick Man of Europe,’ a highly inefficient empire whose territories in both Middle East and Central Asia looked too ripe to be picked.
Works Cited
Alkhateeb, Firas. How the British Divided up the Arab World. 26 December 2012. Web. 13 March 2016. <http://lostislamichistory.com/how-the-british-divided-up-the-arab-world/>.
Kenney, Jeffrey. Pan-Islamism. 2005. Web. 17 March 2016. <http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Pan-Islamism.aspx>.
Kidwai, Mushir Hosain. Pan-Islamism. Lodnon: Lusac and Co., 1908.
Ochsenwald, William. "Islam in the Ottoman Empire." Islamic Studies (2011). Web. 17 March 2016. <http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195390155/obo-9780195390155-0155.xml>.
