Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses European and Arab colonialism:
Oft-repeated is the canard that the ills and failures of the Muslim world are the consequence of Western colonialism. This claim calls for scrutiny.The Europeans re-entered the Middle East only in 1798, when Napoleon came to Egypt – one of his generals, Kleber, stayed behind and becane the hero of Heliopolis, where he defeated the Turks (Incidentally, a certain well-heeled hotel, one that former Lebanese presidents and Arafat himself liked to stay in, in a very particular suite, when being put up by the Ministere des affaires etrangeres, is to be found in Paris on the Avenue Kleber). Kleber died in May, 1800, a month before Suvorov (a less-successful general), and was succeeded by General Menou, a French convert -- convenience? deep belief? -- to Islam.
For many hundreds of years the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa were subject to rule, varying in the degree of its immediacy and power, by the Ottoman Turks. Even before 1517, when the Ottoman Turks conquered, the Mamelukes, who were of Turkic stock, ruled Egypt. It was the Europeans who largely freed the Arabs from Turkish rule.
The vast peninsula of Arabia (renamed after the Al-Saud family) was never subject to European colonial rule. In fact, the British made it a rule to use only naval power to do two things in the Persian Gulf: to end the Arab slave trade in black Africans, and to establish some modicum of peace between the constantly warring tribes -- including stamping out piracy, for this threatened their route to India and the East. And that was it. There were a few British garrisons later established, chiefly at the entrepot of Aden, and on side of the Gulf as well. There was no settlement by Europeans, nothing to exploit, no "colonization" in the Middle East itself (I'll get to North Africa in a minute). As for Syria-Lebanon and Iraq, the only pressure from the first was that of the European powers, chiefly France, to protect the local Christians from Muslim mistreatment. The French Mandate over Syria lasted for all of a quarter-century. It was not "colonial" in nature; there was no exploitation of the locals, but rather it became a net expense for the French. So too was the British Mandate in Mesopotamia, which lasted for a mere dozen years, from 1920 to 1932 (and when the British left, the Arabs promptly started massacring the Assyrians, though they had given assurances that they would not).What about Egypt? Egypt was given, for the only time in its modern history, or perhaps ever, an example of a relatively honest and efficient civil service under Lord Cromer. This did not amount to colonialism. Indeed, it created the conditions which allowed for the development of the Egyptian economy and the rule of law, while keeping corruption to a minimum. It constituted the best-ruled period in modern Egypt's history. And when that ended in 1922, the effects did not disappear but lingered, even unto the final fall of Farouk in 1952 -- when the colonels not only removed the ancien regime, but promptly "nationalized" all the property owned by the Greeks, the Jews, the Italians, and others who had lived in Egypt for generations.
As for Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria -- well, in Libya everything that was built that is worth noting either was left by the Romans, or was built by much later craftsmen from the Italian peninsula who arrived early in the last century. If that constitutes "colonialism" -- and compare the rule under Italy with that under either King Idris or Khaddafy -- few people would not have welcomed such a fate.
In Morocco and Tunisia, the French stayed as colonial powers for all of 40 years (roughly 1912 to 1952, give or take a year or two). Forty years, out of 1350 years of Islamic rule. Yet some would have us believe that when the French came and built hospitals and universities and offered the gift of the French language, and therefore of French literature, French rationality, French everything, that this was a terrible thing, a thing to be deplored. Nonsense.
What about Algeria, the only place in all of what is wrongly called "the Arab world" that really did have a colonial presence for more than a few brief decades? The French, like the Americans and others, had tried to stamp out the attacks on their shipping: for centuries Christian-owned vessels and seamen were the object of attack from North Africa. The Americans managed to prevent attacks on their ships by a firm display of force. But when they left, the French continued to suffer. Finally, in 1830, they seized Algiers. And they remained in Algeria until 1962, for 132 years. There, as elsewhere, they built hospitals and schools. They created, from land that had not been correctly tilled or mostly not tilled at all, thriving agriculture -- including vineyards. There is not an educated Berber or Arab today who does not compare favorably the state of Algeria under the French with the monstrous things that happened after the victory of the FLN, and its continuous misrule by the army and corrupt generals who, however, are models of decency and deportment compared to the F.I.S. and other Islamist groups (see Michael Willis, "The Islamist Challenge to Algeria.")
Arab Muslims suffered far less from European colonialism than did any other people in the soi-disant Third World -- far less than those in sub-Saharan Africa, in Central and South America, and in Asia. Indeed, it might be argued, and has been by many non-Arab ex-Muslims, such as Anwar Shaikh (in his "Islam: The Arab Imperialism"), that the most successful imperialism or colonialism of all time, has been that of the Arabs themselves, who used Islam as a vehicle for arabization, especially of the cultural and linguistic kind: the taking of Arab names and false Arab lineages, using 7th century Arab customs as a model for all time, being required to read one's holy books in Arabic, and so on. That is what the Berbers are keenly aware of, and the Kurds, and the black African Muslims in Darfur.
It was the Arabs from Arabia who settled themselves in, and laid down the law to, every non-Arab and non-Muslim people they conquered. Even so, it took quite a while to become a majority in these lands. In Egypt, for example, the Christian Copts, the original Egyptians, were still a majority in the first part of the 13th century. But then a campaign of persecution, murder, and forcible conversion began, and within a short period they were reduced from more than 50% of the population to about 10% -- their proportion today.
Let us discuss the thousand years, and more, of Arab "colonialism" in the Berber lands, in sub-Saharan Africa, in Persia, or of the arabization that accompanied islamization, even if that islamization was conducted by non-Arabs, in Hindustan, in the East Indies (look at what happened to the Hindus and the Buddhists who once made up the population of that vast archipelago), and everywhere else that islamization, a vehicle for Arab cultural and linguistic imperialism, takes place. When John Smith becomes Abdallah Smith, and Richard Jones becomes Muhammad Jones, and an entire past is jettisoned so that what some people in 7th century Arabia are reported to have said and done becomes a guide to existence, that is a greater imperialism than the easy-to-get-rid-of political kind. For it destroys one's own sense of one's past, or one's link to one's ancestors. With Islam, you begin as if anew, and the pre-Islamic or non-Islamic past is no longer of symathetic interrest. That successful Arab colonialism shoud be compared to the almost complete absence of "colonialism" in the classic sense, anywhere that Europeans ruled over Arabs and Muslims (the real colonialism was practiced elsewhere, with results not nearly as malign as depicted in the press today) -- save for the one exception of Algeria. And that exception lasted all of 132 years, and the state of Algeria since the French left has been, in every respect, far worse than it was when they were present.
Yes, French rule in North Africa, and especially in Algeria, in comparison to what preceded it, or what came after, can be seen more clearly now that both that European "colonialism" -- and the "de-colonialism" that ended it -- have been gone for a half-century. And what one realizes is that the French presence, not only the building of roads and buildings, the hospitals and schools, but the cultural gift of the French language and literature and possibilities of free inquiry and thought, represented in those lands a brief, but lucid interval of Western civilization.
Bravo, Hugh! Blaming colonialism for the ills of the Muslim world is just another form of scapegoating. The Muslim apologists should be willing to respond to the following question: Regardless of what you believe happened in the past, how does that absolve the present day Muslim leaders from their present day responsibilities to govern honestly, to develop modern economies, to follow basic principles of the rule of law and equal justice under the law and to end discriminatory treatment of racial and religious minorities? I'll say one other thing: If the present day Muslim leaders are going to continue to blame their problems on colonialism, they should be intellectually honest and renounce the primary legacies of colonialism, which are the nation-states created by the colonial powers. Let Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria etc. be broken up into as many different pieces as necessary to undo the colonial legacy. But if the Muslim leaders say this is impractical, they should simply shut-up and finally start accepting responsibility for their own actions.
Great article, Hugh.
Gee, could it be that dark skinned people like Arabs could have been oppressive colonialists? I thought you had to be a George Bush look-alike to do that! At least, that's what I learned when I attended Columbia...
Fascinating Hugh, historical, tour de force and a must read for all who do not know history. My grandfather in Spain would tell me a similar story of the hoax of
al-andalus and how of it's false history of tolerance. In truth, it was conquest and Arab imperialism. He passed on to me the truth of Muslim Spain and the Spanish peoples resistance to Dimmitude and Jihad.
Bravo Hugh!
One minor correction: the Mameluques were not of Turkic stock, they belonged to a Circassian slave military caste that eventually subdued their Egyptian Muslim masters and controlled the country. That means that they originally came from the Caucasus, not from the Turkic Asian steppes and not even from modern Turkey herself.
As to the rest of the article, all I can exclaim is "Bravo!".
European colonialism was initially implemented upon a notion of cultural (and in some cases racial) supremacy by the European settlers over the indigenous populations. What is surprising, is that the members of the best "team" went out of their way to find and protect aspects of the native culture. Just look at what the French and the English did in Egypt, or what the English did in India. Compare that to what the Muslims did to the nose of the Sphinx and to the sandstone that one upon a time covered the great pyramid of Kufu.
Excellent article! We also need to start talking direct words about the deploring consequences of the Arab and Turkish colonialism in Europe, for instance in Spain and the Balcans. Most history books still describe this period of the most terrible and disgusting opression and exploatation as tolerant. Indoctrination of generations of Europeans with history books written more or less from the perspective of the Moslem "Herrenmensch" has also led to Europe´s powerlessnes when it comes to defending the fundaments of Judeo-Christian civilisation.
Regards,
Great Synopsis.
While reading I recalled the Anti-Colonial movements in Africa of the 60s that in reality were puppets of Soviet expansionism. Some of the converts to that failed philosophy ended up in the State Department or became Professors in US Universities, and propagandized the USA.
"If the present day Muslim leaders are going to continue to blame their problems on colonialism..."
The biggest, loudest, most obnoxious and noxious voices blaming the world's problems on Western colonialism have been, for several decades now, Westerners themselves. Muslims are merely capitalizing on this Western pathology of excessive self-criticism, and would have little effect on us if we regained our right mind. When will some of you numbskulls get this!!!???
"European colonialism was initially implemented upon a notion of cultural (and in some cases racial) supremacy..."
European colonialism began as cultural supremacy (but still, the most beneficent and moral cultural supremacy in the history of Mankind);
it gradually evolved morally and institutionally into a cultural superiority (which, given the character of Third World cultures then and now is difficult to argue against);
then its evolution sped up (beginning in the late 18th century but only really picking up steam in the late 19th and then after the civilizational crisis of WWI and its aftermath) as it careered into multiculturalist equivalence;
and finally devolved as a fabulous invalid of powerful impotence in the late 20th century into pathologically self-critical inferiority.
This is where we find ourselves now, ill-equipped to deal with the problem of an Islam Redivivus.
One of your best, Hugh.
Thank you for helping to complete my education, and surely that of many others, by your writings. As j-dog above pointed out with respect to Columbia, you're a counter-balance to an academic establishment that is on a mission of political correctness and Western self-hatred.
Good post Dr Pepper.
My beloveds (Malik and Musa)
May the Creator of the heavens and the earth reward your valiant strivings in the den of inequity of the shaytin.
One ponders the question: Of all the professed religions of the world... WHY has Islam become the chief and sole obsession of so many Americans? Is it purely because of the events of September 11, or are there other reasons? What motivates so many people that are not Muslim to spend countless hours researching Islam if they want nothing to do with it?
Be sure, this is a dedicated, well-orchestrated, totally planned campaign being waged to disuade as many people as possible from their chosen religion (funny, they are not interested in converting the atheists, wiccans or satanists), and turn back as many Muslims as they can from their religion. If this were not so, you would be able to engage in intelligent dialogue with these people and discuss and compare religion respectfully without trading insults.
The tendency to apply today's standards to acts that occurred more than 1,400 years ago is also suspect, given the fact that Muslims are accused of living in the past and following a religion that is archaic and obsolete. The bible, revered by millions as irrefutable truth from God, is never put under similar scrutiny.
For example, Prophet Lot is reported to have slept with his two daughters after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorah at their urging, fearing that the world needed to be repopulated and they were the only survivors as seen in these direct quotes from the bible, NIV:
"Lot and His Daughters" NIV, Genesis 19:30-36
30 Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31 One day the older daughter said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is no man around here to lie with us, as is the custom all over the earth. 32 Let's get our father to drink wine and then lie with him and preserve our family line through our father."
33 That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and lay with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
34 The next day the older daughter said to the younger, "Last night I lay with my father. Let's get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and lie with him so we can preserve our family line through our father." 35 So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went and lay with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
36 So both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father. 37 The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab [g]; he is the father of the Moabites of today. 38 The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi [h] ; he is the father of the Ammonites of today.
Should we question the morals of Prophet Lot and his daughters for engaging in this obvious act of incest?
Still more distressing passages of immorality can be found in Genesis 38:13-18. I challenge anyone anywhere to find a single passage that says Muhammad slept with his daughters, committed adultery, or fornicated even once outside of marriage:
13 When Tamar was told, "Your father-in-law is on his way to Timnah to shear his sheep," 14 she took off her widow's clothes, covered herself with a veil to disguise herself, and then sat down at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that, though Shelah had now grown up, she had not been given to him as his wife.
15 When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. 16 Not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, he went over to her by the roadside and said, "Come now, let me sleep with you." "And what will you give me to sleep with you?" she asked.
17 "I'll send you a young goat from my flock," he said. "Will you give me something as a pledge until you send it?" she asked.
18 He said, "What pledge should I give you?"
"Your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand," she answered. So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him. 19 After she left, she took off her veil and put on her widow's clothes again.
And in the following passages, David lies with Bathshebah, a black hittite woman, the wife of Uriah, plots for him to be killed in battle, and earns the wrath of God. Notice that the prophets of the bible did not shy away from killing and warfare. Also notice that in 2 Samuel 11:4, Bathshebah lay with David after ritually "purifying" herself from "uncleanness". Why was she considered "unclean"?:
2 Samuel 11:1-26 (NIV)
David and Bathsheba
1 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then [a] she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."
6 So David sent this word to Joab: "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent him to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him. 9 But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master's servants and did not go down to his house.
10 When David was told, "Uriah did not go home," he asked him, "Haven't you just come from a distance? Why didn't you go home?"
11 Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!"
12 Then David said to him, "Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 At David's invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master's servants; he did not go home.
14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15 In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die."
16 So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were. 17 When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David's army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died.
18 Joab sent David a full account of the battle. 19 He instructed the messenger: "When you have finished giving the king this account of the battle, 20 the king's anger may flare up, and he may ask you, 'Why did you get so close to the city to fight? Didn't you know they would shoot arrows from the wall? 21 Who killed Abimelech son of Jerub-Besheth [b] ? Didn't a woman throw an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?' If he asks you this, then say to him, 'Also, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.' "
22 The messenger set out, and when he arrived he told David everything Joab had sent him to say. 23 The messenger said to David, "The men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance to the city gate. 24 Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the king's men died. Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead."
25 David told the messenger, "Say this to Joab: 'Don't let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another. Press the attack against the city and destroy it.' Say this to encourage Joab."
26 When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. 27 After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the LORD.
Should the bible as a result be viewed as a manual of incest and debauchery because of these passages? What do these passages tell us about the lowly status of women during these times?
And what sense shall we make of the following biblical passages about the sons of Prophet Noah? It has been a long-standing dispute that these passages infer that the black-skinned peoples of Africa are the descendents of Ham, the Canaanites, cursed by Noah to be the eternal "slaves" of their brothers (see Genesis 9:24-27). If this is not true, why haven't these passages been stricken from the bible, as they would have Muslims strike offensive passages from the qur'an? Note also that Noah is reported to have lived 950 YEARS, when the average life expectancy of a human today is about 75 years. I don't hear anyone challenging the validity of this claim.
The Sons of Noah (NIV) Genesis 9:18-28
18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth.
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded [a] to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
"Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers."
26 He also said,
"Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem. [b]
27 May God extend the territory of Japheth [c] ;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be his [d] slave."
28 After the flood Noah lived 350 years. 29 Altogether, Noah lived 950 years, and then he died.
My beloveds, I give these few passages to you as an example of the deception, dishonesty, and twisted purpose of those who attack you here, who spend all of their energies and exhaust their knowledge and resources attacking Muslims and what we believe, without looking at what they claim to believe themselves.
May God the Creator grant you peace and mercy and forgiveness of your sins. Salutations of peace to Muhammad and all the prophets and companions of heaven.
"The tendency to apply today's standards to acts that occurred more than 1,400 years ago is also suspect..."
-- from a posting above
One can't have it both ways. One cannot describe the behavior of Muhammad as that of the Perfect Man, uswa husana, al-insan al-kamil, and take his acts and words as the immutable guide for all time, in all places, and then, when these acts and words are adduced by people who are not Believers, but Infidels, and who believe that they have every right to find out exactly what is contained in the Hadith (in one of the collections of the most authoritative muhaddithin, such as Bukhari or Muslim) and in the Sira, and then argue that, after all, this happend 1400 years ago.
Yes, it did. But Muslims themselves do not see it that way. They see the model of someone behaving a certain way, doing certain things, approving of or forbidding certain things (and even the times when Muhammad was silent are carefully analyzed for their meaning) as being forever relevant.
You can't both suggest that Infidels "put it all in historical context" at the same time that Muhammad's words and acts are regarded as beyond reproach, for all time.
Which is it: historical context, so that Muslims today can ignore or even deplore, and thereby change, certain things, or no historical context, because just as the Qur'an is not regarded as a historical document, with its own history that can be studied (and is being studied, but almost exclusively by non-Muslim students of early Islam and the early Qur'an), but as uncreated, so Muhammad's words and acts, thought they took place (according to Believers) in a certain time, are held to be models for all time, outside of any historical context.
You can choose A. Or not-A. But logically, you cannot have both.
European colonialism (and to a much more limited extent American colonialism) helped lift much of the world out of the hell of tribalist warfare and give the world vital institutions such as parliaments, roman law, representative government, etc. The singular exception to this observation would be Spain which (wouldn't you know) was strongly-influenced by Islam.
Islam gave the world nothing except an endless procession of horrors paraded as God's will.
In the New World however Europeans must also take credit for the establishment of the slave trade and a slavery-based economy. And unfortunately, the United States has often been incorrectly blamed for that. In fact, it was the United States that ended the slave trade in 1807.
It is a brave thing in these latter days to come out with a position like this -- Despite the jubilant Eurocentric tone in the article above, it is especially brave to state such ideas when the Europeans, having had a far longer and sometimes heinous colonial track record, now comfort themselves in their frenzy of self-loathing hatred by slandering America with the rubric of "Imperialist" and "Hegemon". They often can be seen, even here at this site, projecting their guilt (real or imagined) onto America, her culture, her administrations, her people. Mr. Fitzgerald reveals himself to be more Eurocentric than most Europeans are today!
How great the burden for America today! We must hold up the banner of the West -- prop up the rotting hulk of Europe in her dotage, symbolically and literally fight for the legacy of the West, all the while being sniped at symbolically and literally by Europeans, self-loathing Americans, AND the always vile Islamists!
The legacy which we were bequeathed by our forebears -- and which so many have died for will fall into oblivion if we don't carry this burden...
The Islamic Jihad must be fought and defeated if the Western tradition is to survive... But will we survive? So far, when an American thinks more highly of the European track record than the Europeans do themselves, and with the Muslim in Europe and abroad exploiting every last ounce of propaganda value from that predicament -- I don't see much help coming from this bankrupt and aging sector of the West --
I hope fervently I am proved wrong -- but France and Germany still seem to be the intellectual center of gravity in Europe... They still harbor delusions of grandeur to repudiate and subborn America's position as leader -- We have a Europe, for the time being stalled in her grandiose schemes, still utterly drunk with her plans to institute and empower supra-national governmental agencies such as the UN, the so-called "World Court", the "EU" project, and a neverending proliferation of alphabet soup of NGOs controlled by brigades of Eurocratic fantasists...
So Europe! Europeans !!! -- you may have a great legacy indeed! (though not without taint, I could add)... I say to you-- 'what have you done for us lately, Europe?' -- What have you done to protect the legacy of the West against what may be her gravest foe?
"The world wonders..."
A polite correction has arrived from Hamburg, Germany, informing me that General Kleber, described in my article above as having converted to Islam, was not the French general who did so, but rather his successor, General "Abdallah" Menou. So the Alsatian hero of Heliopolis apparently never became a Muslim, even in name only, in order to gain the greater loyalty of the locals.
Perhaps someone can help me figure out why I thought Kleber himself had converted to Islam. Perhaps I read an account many years ago too rapidly, and the line that moved from Kleber to his successor, was given short shrift by the mislineations of memory. Europeans have converted, briefly, for the sake of convenience. They have also been asked to, for the sake of convenience. The French troops who finally ended the takeover of the Mosque in Mecca back in late November 1979, in order to enter Mecca at all, had to hastily "revert" to Islam. I doubt that too many of them took it seriously. And duty called. And no doubt the pay was good, because one can just imagine how much the grateful House of Al-Saud was willing to pay the French for both their services, and their subsequent silence.
As for that place on Avenue Kleber, romantics may wish to know that it was, in addition to having among its guests assorted unpleasant rulers whose tab was picked up by the French taxpayers, the hotel where Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn used to go for their Parisian rendezvous. At a still later period, Serge Gainsbourg would play the piano downstairs. The famous suite where a former President of Lebanon liked to stay, for months on end, is very grand. The greatcoated chasseur who stands outside the hotel has a splendid bearing. Not quite as impressive as the motionless Turkish guards who replace each other at intervals, on duty in front of Dolmabahce Palace -- but close.
That should whet a few appetites.
Hugh,
Actually, Napoleon himself pretended to convert to Islam to prevent a jihad being declared against him by the Sublime Porte. It was a Takiyya in reverse. Since the Egyptians were by then so used to being ruled by foriegners, they could care less that he was French as long as he followed their cult. As soon as he left Egypt he reverted to Catholicism and even cajoled Pope Pius VII into crowning him as a new Charlemagne.
In reality, Napoleon was a cynic who would feign whatever religion or ideology that was to his advantage at the time.
One also suspects that his "conversion" also had the advantage of helping him bed a few Turkish women, while he was away in Egypt.
The host of JW/DW would do us all a favor if he were to delete the spamming by one 'hatsheput', his/her postings are OT, repeated on every thread, non-sensical and detract from the issues, which is what trolls intend.
Detto fatto.
It also should be remembered that the Western Colonial experience was the apex of religious freedom in the Muslim world (as far as non-Muslim are concerned).
PEPPER: "The biggest, loudest, most obnoxious and noxious voices blaming the world's problems on Western colonialism have been, for several decades now, Westerners themselves."
Amen old buddy. This is why an education in a Western university no longer facilitates adoption or even just appreciation of the intellectual traditions of the enlightenment, but instead validates the most obscene anti-Western prejudices existing today in the world.
PEPPER: "European colonialism began as cultural supremacy (but still, the most beneficent and moral cultural supremacy in the history of Mankind);"
I'll have to differ with you here my friend. The fate of the indigenous at the hands of the conquistadores, the Indian genocide in America and Argentina, nor the Atlantic slave-trade can be desribed as "benificent."
I see no problem in the exposition of the past sins of the West. It's the whitewashing of the sins of the "other" that is so craven and such a betrayal of academic and intellectual standards.
Hugh-you likely know this:
Churchill was a lone voice that advised that Britain should not enter the Middle East after World War I, but wanted the defeated Turks (Germany's ally during the war) to continue to rule the Arabs. He wanted the Ottoman Empire to be kept in tact.
From David Fromkin's book "A Peace to End All Peace-the Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East," page 494:
Churchill: "We ought to come to terms with Mustafa Kemal and arrive at a good peace with Turkey," he argued, in a memorandum to the Cabinet on 23 November 1920, so as to stop estranging "powerful, durable and necessary Turkish and Mohammeden forces. We should thus re-create that Turkish barrier to Russian ambitions which has always been of utmost importance to us."
However, Churchill did not prevail, and became very frustrated with Prime Minister LLoyd George, who he believed had a "vendetta against the Turks," in part because of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians during the World War. Churchill seems to have had a presentiment of evil in Britain's involvement in the Middle East, similar to his later presentments about Hitler and Nazi Germany. Maybe he was right.
The title has been changed to make sure that no one confuses the intent of the writer. The article was not intended to be a celebration of European colonialism always and everywhere. It had two main points:
1) The Arabs suffered least from European colonialism, and indeed benefited most in the handful of cases where there was such colonialism. Most of the Arab world -- including of course what is now Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf statelets -- had no intervention by the Europeans save to put paid to the Arab trade in black African slaves. No settlement of people from England and France -- the main colonial powers -- took place. No exploitation of resources took place (if anything the discovery of oil, and uses for that oil, which was owed to Americans and the British, was a great boon to them, and the oil-producing states currently charge about 60 times the actual cost of lifting a barrel of crude).
2) Arab "colonialism" -- that is, the cultural and linguistic imperialism, reflecting the Arab supremacist ideology that naturally comoes with islamization, and that only here and there (as in Persia) was successfully rejected, is far more powerful, long-lasting, and damaging than the kind of imperialism, or "colonialism," practiced for a few centuries by the European powers, and for 1350 years by the Arabs. Think of the Copts in Egypt, who even as late as 1250 constituted 50% of the population, and who have been reduced to a remannt, constantly under attack and threat of greater persecution by Muslim Arabs, or by descendants of converted Copts who have become convinced that they are Muslim Arabs and have nothing in common with the Copts. Think of the Berbers in North Africa, who under Arab rule in Algeria were, until recently, forbidden even to speak their own language outside the home (the cause of riots in Tizi-Ouzou).
The original title was too broad, and may have for some implied endorsement of, for example, the massacres of King Leopold in the Congo, or those by the Germans in German East Africa. Not at all. I am keenly aware of what was wrong, and what was right -- about European colonialism. America, too, began as a colony, or a series of them. The English language (see Samuel Daniel's prediction come true) and the English common law have more than made up for the Stamp Act, and short-lived taxation without representation, and a few things like that.
I'm very glad you made this title change, and this clarification.
How ironic that our own willingness to confront and own the prior transgressions of the West has become such a propaganda tool for our enemies. They certainly exhibit no similar honor or intellectual honesty regarding their various and innumerable crimes and shortcomings --
This goes for nearly every Muslim on planet Earth, as well as all the self-loathing Western-bashing "intellectuals", marxists, religious fanatics and anarchists which populate the Planet.
In a post 9/11 world, and especiallly with the Islamic Jihad in the ascendancey, many or most of these malignant persons should be scrutinized as possible enemies, or dangerous collaborators with same...
Great article Hugh. Next time u might write about the belief that many Muslims express about colonialism, mainly, that the West in general and the U.S. in particular subverted self determination over the years in the M.E. by "propping up dictators". Your analysis on this issue would be great
RE: The biggest, loudest, most obnoxious and noxious voices blaming the world's problems on Western colonialism have been, for several decades now, Westerners themselves.
And their leader would be Jimmy Carter!!!
I won't call him former Pres because he is not
worthy of such. Clinton is not to far behind.
Carter was the worst president in American history. Not even close.
Cornelius --
PEPPER: "European colonialism began as cultural supremacy (but still, the most beneficent and moral cultural supremacy in the history of Mankind);"
"I'll have to differ with you here my friend. The fate of the indigenous at the hands of the conquistadores, the Indian genocide in America and Argentina, nor the Atlantic slave-trade can be desribed as "benificent.""
I didn't say Western colonialism was simply beneficent; I said it was the most beneficent -- implied: compared with all other (supremacist) imperialisms in history.
"I see no problem in the exposition of the past sins of the West."
The problem of the modern West is not in an exposition of past sins and self-criticism in general -- it is in the pathological excess of this which has become the norm.
RE: Carter was the worst president in American history.
What is disturbing is that Carter still spouts off and has an audience.
"The problem of the modern West is not in an exposition of past sins and self-criticism in general -- it is in the pathological excess of this which has become the norm."
No question about it.
Horowitz just released 'The Professors'....a vivid documentation of this "pathological excess."
Frank:
If Churchill said what you say, he was ill-informed. Far from being a bulwark against the Russians, Kemal not yet Ataturk was busy in 1920 making a deal with the Bolsheviks (whose Commissar for Nationalities was one Josip Vissarionovic Djugashvili a.k.a. Stalin) to jointly squash the Armenians and the other Transcaucasians. The Soviets were also of help in his internal wars. In 1923, he was imitated by the Germans, who had been impressed by the way Kemal had managed to reverse the terms of the peace treaty (and massacre a few hundred thousand more Christians into the bargain), and who decided that a deal with the Soviets, shutting out the West, was the thing to do to break the Versailles settlement. The Treaty of Rapallo, as it was called, brought down Lloyd George, broke the Liberal Party and ended their importance in British politics, and was the beginning of a series of hostile acts by the German government which reached their climax in the famous hyper-inflation of 1923-4, which was deliberately engineered by the Reichsbank and the Reich government in order to break the whole European financial structure. Meanwhile Kemal Pasha, undisturbed by the squabbling Allies, was consolidating his state.
I totally agree that the Western argument for the Arab conditions is bunk.
I am trying to puzzle through the present constructs of why the Arabs, so close to Europe, often only a days sail, or less, are as they are. There is no physical reason. So, it must be some well-distributed mode of thought that has persisted over a long time and remained in the face of brutal Western incursions and European hegemony. I think it is safe that we can rule out everything save Islam. Islam is the only force that has remained as a constant. The west says, or at least we do, that Islam is the problem. The Muslims say no. Is there anywhere that a few decades after Muslimization, that it and its people haven’t gone downhill? Even non Muslim Africa, which really did have long term, resource exploiting, European colonization, even there the statistical economic factors are superior to the Arab world. An Arab world that is right next to the historically wealthiest continent in history. (As an aside ditto the observation of the Palestinians next to the Israelis.) It seems that what was said of Arafat can be said of the Arabs, ‘That they never miss missing an opportunity.”
I had a cousin who worked as a technical teacher in Arabic countries. He didn’t speak Arabic. He would give a lesson with an interpreter. He was giving a lesson on a particular engine. He noticed as he was pointing out the various components that the interpreter was using the same word. He pulled the interpreter aside and asked what was going on, and the interpreter said that Arabic uses the same word for different components of the engine, such that something might be described as ‘fix the thing, within in the thing, next to the thing.”
So, the Arabs have a language that doesn’t take in new words, thoughts, concepts. They practice a religion that freeze frames to the doings-on of a delusional 7 century thief, and clerics. Throw in a nice draft of socialism and a world that is warp speeding away and here we have it.
Arthur Miller, the Harvard law professor was once asked if everyone should get a law degree, and he said no because law was a form of brain damage and you begin to believe that things that are not real are real, and things that are real not real. A billion plus people that have one or both forms of brain damage. Ug, the welfare, toxic state from hell.
I suspect those Muslims that we meet that are successful, are, in the workings of their brains, already hardwired as westerners. The drop in communication costs, satellite tv, cheap air fare and Internet are all now sweeping over Arab and Muslim youth. And the Islamist hucksters know it, and they know their future, if this continues, is about as successful as those who still sing the Soviet Communist Party praises outside Lenin’s tomb on the weekends. Further, who needs to speak Arabic? What, so you can make friends with the Chinese? The Russians? It’s not the language of business, or science. It has got to be a dying language save by force, isolation and thinning custom.
Osama wanted the clash of civilizations. This is just how the Communists always wanted to polarize and shatter an existing order such that they, even being a small disciplined minority could come and pick up the reigns of power and use the desperate pleas for order as fuel for rule.
This is why the Taliban were able to come to power in the war shattered Afghanistan, and why the Communists always had such success in filling the void, world wide, after nations had war and it’s destruction of their old orders.
I think we’ll make it. We are Darwin(ing) out failed social species by the hundreds each year. I don’t know how the Islamist can win the race against western values and life styles. I don’t even think the Arabic language will survive.
I just don’t think it will be pretty, and I’m afraid our cocooned Eloi elites will have many of us killed in a struggle that is only just beginning and will last for generations.