The Islamic world has been convulsed by the modernization process. Instead of
being one of the leaders of world civilization, Islamdom was quickly and
permanently reduced to a dependent bloc by the European powers. Muslims were
exposed to the contempt of the colonialists, who were so thoroughly imbued with
the modern ethos that they were often appalled by what they could only see as
the backwardness, inefficiency, fatalism and corruption of Muslim society. They
assumed that European culture had always been progressive, and lacked the
historical perspective to see that they were simply seeing a pre-modern
agrarian society, and that a few centuries earlier Europe had been just as
"backward." They often took it for granted that Westerners were inherently and
racially superior to "orientals" and expressed their contempt in myriad ways.
All this not unnaturally had a corrosive effect. Western people are often
bewildered by the hostility and rage that Muslims often feel for their culture,
which, because of their very different experience, they have found to be
liberating and empowering. But the Muslim response is not bizarre and
eccentric; because the Islamic world was so widespread and strategically
placed, it was the first to be subjected in a concerted, systematic manner to
the colonization process in the Middle East, India, Arabia, Malaya and a
significant part of Africa. Muslims in all these places very early felt the
brunt of this modernizing assault. Their response has not been simply a
reaction to the new West, but the paradigmatic reaction. They would not be able
to come to modernity as successfully or as smoothly as, for example, Japan,
which had never been colonized, whose economy and institutions had remained
intact and which had not been forced into a debilitating dependency on the
West.
The European invasion of the Islamic world was not uniform, but it was thorough
and effective. It began in Moghul India. During the latter half of the
18th century, British traders had established themselves in Bengal, and
at this time, when modernization was still in its infancy, the British lived on
a par with the Hindu and Muslim merchants. But this phase of British activity
is known as the "plundering of Bengal," because it permanently damaged the
local industry, and changed its agriculture so that Bengalis no longer grew
crops for themselves but produced raw materials for the industrialized Western
markets. Bengal had been reduced to second-class status in the world economy.
Gradually as the British became more "modern" and efficient themselves, their
attitude became more superior, and they were determined to "civilize" the
Indians, backed up by the Protestant missionaries who started to arrive in
1793. But the Bengalis were not encouraged to evolve a fully industrialized
society of their own; the British administrators introduced only those aspects
of modern technology that would reinforce their supremacy and keep Bengal in a
complementary role. The Bengalis did benefit from British efficiency, which
kept such disasters as disease, famine and war at bay, and the population
increased as a result; but this created new problems of overcrowding and
poverty, since there was no option of migration to the towns, as in the West,
and the people all had to stay on the land.
The plundering of Bengal economically led to political domination. Between 1798
and 1818, by treaty or by military conquest, British rule was established
throughout India, except in the Indus Valley, which was subdued between 1843
and 1849. In the meantime, the French had tried to set up an empire of their
own. In 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte occupied Egypt, hoping to establish a base in
Suez that would cut the British sea routes to India. He brought with him a
corps of scholars, a library of modern European literature, a scientific
laboratory and a printing press with Arabic type. From the start, the advanced
culture of Europe, coming as it did with a superbly efficient modern army, was
experienced in the Muslim Middle East as an assault. Napoleon's expedition to
Egypt and Syria failed. He had intended to attack British India from the north,
with the help of Russia. This gave Iran a wholly new strategic importance, and
for the next century Britain established a base in the south of the country,
while the Russians tried to get control of the north. Neither wanted to make
Iran a full colony or protectorate (until oil was discovered there in the early
twentieth century), but both powers dominated the new Qajar dynasty, so that
the shahs did not dare to make a move without the support of at least one of
them. As in Bengal, both Britain and Russia promoted only the technology that
furthered their own interests and blocked such inventions as the railway, which
might have benefited the Iranian people, in case it endangered their own
strategic positions.
The European powers colonized one Islamic country after another. France
occupied Algeria in 1830, and Britain Aden nine years later. Tunisia was
occupied in 1881, Egypt in 1882, the Sudan in 1889 and Libya and Morocco in
1912. In 1915 the Sykes-Picot agreement divided the territories of the moribund
Ottoman Empire (which had sided with Germany during the First World War)
between Britain and France in anticipation of victory. After the war, Britain
and France duly set up protectorates and mandates in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine,
Iraq and Transjordan. This was experienced as an outrage, since the European
powers had promised the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire independence. In
the Ottoman heartlands, Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk (1881-1938), was able
to keep the Europeans at bay and set up the independent state of Turkey.
Muslims in the Balkans, Russia and Central Asia became subject to the new
Soviet Union. Even after some of these countries had been allowed to become
independent, the West often continued to control the economy, the oil or such
resources as the Suez Canal. European occupation often left a legacy of bitter
conflict. When the British withdrew from India in 1947, the Indian subcontinent
was partitioned between Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, which are to this day
in a state of deadly hostility, with nuclear weapons aimed at each other's
capitals. In 1948 the Arabs of Palestine lost their homeland to the Zionists,
who set up the Jewish secular state of Israel there, with the support of the
United Nations and the international community. The loss of Palestine became a
potent symbol of the humiliation of the Muslim world at the hands of the
Western powers, who seemed to feel no qualms about the dispossession and
permanent exile of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
home · portraits of ordinary muslims · introduction · major themes · interviews · faqs
readings & links · discussion · teacher's guide
producer chat · tapes & transcripts · press · credits · privacy
FRONTLINE · wgbh · pbsi
web site copyright WGBH educational foundation
| |
