A world Without Islam pdfdrive com

Anti-Imperial Rebellion
Rebellion and struggle in the Muslim world against foreign domination actually
came surprisingly late in the history of the anticolonial movement. Looking
back, it was the Americas that first rose against their European masters of
Britain, Spain, and Portugal. But these rebellions did not represent the struggle
of native populations against European colonial rule, but rather rebellion by
European colonials themselves resisting the heavy-handed controls of their own
metropoles—quite different from later anticolonial struggles elsewhere in the
world.
The next key phase of anticolonial or self-determination movements actually
emerged from a series of Christian revolts in the Balkans against the Muslim
Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. A key source of their success lay with
the support of European powers and Russia, which were ready to back Christian
revolts in order to whittle down the power and size of the Ottoman state, subvert
it, and gain new clients in the region. The Christian character of these rebellions
stands in stark contrast to the basic loyalty of the Muslim populations under
Ottoman rule, who still perceived themselves as part of a legitimate
multinational Islamic empire—regardless of whatever particular grievances they
had with specific local policies of the empire. As a result, Muslim rulers
developed anxieties over the susceptibility of Christian minorities to rebellion,
especially at the beck and call of Western states. Indeed, one hundred and fifty
years ago, Muslim leaders could have spoken with some accuracy of “the bloody
borders of Christianity” in stirring up rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. The
Ottoman Empire did face local periodic rebellions by Muslims as well, but it was
far more limited.
For most of the Arab world, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of
World War I did not spell “independence” for them at all. In a cruel turn of
events, immediately after the war, European powers quickly took over most of
the Arab world as “mandates” and placed them under imperial domination.
Thus, successful rebellion against European imperialism by Muslims mainly
took place as late as the twentieth century. (One major exception was the
extensive Muslim involvement in the Indian mutiny against British colonial rule
in India in 1857, and Afghan routing of British imperial ventures there.) The first
Muslim state to achieve some kind of independence was Afghanistan in 1919.
Iraq was next, but achieved only nominal independence from Britain in 1932;
the British continued to fully dominate the Iraqi government and its policies via
indirect rule and an unpopular military presence there for twenty-six more years.

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Most other Muslim states only achieved limited or nominal forms of
independence, usually under pliable Western-selected rulers, and only after
World War II. The fact that so many Muslim states achieved independence so
relatively late helps account for the raw emotions still linked with anti-
imperialism among Muslims today; meanwhile, neo-imperial Western political
interference is still ongoing in quite intensive ways.

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