A world Without Islam pdfdrive com

The Struggle for Independence:
Islam? Or Nationalism?
Resistance against foreign domination is a basic instinct in all cultures. And the
colonial powers dominating the Muslim world differed from their subjects not
only ethnically, but also religiously: a colonizing Christian West over a
conquered Muslim East—or over a Hindu India or a Confucian/Buddhist China.
Thus, resistance to imperial power naturally stresses both ethnic as well as
religious differences with the imperial foreigner. Why would religion not be used
as an important fault line, and, additionally, as a way to “sanctify” the ethnic
resistance struggle? And monotheistic religions, with theological certainty about
their revealed character, may represent the most potent religious force to
combine with nationalism.
Indeed, religion can sometimes be a more effective rallying force than mere
ethnicity since it appeals to a higher power—at least for a certain interval, until
the blood ties of ethnicity surpass it. Not surprisingly, then, Islam was regularly
pressed into service in the anti-imperial struggle. But the issue was anticolonial
resistance and not religious war. It was on a country-by-country ethnic basis
rather than a cohesive transnational religious movement. Nor should we forget
that the anticolonial resistance of Muslims was part of a broad, global,
anticolonial movement that included Christians, Buddhists, Hindus,
Confucianists, and others against European domination.
One of the outstanding sources of resistance to imperial power in the Muslim
world came from Sufi groups. While Sufi brotherhoods are generally known for
a more quietist and mystic approach to Islam, they traditionally rank among the
best organized and most coherent groupings in society. They constitute ready-
made organizations—social-based NGOs, if you will—for maintaining Islamic
culture and practices under periods of extreme oppression and for fomenting
resistance and guerrilla warfare against foreign occupation. The history of Sufi