1.
Reactions to
the West after WWI: nationalism and
Islamic movements
a)
b)
c)
d) Arab East -- ditto
e)
2.
Zionism
We
considered in our last meeting the effect of the First World War and the peace
settlement on the
The
growth of nationalist feelings in the
There
was another response to the Western challenge that emerged among the political
elites of the
On
the intellectual side, a number of influential thinkers sought to reconcile
aspects of the modern world with an updated understanding of Islam, and thus to
reinvigorate the Islamic polity. Jamal
al-Din al-Afghani, a peripatetic teacher and political activist, sought to
inspire political rejuvenation based on a reassertion of Islamic identity from
Afghanistan and India to Egypt and Istanbul. cAbd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi
expressed the view that a revival of Islam required a revival of Arab society
and political life in his call for an Arab caliphate to lead the Muslims.
Rashid Rida echoed this critique in his writings and teachings.
While neither of these men could be considered an Arab nationalist, their
arguments provided fuel for the fire of the nationalist movement, and perhaps
even more importantly, gave an Islamic rationale for Arab nationalism.
Let
us now examine the relative influence of these two strands of thought, the
nationalist and the Islamic, in the various political movements which developed
in the Middle East in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The two elements mixed in various ways in the different movements, and
the nature of that mixture was to a great extent responsible for the political
development of the Middle East during the inter-war period.
First,
let's consider the Turkish parts of the
After
the defeat of the empire in World War I, and its occupation by various Allied
armies, Mustapha Kemal Attaturk led an explicitly nationalist, Turkish political
movement which gained independence for a Turkish state in Anatolia.
Turkish nationalism was in many ways the most anti-Islamic of any of the
local nationalist movements. The
Young Turks and Kemal Attaturk both saw the Sultan as their enemy, and were
opposed by the clerical establishment which surrounded the Sultans and which had
benefitted from cAbd al-Hamid's Pan-Islamic policy.
Attaturk in particular was able to take advantage of the fact that the
Sultan had signed the humiliating Treaty of Sevres immediately after WWI, which
would have reduced Turkey to a vassal state of Britain.
Attaturk's revolution, while unable to shake the Islamic identification
of the Turkish people, went a long way towards de-emphasizing Islamic themes in
public life -- though certainly not eliminating them (success recently of
Islamist parties; past efforts by other parties to appeal to Islamist
sentiments). As a result of the
success of Ataturk's military campaigns, foreign forces were expelled from what
we now call Turkey, and a new treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, was negotiated
with the Great Powers establishing Turkish independence.
In
both Egypt and in the Eastern Arab world, the local political movements which
grew up during this time period were an interesting mix of nationalist and
Islamic themes. This unstable
mixture could be maintained in the political realm because in each case the
political movement was aimed against an outside occupying power -- in the case
of Egypt, Great Britain; in the case of the Arab nationalists of Greater Syria
and Iraq, the French and British. Both
the nationalists and the Islamists could agree on the goal of opposing the
outside power, each for their own reasons, and this was enough to unite the
disparate forces for political purposes. While
it was nationalism that animated the local political leaders, for the most part,
it was the Islamic element, or rather the Islamic sanction provided for their
political activities (along with tribal and sectarian allegiances), that allowed
them to develop a more mass following, on the occasions when that occurred.
Egypt,
more than any other area of the Arab world, has had a millennial tradition of
being a state entity and its people a sense of themselves as Egyptians (along
with other forms of identification, such as Muslim and Arab). Influenced by
French education and the French political example, many Egyptians educated in
the modern way adopted an explicitly nationalist political rhetoric. The idiom
of the political leadership was nationalist, both out of personal conviction and
in order to include the substantial Christian minority in the movement, but it
did not reject the Islamic strain either.
The
nationalist idiom was the best suited for dealing with the British, and the Wafd
of Sacd Zaghlul and Mustapha Nahhas was an explicitly nationalist
party. But the mass support which
the nationalist movement received, particularly during the great revolt of 1919,
was clearly motivated more by xenophobia and by a distaste for foreign rule than
by any explicitly nationalist sentiment.
As a result of the 1919 revolt, Britain gave Egypt its independence, but
in such a circumscribed way that Britain remained the major power in local
politics (military issues, Suez canal, etc.).
Britain remained the ultimate arbiter of Egyptian politics, and played
off the palace, the Wafd and other parties to maintain the political balance.
Anti-British
feeling and social change in Egypt, particularly in the cities, led in the
1920's and 1930's to the emergence of new, ideological political groups to
challenge the old nationalist elite (Wafd, king, landowners). The local
Communist party had some success at organizing workers; Misr al-Fatat (Young
Egypt) organized Cairene youth along fascist lines; and most importantly, the
Muslim Brotherhood developed a large following in urban areas.
The Brotherhood was founded in 1929 by a charismatic schoolteacher from
Ismailia named Hasan al-Banna. al-Banna
advocated a return to Islamic principles in government and uncompromising
opposition to the British presence. His movement gained in strength during the
1930's, and received much favorable publicity for organizing volunteers to
participate in the 1948 War. But in
the period leading up to WWII, the British still dominated politics, in a
relationship of some tensions with the palace and the Wafd (economic interests
tie them together, political interests keep them apart).
The dominant political issue remained efforts by Egyptian politicians to
gain more freedom and independence from Britain (1936 Treaty leads to Egyptian
membership in League of Nations).
In
the Arab East, particularly greater Syria, we see this same mix of nationalist
and Islamic sentiments in the political movements of the time.
The idea of Arab nationalism was put forward explicitly by Arab
Christians, many of whom were Lebanese. These
Christians, who both had a greater familiarity with the political ideas of the
West and who were searching for some political formula in which they could be
full participants in the political life of their state, something denied to
Christians in the Ottoman Empire. However,
because of this particular Christian undertone to the concept, it would have
been very difficult for it to gain adherents outside of the narrow band of its
sectarian community and some other European-oriented Muslims.
However, as we have seen, the Islamic modernist movement provided an
Islamic rationale for opposition to the Turks.
It
is important to recognize that the vast majority of the Arab populations
remained loyal to the Ottoman Sultan during the war.
There were no mass risings against the Turks in support of Arab
independence. The Arab nationalist
movement, like the Egyptian nationalist movement, only developed a mass
following when European states came to occupy the Arab territories -- when
nationalist and Islamic political tendencies could find common ground in
opposition to the infidel, foreign occupier.
We see that in the massive uprisings in Iraq in 1919-20 against the
British, and the Syrian Revolt of 1925-26 against the French.
As
in Egypt, it was the nationalist idiom that dominated the leadership of the
movement. The modern educated
nationalists had the vocabulary to talk with and challenge their European
colonial masters, and the skills necessary to forge a political movement --
organizational and propagandistic talents developed in such modern professions
as law, military service and journalism. The
traditionally educated shaykhs and imams could not, at that time, rival them in
technique, and were accustomed to dependence upon and loyalty to political
authority. Thus for the most
part they were content to follow the nationalists lead in their joint endeavor
of opposing the colonial power. But
the mass support which the nationalists called upon and exploited in Syria and
Iraq was motivated more by tribal and religious/sectarian rationales than by the
foreign, European idiom of Arab nationalism.
In
Iraq, after the great rising of 1919-20 (tribally-based, but country-wide, in
reaction to British plans to resettle Indians in the area and rule directly from
London), the British set up a Hashemite monarchy under Faysal I.
There was a parliament, and parties, and like Egypt Iraq was formally
independent, but like Egypt it was the British who finally called the shots --
playing various factions against each other, maintaining military bases in the
country, officially serving as advisers to the government ministries, helping to
put down tribal and minority (Kurdish) revolts with the RAF.
The military became increasingly involved in politics during this time --
first military coup in the Arab world was in Iraq in 1936.
Arab nationalist sentiment also grew in the military and in society, to
some extent encouraged by the palace (Hashemite legacy, goal of larger Arab
state). The political scene was
dominated by the effort by Iraqis to get more freedom from the British --
treaties of 1922, 1926, 1927 and finally 1930, with League of Nations
membership).
In
Syria, the French succeeded in separating off from their mandate a separate
state of Lebanon, to be dominated by their long-time Maronite allies.
But the French failed in a larger effort to divide the rest of Syria into
smaller states, based on confessional minorities (Druze in south; Alawi in
northwest) and regional divisions (Damascus v. Aleppo).
Arab nationalists resisted in various elections; revolt in Jabal Druze
that spread to rest of country in 1925-26. 1936
Treaty envisaged an independent Syria in 3 years.
It
is in
The
gap between the two groups grew as many of the modernists turned to a military
strong-man, Reza Khan, and strong central government, as the only way to unify
the country and implement reform. Reza
Khan upon becoming Shah launched a concerted attack on the power and
prerogatives of the clergy which left a bitter divide in the Iranian polity, a
divide whose results we can see today. Reza
Shah did succeed in reducing, but not eliminating the British role in the
country's domestic politics. New
treaty of 1928 ended the British system of direct relations with local tribal
shaykhs throughout the country. However,
British role in oil industry continued through the Anglo-Iranian (BP) dominance
of that sector.
Why
was it in
Second,
unlike in Turkey, Egypt or the Arab East, there was no formal European
occupation of the country to unite the Islamic and nationalist movements in a
single common struggle of long duration. Because
there was no formal colonial power, the natural advantage of the nationalists in
dealing with it was nullified, and the glue which held together the Egyptian and
Arab political movements was just not there in Iran.
Of course, despite its relative strength, the Islamic political movement
in Iran did not win out at this time. The
military was the final arbiter of politics in the fragmented and confused
political atmosphere of post-WW I Iran, and its strongman, Reza Khan, fancied
himself a modernizer in the tradition of Attaturk.
But the Islamic tendency in Iran bided its time and eventually came back
to overthrow Reza Khan's son and establish an Islamic republic in the country.
But that is another story, which we will discuss a little closer to the
end of the semester.
Where
does Zionism fit in to all of this? It
is certainly a nationalist movement, but it originated outside of the Middle
East entirely. Yet, in its own way,
Zionism was as much a reaction to the challenge of the West as was any of the
indigenous Middle Eastern political movements, and had its own secular-religious
tensions to deal with. Lets look at
the origins and development of the Zionist movement in the same framework we
applied to the other nationalist movements of the Middle East.
The
treatment of the Jews is perhaps the greatest collective blight on Western
civilization, not just in the 20th century but throughout the Christian era.
As we all know, Jews in the West were for centuries physically separated
from the rest of society, restricted residentially to ghettoes and in employment
to certain professions in which Christians would not engage.
During these centuries of restriction the Jewish communities of the West
developed a strong sense of communal solidarity and a whole range of social
institutions around which their collective life was organized, the most
important of these being Jewish law and Jewish education.
In these self-contained communities Western Jews developed a rich and
satisfying, but inbred culture. This
culture was as profoundly shaken by its encounter with modern Europe on the
intellectual and moral level as the Ottoman and Persian Empires were shaken on
the military level.
The
Enlightenment and the French Revolution led to an end in many areas of Europe of
the restrictions on Jews, and offered to Jews the prospect of full participation
in national societies. This offer
had a condition, however -- that Jews accept the Enlightenment notion that
religion was a matter of personal conscience, not community norms.
That is to say, the promise of acceptance was held out to Jews in
exchange for the process of assimilation. This
promise did not extend to Eastern Europe, where the large Jewish communities of
Rumania and Russia still lived under imposed restrictions, though even in those
areas there was some relaxation of those restrictions.
Given
this opportunity, many Jews in fact chose assimilation.
We can think of some of the great personalities of 19th century Europe,
men like Benjamin Disraeli and Karl Marx, who took full advantage of the
opportunities presented to Jews willing to play by, if we might call them,
"Enlightenment rules". Other Jews accepted the promise of assimilation
by joining revolutionary political organizations meant to overthrow the old
order; we notice the important role played by Russian Jews in the early
Communist movements. However, the
promise held out to Jews began to fade as the 19th century wore on.
Anti-Semitism had hardly been eradicated, either in Eastern or Western
Europe. The assassination of Czar
Paul of Russia in 1881 led to large-scale pogroms and the emigration of over 2.5
million Eastern European Jews over the next three decades.
The growth of racialist-nationalist philosophies in Western Europe led to
renewed public attention to Jews and opposition to their participation in
national life. The Enlightenment,
far from solving what Marx and others termed the "Jewish Question",
had in fact heightened it, as many Jews felt cheated by its unfulfilled promise.
It was Jews such as these who proposed a radical, nationalist solution to
their plight. Lets look at two of
the more influential of these Jews, who might be considered co-founders in their
own separate ways of the Zionist movement.
An
Odessa, Russia physician named Leo Pinsker, reacting to the Russian pogroms of
1881, published in 1882 a booklet entitled Auto-Emancipation.
In this work he argued that anti-Semitism was an insoluble condition of
Christian society, and proposed as the only solution to Jewish persecution the
mass emigration of Jews to a land where they could form their own commonwealth
and thus become the equal of the other nations of the world.
His followers founded the Chovevei Tzion (Lovers of Zion) organization,
with the goal of promoting his ideas. Pinsker
was the founding father of Russian Zionism, though he himself did not insist
upon Palestine as the location of the Jewish commonwealth.
About
a decade after Pinsker's work was published, an assimilated Viennese Jew named
Theodor Herzl covered the Dreyfus Affair for an Austrian newspaper.
He was struck by how, in the home of Enlightenment ideals, anti-Semitism
could be revived and seize the public's attention.
Despairing of the prospects for assimilation of Jews into Christian
European society, Herzl wrote the book The Jewish State in 1896, arguing
like Pinsker that the only hope for the Jews to live in peace was the founding
of an independent Jewish political entity. Such
an event would establish the Jewish nation as legitimate in the eyes of other
nations, and ease the passions of anti-Semitism even for those Jews who chose
not to emigrate to the new state. With
this, Herzl began his life-long mission of organizing a world Zionist movement.
Unlike Pinsker, Herzl was an organizational dynamo and within a year had
succeeded in garnering enough interest and support among Western Jews to hold a
congress in Basle, Switzerland, at which the World Zionist Organization was
founded.
The
nationalist response embodied in Zionism was, like Middle Eastern nationalisms,
a reaction to the bitter but educational encounter with modern Europe.
Like these other nationalisms, it also faced a secular-religious tension.
Neither Pinsker nor Herzl were particularly religious Jews; rather, they
had rejected much of the traditional Jewish culture of the ghetto in their
efforts to assimilate. Their's were
particularly political solutions to what they saw as a sociological, national
problem. Their divorce from the
religious tradition of their people can be seen in the fact that neither
proposed Palestine, the promised land of Abraham, Isaac, Moses and David, as the
Jewish state. It is only when the
sociological analysis and political recommendation of Pinsker and Herzl was
attached to a commitment that the Jewish state be in Palestine, that there was
any response within the Jewish community to their proposals.
The organization founded by Pinsker's followers was called Lovers of
Zion, not Lovers of a Jewish Commonwealth. The
Basle Congress, which Herzl himself organized, overruled the founder of the
movement in setting out the aim of the world Zionist Organization as the
foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Thus,
a particularly modern political notion, that of nationalism, was wedded to an
ancient religious and cultural yearning for Zion to form the modern Zionist
movement.
We
should note that, like the nationalisms native to the Middle East, Zionism did
not during this period enjoy the support of anything close to a majority of its
intended audience. It was only after
the horrors of Nazism became clear that most of world Jewry rallied to the
Zionist cause. At the turn of the
century, most Jews rejected the Zionist call.
Many more religious Jews, including a large number of Orthodox rabbis,
rejected the notion of a Jewish commonwealth in Zion divorced from the messianic
promise. Assimilated Jews throughout
Western Europe and the United States saw the Zionist movement as promoting an
unattainable goal which was at minimum embarrassing, and perhaps threatening, to
their effort to become full members of their own societies.
The only Jewish member of the British cabinet in 1917, Edwin Montagu
(Secretary of State for India), opposed the Balfour Declaration.
Some politically active Jews in Eastern Europe opposed the movement
because they felt it deflected attention from the need to concentrate Jewish
political energies on reforming (or overthrowing) local political structures.
The limited nature of the movement's support can be seen in the low rate
of emigration to Palestine in the years before World War I. However, the idea
had been born and received an organizational framework, and its success would
grow in coming decades.
BOTTOM
LINE:
On both nationalist and religious bases, movements were developing during
the inter-war period that would challenge colonial control of the region, and
ultimately contest with each other for political control.
But it was not until after WWII that these movements were strong enough,
and the colonial powers weakened enough, for them to succeed in winning full
independence and take over state power.