The Muslims who came in from the Heat? - the 'Diaspora' in the West, India and other Asian (and African) minorities (and majorities)

The internal debates (among other things), as I've suggested in a recent post, have had the effect of producing refugees, migrants and exiles to most parts of the world over many decades. In the West, this 'Diaspora' has been viewed with some suspicion, particularly since 9/11. Nevertheless, as discussed, they are not the threat they may appear and in some cases they have lived in their new homes now for an extended period of time.

Turkish Cypriots mostly arrived from the 16^th to the 19^th Century, for example. Muslims in Albania, Kosovo, Greece, Bulgaria and Bosnia have for the most part lived there since Ottoman times and minorities exist in several other Balkan states.

In more recent times, a group of Muslim mainly economic refugees have arrived in the West (as citizens of former Western colonies). The countries most affected include France (mainly North Africans), the Netherlands (mainly Indonesians), Spain (mainly Moroccans), Italy (mainly North Africans) and the UK (mainly South Asians). There are also hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis in Norway, Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest workers) and other Muslim asylum-seekers in Germany and Muslims generally in Denmark.

Migrants to the US tend to be relatively well off before their migration when compared with the experience in many of these other countries.

Efforts have been made in countries of the West to study the experiences of these and other migrants and their children and grand children. Young people in this group (aged 10 and less) commonly lose the language of their parents relatively quickly as they replace it with the language of their host country unless special efforts are made to ensure they retain it. This often creates some difficulty with the older age group who tend to be slow to learn the new language.

Migrants tend to first assimilate into their new culture by adopting the local dress to some extent, the local language as much as possible and local food consumption patterns and preferences and local names to some extent. Integration tends to follow this superficial beginning as new migrants become more familiar with the local culture and this might be indicated by an interest in participation in local sports, for example.

The phenomenon of blocs of a particular nationality initially settling together in particular neighbourhoods has also been studied, as well as the tendency for migrants who attain a certain standard of living or level of 'novel acculturation' to eventually settle in new neighbourhoods in a fashion that is somewhat more integrated into the population as a whole.

The role of schools, clerics, community organisations and home governments is also studied. Interestingly, the secularist Turkish government plays a more significant role in the religious institutions of the Turkish diaspora including in Australia than any other Muslim government plays in the affairs of their diasporas.

Tariq Ramadan, a grand son of Muslim Brotherhood founder al-Banna and born in Switzerland, is an interesting example of integration by education of the son and grandson of a Muslim Brother. He has written on the role of Islamic reform in the position of Muslims in Europe and is usually considered a moderate Muslim. He has also been denied a visa to the US and is a controversial figure in both the West and the East.

India contains such a large minority of Muslims that there are more Indian Muslims there than there are Muslims in the entire Arab world. They have tended to be concentrated in specific areas in the largest numbers.

Minorities also exist in the south of the Philippines (called Moros (Moors) by the Spanish colonists - naturally all Muslims looked the same to them). Southern Thailand and West and North West China (virtually all throughout China there are actually significant numbers both urban and rural) also have large numbers of Muslims though they form a minority in the countries as a whole. All of these groups may be considered virtually indigenous to the regions they occupy today. There have been recent migrations, also, to Japan and Korea.

Ghana and several east African states, while they have contributed significantly to the European populations of Muslims, also continue to contain large minorities within their borders.

The dynamic experience of Muslims in the US (which is likely to be similar to the experiences in countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and some South American countries) has been studied especially extensively and intensively. Most Muslims (besides the virtually indigenous African American Muslims, whose ancestors, many of whom were likely Muslims, arrived as slaves) arrived in a large surge in the last four decades and the new arrivals were mostly 'people of means' on arrival. Among them have been professionals and academics that have significantly influenced the US political class and intelligentsia as well as comparable groups in their home countries.

They tend to form part of the middle class and settle in cities. Modern Islamic organisations have formed in areas of concentration which also still have an influence in the originating countries some of which cooperate well with the US government. Many African Americans have converted (or possibly in some sense reconverted given their history referred to above) to Islam forming some separate organisations. There are also, of course, recent African arrivals that are also Muslim. Reprisals following 9/11 and consequently further alienation and disaffection of Muslims have produced a significant (and ongoing) cycle in the US.

The Australian experience has been that many Australians don’t understand that there is a difference between Islam (the religion) and Islamism (a variety of political doctrines with limited support among adherents to Islam). This has been played upon to some extent by ignorant or deliberately trouble-making opinion-makers for their own purposes. The result has been some disharmony in a community suspicious of “fifth columnists” representing “international terror” within a basically peaceful Australian Muslim community. The Muslim community leadership may also have played a role by appearing to pay no more than lip service to politically pluralist values with limited actual engagement and compromise with the rest of the community in civil society. The Turkish thinker, Fethullah Gülen, who now lives in the US, has paid special attention to what may be required on the part of Muslims here in Australia and taken practical steps.

On the other hand, in our northern neighbour, Indonesia, as well as in Central Asia, the uncompromising Hizb ut-Tahrir that originated in the Middle East and South Asia and promises a return to the formerly ‘unbroken’ Caliphate continues to have a significant following.

Is Islam (or are Muslims (or Arabs)) out to get the "West"?

Now that we have been able to examine how the Arab world has been thinking lately and we’ve considered some of the themes of ‘modernising’ Islam, too, let’s try to come back to a further examination of the relationship of the Arab and Islamic world to “us” in the West. Are they out to get us? There appear to be two main opposing views expressed in the works, respectively, of Samuel Huntington and Tariq ‘Ali: The Clash of Civilizations and The Clash of Fundamentalisms.

The first view can probably be seen as having its origins as least as far back as the time of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and fall of the Roman Empire published in the 18^th Century. That view is that civilisations clash.

There has on the other hand been an ironic coincidence of aims between the neo-cons in the US, 'led' by George W. Bush, and al-Qaeda. Both groups actually wanted a fight on 'Muslim soil' as al-Qaeda wants to prove that the US wants to kill Muslims, generally (as well as letting its proxy, Israel, do so), as they have been in Iraq and still are in Afghanistan. The reasons of 'the US' include preferring a fight away from the US 'homeland' for domestic political reasons. The US had been warned by observers like Tariq ‘Ali and ‘Abd al-Bari Atwan that al-Qaeda wanted this exact thing but neo cons wanted it so desperately themselves that 'the US' went ahead and did it anyway.

Edward Said in his work, Covering Islam, discusses how this view of Islam as out to get the West has come about in the West. He first suggests that the West and especially the US has been looking for an enemy for internal reasons (i.e. to achieve more unity). Writing immediately after the Iranian Islamic revolution, he gives this as a case in point. He goes on to suggest that Muslims are not out to get the West and that what we in the West have taken to be evidence of this is actually evidence of a struggle within Islam. While he wrote this before 9/11, the post-9/11 struggle is merely a continuation and 'spill-over' of the struggle he identified within Islam.

He notes that what the West ought not to do is seek to control the ‘East’ as much as engage in real dialogue with it.

Clearly, this impulse to control the ‘Other’ accompanied by almost wilful ignorance may produce effects like 9/11. In his masterpiece Orientalism, based in part on Foucault’s discourse theory and also on the work of Noam Chomsky, and in other works, Said explores this in more detail while also clearly opposing the ideology of nationalism. The idea of the Orient as a Foucaultian “subterranean self” of the Occident as opposed to a real place is explored and has inspired entire fields of post modern and “post-colonial” study as well as some criticism. The cover artwork of one of the paperback versions aptly consists of a depiction of Snake Charmer by the 19^th Century French painter of the so-called “Academic School”, Jean Leon Gerome, a mere (but inventive yet still defamatory) pastiche of a purported Middle Eastern scene that poses as a photo-realistic depiction.

One of the complicating features of the question of Islam and the West is the situation in Israel-Palestine. Dr Ghada Karmi has written about how Israel must recognise the rights of Palestinians and has proposed a one-state solution in Israel/Palestine. Said’s The Question of Palestine and his autobiography, Out of Place, are both significant works for their rich discussion of important issues to the Arab psyche for the benefit of a US audience, cogent argument and fine English prose. He again employs discourse theory and claims objectivity is not possible in the circumstances of conflict in which Israel/Palestine is mired. He further claims Zionism to be a corrosive element in US discourse concerning the conflict and beyond. His main goal, he suggests, is to address the imbalance in the US discourse and encourage other Arabs to find ways to do so also.

The main view that he proposes is that Zionism is racist and colonialist ideology that uses religion disingenuously and that Zionists have disingenuously peddled an absurd view that there is not a Palestinian people that needs to be considered in the Zionist project in Palestine. This turns on its head the idea that anti-Zionism is racist; rather he asserts that it is both anti-racist and anti-imperialist (contrary to the Zionist argument that the Jews are the only natives in Palestine). He shows that there is a Palestinian history and a Palestinian culture, what Zionism is (and how it argues there is no other viable polity in Palestine) and also proposes a secular one-state solution to this “question of Palestine”.

Amin Rihani in the 1920s (and Tanya Reinhart for the Jewish “side” more recently) among others have seriously proposed similar solutions but they have never received serious popular support on either “side”). Rihani also expressed a desire to improve the US discourse concerning this “question” as early as in the 1920s and was also quite active in promotion of an improved and fairer understanding of the Arab world in the US. He was also uncannily prophetic concerning the wider geopolitical effects of the “question” that are evident today.

In a collection of Said’s interviews, Power, Politics and Culture, he typically advocates the secular one-state solution even more strongly in his later years as he also does in his later writings.

The 'scholarly' argument that goes to support this position of recommending controlling the East has been called ‘fundamentalism with footnotes’. It often seeks to portray Islam as having an essence rather than being the indefinite thing that it is, defined only in its historical contexts, in much the same way Islamic fundamentalists also do. The Jewish historian, Bernard Lewis is a classic example of this kind of ‘essentialising’ scholar against whom Said rightly railed.

Islam is thus often referred to in this debate as ‘inherently backward’. This form of scholarship sometimes uses the tactic of comparing apples and oranges such as the best of the West with the worst of the East, in order to deliberately draw specious conclusions about the two hemispheres to the detriment especially of ‘inherently backward’ Islamic populations.

The less ‘scientific’ approach to this side of the debate with definite political axes to grind is exemplified by the neo-conservative New American Century group. Their approach is to assert a God-ordained position in the world for the United States as al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups assert a similar role for themselves.

Fundamentalism on both sides stems from emotions of fear, insecurity, anger, despair and inflexibility and a Weltanshauung characterised by irrational ahistoricity and hatred of the ‘Other’. In the end, the debate often serves to define ‘our’ values as ‘human’ values to the exclusion of the views of the ‘inherently backward Other’. Consequently, invasion of countries such as Iraq comes to seem to make complete sense for reasons of ‘world’ peace and ‘human’ rights.

Suicide bombers on a large scale are such an obvious example of a recent phenomenon in Islam that the idea that Islam is unchanging is clearly demolished by it. What is, of course, changing is the level of some of the negative emotions in various parts of the Islamic world for clearly historical reasons. For Islamists, apparently Western ideas such as ‘democracy’ thus naturally lose some of their lustre in these kinds of contexts.

Karen Armstrong has become a noted Western apologist for Islam and supporter of theism more generally and has neatly divided the historical Islam into five periods; beginnings, development, culmination, triumph and the current agonist phase. She suggests that the effect of colonialism and the Western ideas of nationalism and modernism on Muslims rather than the effect of Islam itself (which she holds is also inherently democratic and egalitarian) has been the catalyst of the fundamentalist and violent form of Islam that is most problematic today. She also regards Shi’a Islam as inherently less optimistic in its outlook than Sunnism.

Benedict Anderson has also explored the nature of religiously inspired and other nationalisms in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Hans Küng has also attempted (perhaps with more insight than Armstrong, it’s hard to say I have to admit) to tease out the paradigmatic dimensions represented in the history that would allow a Westerner, and more specifically a Christian (as a Catholic theologian himself), to have a serious dialogue with Muslims and through them with Islam. I note with some disappointment the unwillingness of Richard Dawkins to move outside the Orientalist perspective when discussing Islam.

Yitzhak Nakash, a Jewish Brandeis academic, has written of the particular place of the Shi’a in a new Arab Islamic era first catalysed by both Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’a Iran in Reaching for Power: the Shi’a in the Modern Arab World. The book examines the games that are ongoing between the Sunni and Shi’a in Arab Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lebanon and Iraq. It begins with a discussion of the hatred for the Shi’a engendered by 18^th Century Wahhabism in the region that became Saudi Arabia and extended also to Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain. It also examines the effects of the current Western policy of containment of Iran in the region and the situation today in Iraq. The author notices that the Shi’a political classes in Iraq have reached a unique accommodation with the West that I must add possibly isn’t well supported by Shi’a political ideology or the Shi’a masses. The author also discusses comparative Sunni and Shi’a views concerning democracy, Shi’a nationalisms in general, problems in Iraq for mostly Shi’a non-Ottoman citizens in the succession from Ottoman rule and the nature of the significant Shi’a resurgence in Lebanon in recent years.

The Arab World Today, edited in 1994 by Dan Tschirgi seems to suggest an Arab crisis in the immediate aftermath of the US Gulf War of 1991. It generally focuses upon implications for the West and various USSR successor states but a wide range of views are included. The general conclusion is that the crisis produced a deepening of fissures between pro- and anti-US camps in the Arab world. Looking back, its predictions generally weren’t especially prescient (especially Alan Richards’s concerning oil prices) but the authors’ analysis is generally interesting.

It begins by contextualising the crisis including within the loosening framework of the end period of the Cold War analysed by Carl Brown of Princeton. He suggests that the Arab states were thus left increasingly dependent on the US militarily for what are now their highly militarised regimes in the new instability of the region. That may now be a dated view but the sophistication of the military power now available in the region is undoubted despite the relative ease with which Hussein’s regime was later ousted. Nicholas Hopkins assesses the region using the kind of class analysis employed by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party and finds the analysis wanting. Cynthia Nelson engagingly suggests a feminist critique of the crisis and her prognostications for the region are unfortunately pessimistic. One author sees Russia continuing to be a powerful influence in the region. Saad Eddin Ibrahim considers most efforts in the direction of democratisation in the region to have been abortive. It remains to be seen, of course, what will become of the most recent regime in Iraq. Ferghany considers the intra- and inter-region effects of globalisation as they relate to the region. Features of the instability included regional unemployment (which is an ongoing problem) and an interruption in remittances from the Gulf (also an ongoing potential threat as fewer (especially but not exclusively) non-Gulf Arabs tend to be able to take advantage of employment opportunities there). Al-Khoury rightly notes that the alleged liberality of Jordan is, in fact, quite limited. He doesn’t see the 1991 war as an historically major event. Bassam Tibi considers the deleterious effects of this intra-Arab world war on any prospects for the elusive and perhaps illusory pan-Arab unity in the near term. He nevertheless considers the EU model as worth considering in the Arab context. Al-Djami, a member of the Palestinian National Council, suggests that Saddam’s prosecution of the war effectively stiffened the backbones of the Israeli hawks and that Israel was made relatively strong as it faced a further divided Arab world but still amazingly but laudably expresses optimism for the “peace process”.

In 2005, Kuwaiti American Khalid Abou el-Fadl wrote The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists. He has legal training from both Kuwait and Al-Azhar and prestigious US law schools and a PhD from Princeton and teaches at UCLA. The essence of the work is a comparative jurisprudence of two Islamic ‘sides’ and seeks to arrive at a relatively ‘moderate’ true position of Islam thus undermining extremist Islamist interpretations on what he calls the Puritan side. He acknowledges both the more ‘Puritan’ and ‘moderate’ legal traditions within Islam. He understands the rise of the Puritan views to prominence in historical periods as having political causes.

He suggests that Afghani represented the moderate view whereas al-Banna, Qutb and Rida all came from the Puritan tradition. The distinction may not be as clear-cut as he proposes but he himself, as an Usuli-trained scholar in Sunni terms, may fall quite near the meeting point between the two styles. He appears to give some limited support to the ideas of secularism. The work explains well the debate within Islamic jurisprudence of the two invested sides.

El-Fadl explores the history of the Wahhabi ideology and its linkages with modernist thinkers such as ‘Abduh. He also has a provocatively titled section, What all Muslims Agree on, in which he explores the attitude of Muslims to the sources of Islamic law, just government and law, rights of resistance against unjust government, democracy and women. The cleavages, he suggests, are not predominantly over the sources per se but over the uses to which they are put. The Puritans are, in essence, not willing to allow law to be derived from the sources by any kind of analogy, he says, or even any consensus of the scholars or legal authorities that were not actually alive in the time of the Prophet.

So whether 'they' hate the West or not there is certainly significant internal division that may easily be confused with a state of being out to get the West but should not be. The state of Afghanistan today, though, is relevant to how the West is being viewed. In 2007, Dr Sima Samar, the human rights ‘watchdog’ (the Independent Human Rights Commissioner/Chairperson) in Afghanistan, former deputy president and a medical doctor gave a lecture to a Politics Society meeting at the University of Sydney on the conditions of women and human rights in her country. She went into exile under the Marxist government in 1978 and returned to her country post-Taliban (i.e. post-2001). She is also the human rights ‘watchdog’ in Sudan so she clearly has some monumental challenges on her plate.

She explains the context of the current situation beginning with the 1978 Marxist government by coup d’état and its call to the Soviets that led to their 1979 invasion and anti-religion and anti-landowner government. This, of course, met with violent reaction region-wide in the further context of a recently Islamising Middle East and Talibanising (‘brain washing’) Pakistani madrasa system. The movement for the Islamic polity that was thus set into motion, she says, was anti-woman. She notes that most of the humanitarian NGOs had been forced out by 1992. When the Soviets were defeated, the mostly Arab mujahidin that had until then been supported by the West then essentially left the young local Taliban fighters to continue the jihad alone. The idea Dr Samar stressed was that the West helped break her country so they essentially bought it but nevertheless piked out and left it in the parlous state that ended in the anti-woman Taliban regime beginning in Kandahar in 1994 (incidentally the name Kandahar is a local form of Alexandria - the city was established in Hellenistic times and thus named for Alexander. Iskander is a Persian form of Alexander, too). I understand Dr Samar's current view is that the West has now done enough damage and should just leave. The West, of course, became most concerned for the women again after 9/11/2001.

The Taliban promised peace but soon disappointed. Women, of course, were not allowed to be educated or hardly even to speak and the imposition of the Burka and the severest of punishments is well known. The Arab hijackers of 9/11 were trained in Talibani Afghanistan and the US and others invaded the very type of regime whose beginnings it supported against the USSR. Would it make the same mistakes again? Surely it had a responsibility now not to repeat that mistake.

The US invasion, of course, is unfinished business but the first interim government and the US put Dr Samar in her current role. She claims to have been since working with some success to make herself unpopular by continuing to expose the “wound” of ongoing human rights abuses in Afghanistan. She said she believed she still had the support of President Karzai.

The primary issue she has faced has been the Western stink of the concept of human rights. She asserts that Islam nevertheless ought to be concerned with them. Thus her theme has been the creation of a human rights commission that suits Afghanistan and Islam despite its Western stink. With advertising and school curriculum reform attempts, she has attempted to educate the general population and children about the idea of basic rights. While this is ongoing, she emphasised, there is a role for the international community in bringing about an actual rule of law, law enforcement, good governance, a fair judiciary, support for her commission and security.

The major current ideological deficits have produced persistent inequalities based on race and sex in overall impecunious circumstances at the best of times. The absence of a social security safety-net has led to children still forced either to work, starve or attend madrasas so that they might be fed – only one option is viable for any given child. For the moment, Dr Samar sees work as the least of these three evils. Strangely, this form of equality - of children with their parents - is currently acceptable in today’s Afghanistan. This should serve as a reminder that much in the way of resources is still needed from the West; health services are among the things in most distress. Women only receive any protection in the large cities due to the security situation as at 2007 [this has probably since worsened]. There, but only there, they could usually receive an education, exercise some freedoms and unveil somewhat.

Besides advocating the reforms above, the role of the commission has been to independently witness compliance or otherwise in the country generally with international human rights-related treaties including those concerning the rights of women, children and the disabled and concerning the institution of a just penal system. Some of the women’s rights are also provided for directly in the constitution. One strategy in advertising that aims to promote more respect for women is, remarkably, to remind Afghani men that their mothers are women. To an extent, the commission also has a role in highlighting successes in the penal system but must report on abuses. Prison visiting is one of the means of establishing the success or otherwise of reforms. Practices are improving somewhat and are somewhat more regularised with less open use of torture evident than previously. Advertising of particularly egregious abuses in local media has apparently proved effective. The commission also reports on governance, miscarriages of justice and security concerns. It has sought to emulate the South African truth and reconciliation model to some extent but punishments and justice have been demanded. The commission was (in 2007) establishing the facts of atrocities related to around 84 mass grave sites.

So what is the situation in summary and what must be done? The story is of lacks of resources, good governance, justice, rule of law, law enforcement, security and women’s empowerment, conditions generally in most of the country and access to health services. Limited improvements in some areas for women and in prison practices are the success stories. Even the participation of women in the government remains tokenistic, according to Dr Samar. The international community broke it, she says, so they bought it for a while yet (they should also, of course, allow the Afghans a degree of autonomy). As I mentioned above, her attitude may have since hardened against the continuing direct involvement of the West in Afghanistan. She argued that the US has produced a double threat of opium dependence and the Taliban which it must now deal with and that women should be encouraged more to be employed in government in order to restore sanity to the nation. Quality and quantity of education must be ramped up to promote empowerment for the entire nation (but especially for women).

That's a little of the flavour of the inputs into answering the question I've posed in the title of today's post. The answer requires more posts (as I mentioned in the last post) so they will be forthcoming soon.

Other More 'Modernised' Islamic Political Models Part 1: Resistance Movements (generally led by a 'Mystic')

After a delay caused by a wrist injury, I'm tentatively returning to my topic (though I'm not yet fully recovered). I've briefly discussed the most conservative political theory that survived in Islam into the modern period mainly in what became Saudi Arabia (and which has been recently spreading) and I'll now consider a few of the other models that were attempted (and are still being attempted) partly in response to the ideas brought by Western colonists. These models generally contain elements of either religious or ethnic 'nationalism'.

Resistance Movements (generally led by a 'Mystic')

There were separate movements led by Sufi mystics in at least Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Turkey, Iran and Chechnya to revive Islam and oppose occupations by the Ottomans, Egypt or European Powers. The Egyptian group especially was also focussed on nationalism and modernising while the Tunisian and Turkish groups were also modernising forces.

The Libyan group was led by Muhammad Ibn ‘Ali al-Sanusi (1787 – 1859) and opposed the Italian presence in Libya. The group therefore came to be called the Sanusiyya as its leader was called the Great Sanusi. It was also a religious, political and social movement which also had a partly pan-Islamic agenda. It had legal and political clashes with the more conservative religious establishments in both Mecca and al-Azhar over the right of ijtihad (legal reform). It provided for education and social welfare among its supporters and integration of tribes into the community order. It aimed to reform local religious practices by missionary activity and participated in nationalist resistance as jihad against the expansionary and invading 'infidel' Italians. Material luxury was shunned in the puritan and Sufi tradition.

‘Abd al-Qadir (1808 – 1883) opposed the French in Algeria. He controlled an independent state in the Algerian interior from 1832 to 1847 before his exile by the French and opinion is divided as to whether the brief state most resembled a modern nation-state or an Islamic state.

Al-Rifi (‘Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi) (1882 – 1963) in Morocco also opposed the French as well as Spanish occupation with an armed resistance in the early part of the 1920s. He combined nationalist with Salafiyya inclinations.

Al-Mahdi also known as Shaykh Muhammad Ahmad (1848 – 1885) in Sudan opposed the ineffective, economically disastrous and arbitrary joint rule of the Ottomans, the Egyptians and the English with his followers, the Mahdiyya, eventually killing the English general, Gordon, at Khartoum. His declaration of himself as the Mahdi was meant in the Sunni sense of renovator, saviour and bringer of justice rather than the more apocalyptic Shi’a sense. He was a charismatic leader and claimed religious and political authority for himself as a direct descendent from Muhammad with a definite mission inspired by God. He was able with his Ansar to form a revolutionary state from 1881 in which he sought to reform the distinctly Sufi form of Sudanese Islam to bring about a more orthodox and less complex form of Islam. Aside from requiring new religious practices he also required seclusion of women and bans on tobacco, alcohol, music and the visiting of tombs. His group understood itself to be performing jihad against infidels (understood to be all non-Sudanese). Nevertheless the movement had pan-Islamic appeal as it sought to conform to a ‘true’ Islam and oppose non-Muslim and Western colonial expansion and rule.

Muhammad Shamil (1797 – 1871), who was a Sufi master politically active from 1834 to 1859 in Chechnya, opposed Russian occupation and rule of the Caucasus. His resistance was nationalist and supported especially by the local free peasant landowners who opposed foreign control.

Cultural Relations with the West more generally in this Period

Europe is named for Europa, perhaps ironically given the oppositional conflict I've been discussing, a Phoenician princess in Greek mythology and the Phoenicians are closely related to the Arabs. The idea of Europe is relatively recent but may be seen as opposed to what is not European as all identities conflict with their opposites in the sense that they are defined as not something. A politically united Europe was first attempted under the Carolingian dynasty of Charlemagne in the latter part of the 8^th Century and the ideal was later expanded to include what had been Moorish al-Andalus. The concept of Christendom developed in opposition to ‘Moors’ in the south and east from the 10^th Century before the idea of Europe, however.

On the Arab side, we know that al-Mas’udi wrote in detail in 10^th Century Egypt about some of the dynasties of the Franks (Ifranj). We also know that Toledo in central Spain was the major centre of cultural contact between the ‘Moors’ and ‘Christendom’ both before and after its reconquest. Seville in Spain and Palermo in Sicily were also witness to cultural cooperation between ‘Moors’ and ‘Christians’ both before and after their Christian reconquests.

Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (1126 – 1198) was highly regarded and his work was employed by such preeminent Christian scholars as Aquinas. Chess and lute playing were also shared by the two groups. Dante seems to have also had a slight interest in the literary works and history of the East and may have borrowed from the literature to an extent for his Inferno.

Moving to the Ottoman period and to the rise of cities such as Venice and Genoa, we can see a continuation of mutual interest between the two ‘sides’. The Europeans meanwhile continued to harbour admiration for the Arabs and their Arabesque designs and lives. The first colonial endeavours of Napoleon in Egypt were accompanied by continued mutual interest. The interest on the Arab side especially led to a third major wave of translations in our history this time instigated by Muhammad 'Ali, the ruler of Egypt (following the major efforts in Baghdad in the earliest Islamic period and in Toledo in the early modern period of Europe). The back and forth flow of ideas has thus occurred continuously but also has been particularly focused in those three distinct waves.

The Arab World, Islam and the Middle East (a serial blog)

Since 9/11/2001, it seems likely that many Australians and members of other so-called “Western societies” have begun to think about Islam much more than they previously did and when they do, it also seems likely that many have a negative impression of it. They may not all associate it inexorably with violence and fear but many probably don’t regard it in its best light and there are many reasons for this besides what may be inherent in Islam itself. I want to explore this in the course of my blog posts and that is what I, as an Australian, aim to do.

We in the so-called “West” have a history with Islam whether we are aware of it or not. The first two major political encounters with Islam in Europe occurred mainly in Spain and Portugal, in a part of Italy and in the far East of Europe roughly a millennium ago and they involved territorial disputation; hence Muslims are today in a sense archetypal representatives of the so-called “East” in apparent opposition to “our” West. I want to explore whether we are making a Muhammadan mountain out of a peaceful molehill, as it were, because of this unconscious history.

There are at least two questions which possibly arise from what I have just written so I'll address two of them. One is that I have talked about Islam, a religion, as a political force but should I? Another is that I have talked about Muslims being in an eastern political opposition to the West but should I. These are the questions which I hope my subsequent posts WILL address.

Muslims, of course, claim to follow Islam, a religion, but not all of the people living in “Muslim” Spain or Eastern Europe or for that matter anywhere in the then Muslim world were Muslim when disputes have occurred. I will expand on what this means in the course of these posts. It may mean that we have to consider factors other than Islam as contributing to political history, for instance.

Another point I wish to make at the outset is that Europeans also claimed new territory in this history in the East during the various “Crusades” and long after reclaiming parts of Europe went on to claim much more, world wide (that they have (arguably) only relinquished recently (in the last fifty or so years)). I say arguably because many serious thinkers do argue that European and Western colonialism is not yet at a real end. So they would say that the claims have still not been actually relinquished. Again, I will expand on this much more later.

I want to try to explain the history of Islam’s change from merely a religion to much more in world affairs and to do that I will also need to consider the history of its region of origin, the Middle East (a region incidentally defined by Europeans for strategic reasons), and of the people of its origin, the Arabs. I will begin the posts with a survey of ideas of the modern Middle East, modern Islam and Muslims and the modern Arab world. I will then progress through history to examine what we are ACTUALLY dealing with. We had a coalition of religious, political and nationalist ideas that exploded onto the Old World stage in the 7th Century. That was followed by a new political system that had a place adjacent to a fearful, vengeful and hateful Europe and conflict occurred. I will hopefully trace this process in my posts. After those posts I will consider what was happening between Islam and the rest of the world before that rest of the world along with the Middle East itself came to be dominated by the West. That is just a beginning of what I will be posting about. I will also discuss the ideas and learning that were inspired and perhaps later crushed by this new force, its economy, the development of the religion in its sphere of influence and its laws and legal philosophy before discussing the period of domination by the West and the experience of confronting an alien idea of modernity with which the Middle East still grapples.

Islam, the religion, and its politics, economics, science and culture, and its people, all became important to the history of Africa and Asia as well of Europe from its very beginning so I hope my exploration of this will also go some way to explaining the idea of the West itself and much more as at least Europe, in a sense, defined itself as 'not Eastern'.

The influence of Islam in Australia and the Americas has grown, too, and not merely because of bombs but also because the Europeans who settled there (along with possibly some African slaves) were and continue to be constructively shaped by their encounters with Islam and Muslims and the political world of Islam. I hope to discuss this process also in my posts.

I will also discuss the links between this history and extremism. Though I will focus on what we may call the central lands of Islam around the Arabian Peninsula including the lands of the so-called “Fertile Crescent” to its north (from Greater Palestine and the lower Nile to Persia) , North Africa and Asia Minor in my history, all of the globe has been affected by Islam but especially until recently many other parts of Asia and Africa which I will also consider in some detail. Places from Kenya and Nigeria to Afghanistan, Indonesia and Pakistan often figure in the 'Western' news these days (and often for unfortunate reasons) and so the history of Islam and extremism in these places deserves to be considered, too, if more briefly, and so I will consider it in these posts.

The purpose of these posts is to provide a history that will help to (relatively simply) answer questions that many people have today, especially in the West. One in particular is: are all “Muslims” out to get “us Westerners”? These posts will explain that some are but that most aren’t and more importantly why this may be. Beyond that, I also hope to clarify what, if anything, is to be done. Understanding history is at least the first step.

I will thus begin an analysis of what Islam has been in its history up until today and will conclude with what 'true' Islam may be now in Australia as a result and hopefully may be able to remain. I don't say it will be easy to define a religion but I'll give it a go. Those people in Australia who have been able to watch Salam Café on Australian television may be aware that it is a humorous programme presented by Muslims and is roughly about being Muslim and/or living with Muslims in Australia. A central character attempts to poke fun at the fear some people in Australia have of Muslims being a sinister political and cultural force in Australia. Part of his alleged Camden mayoral election platform included renaming Camden (arguably a bastion of these fears) “Iz-LAMB-dn” (my spelling – as pronounced). A key to understanding what to do now, if anything, is in fact, I feel, being able to see the humour along with the history in this situation thus bringing our mindsets forward from the state of fear of Islam to a present and future mindset of being able to laugh along with the rather black humour of our current plight and see the occasionally alleged 'existential threat’ posed by Islam for what it actually is. What that is will require a full examination of this history.

It may be thought based on what I have already written that I aim to be an apologist for Islam or the Arabs and Middle Easterners in some way and can not be expected to present this history objectively. I must therefore state at the outset that I do not have Middle Eastern or Arab or Islamic origins. I am in fact not a theist. However I believe I am able to present the story of Islam and its effects in the world today in a sympathetic yet objective way due to my experience of study of this area.

In these posts (when I remember and have got it right), I will use the symbol ’ in place of the Arabic letter hamza (representing a glottal stop in Arabic) and also in place of the Arabic letter ‘ayn (which sounds a bit like the “ahhh” you make when the doctor wants to examine your throat with a tongue depressor) when writing Arabic words and names. I'll generally also attempt to give the names as usually pronounced in Arabic so if I refer to "al-Shabab", for instance, I'll probably generally write "ash-Shabab". Where an Arabic person's (or group's) name is well known in a particular transliteration or the person or group uses that transliteration, I may follow that transliteration regardless of the pronunciation.

I hope people will feel free to enhance my understanding of the history I am writing by comments and emails and will adjust it where possible to correct my evident errors. Now on to the posts: