The Muslim world and the West: the roots of conflict

TO SAY THAT AN EFFECTIVE reparative of a disease requires a unmutilated diagnosis is to state the obvious. notwithstanding in the face of the 9/11 plague, and of the scourge of terrorism in general, the Bush administration has utterly failed to shed any light upon some of the submerged factors that might have provok like heinous attacks. Instead, the simplistic and politically expedient explanations similar as "good vs. evil," or "the clash of civilizations," or the "Islamic incompatibility with the late world" have shed more heat than light upon the issue.

Aside from their poisonous implications for international relations, of that kind explanations simply fail the experiment of history. The history of the relationship between the novel Western world and the Muslim world present to views that, contrary to popular perceptions in the West, from the time of their initial contacts with the capitalist West more than sum of two units centuries ago until almost the final third of the twentieth hundred the Muslim people were quite receptive of the economic and political patterns of the modern world. Many race in the Muslim world, including the majority of their political leaders, were eager to transform and redesign the socio-economic and political manner of makings of their societies after the prototype of the capitalist West. The majority of political leaders, as well as a significant number of Islamic adroits and intellectuals, viewed the rise of the new West and its spread into their lands as inevitable historical disentanglements that challenged them to chart their possess programs of reform and development

In light of this background, the question arises: What changed all of that earlier receptive and dutiful attitude toward the West to the in every one's mouth attitude of disrespect and hatred?

This research will show, I hope, that the answer to this question lies more with the policies of the Western powers in the region than the alleged rigidity of Islam, or "the clash of civilizations." It will exhibit that it was only after more than a hundred and a half of imperialistic pursuits and a series of humiliating policies in the region that the popular masses of the Muslim world revolveed to religion and the conservative religious leaders as sources of defiance, mobilization, and dignity In other words, for many Muslims the novel turn to religion often exhibits not so much a rejection of Western values and achievements on the other hand away to resist and/or bid defiance to the humiliating imperialistic policies of Western powers.

EARLY replications TO THE CHALLENGES OF THE late WORLD

Not solitary did the early modernizers of the Muslim world embrace Western technology, on the other hand they also welcomed its civil and state institutions, its representational a whole of government, and its tradition of legal and constitutional rights. For example, the Iranian intellectuals Mulkum Khan (1833-1908) and Agha Khan Kermani (1853-96) urg Iranians to acquire a Western education and replace the Shariah (the religious legal code) with a recent secular legal code. Secular political leaders of this persuasion joined forces with the more liberal religious leaders in the Constitution Revolution of 1906 and forced the Qajar dynasty to locate up a modern constitution, to limit the powers of the monarchy and give Iranians parliamentary representation (Armstrong 2000: 149)

plane some of the Ottoman sultans pursu Western originals of industrialization and modernization upon their own. For example, Sultan Mahmud II "inaugurated the Tanzimat (Regulation) in 1826 which abolished the Janissaries [the fanatical elite corps of numbers organized in the 14th century] modernized the army and introduced a certain number of of the new technology." In 1839 Sultan Abdulhamid "issued the Gulhane command which made his rule hanging upon a contractual relationship with his make subordinates and looked forward to major reform of the empire's institutions" (Ibid.: 150)

More dramatic, however, were the modernizing and/or secularizing programs of Egypt' s renowned modernizers Muhammad Ali (1769-1849) and his grandson Ismail Pasha (1803-95) They were in like manner taken by the impressive achievements of the West that they embarked upon breakneck modernizing programs that were tantamount to trying to hothouse the Western world's achievements of centuries into decades: "To secularize the geographical division Muhammad Ali simply confiscated plenteous religiously endowed property and systematically marginalized the Ulema [religious leaders], divesting them of any shr of power" (Ibid.: 150-51) In the face of dire conditions of underdevelopment and humiliating on the contrary unstoppable foreign domination, those national leaders viewed modernization not alone as the way out of underdevelopment on the other hand also out of the tie of foreign domination.

Not alone the secular intellectuals, the political elite, and management leaders but also many Islamic leaders and scholars, known as "Islamic modernizers," viewed modernization as the way of the coming time But whereas the reform programs and policies of the political/national leaders repeatedly included secularization, at least implicitly, Islamic modernizers were eclectic: while seeking to adopt the sources of the nerve of the West, including constitutionalism and rule by representation, they wanted to shield their cultural and national identities as well as Islamic principles and values as the moral foundation of the society. These Islamic modernizers included Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-97) Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) Qasim Amin (1863-1908) and Shaikh Muhammad Hussain Naini in Egypt and Iran: and Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98) and Muhammad Iqbal (1875-1938) in India.