colonialism and islam

The Middle East: Colonialism, Islam and the Nation StateReview by: Youssef M. ChoueiriJournal of Contemporary History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Oct., 2002), pp. 649-663Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3180765 .

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Journal of Contemporary History Copyright ? 2002 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol 37(4), 649-663. [0022-0094(200210)37:4;649-663;027942]

Youssef M. Choueiri

Review Article The Middle East: Colonialism, Islam and the Nation State

Nadje Al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East, Cam- bridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000; pp. xv + 264; ISBN 0 521 78504 9 Frederick F. Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf. The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, New York, Columbia University Press, 1997; pp. xiv + 270; ISBN 0 231 10839 7 Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains. Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876-1909, London and New York, I.B. Tauris, 1998; xii + 260; ISBN 1 86064 307 8 Amos Elon, A Blood-Dimmed Tide. Dispatches from the Middle East, London, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 2000; pp. xxix + 554; ISBN 0 71 399368 5 Derek Hopwood, Sexual Encounters in the Middle East. The British, the French and the Arabs, Reading, Ithaca Press, 1999; pp. 308; ISBN 0 86372 253 9 Derek Hopwood (ed.), Arab Nation, Arab Nationalism, New York and Basingstoke, St Martin's Press, St Antony Series, Macmillan Press Ltd, 2000; pp. x + 204; ISBN 0 333 80439 2 or ISBN 0 312 22985 2 Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks. Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997; pp. xvii + 291; ISBN 0 52020446 8 Donald M. McKale, War by Revolution. Germany and Great Britain in the Middle East in the Era of World War I, Kent, OH and London, Kent State University Press, 1998; pp. xxii +332; ISBN 0 87338 602 7 Beverley Milton-Edwards, Contemporary Politics in the Middle East, Cambridge, Politics Press, 2000; pp. xiii + 256; ISBN 0 7456 1472 8 C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze, Paradise Lost. Reflections on the Struggle for Authenticity in the Middle East, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1997; pp. x + 418; ISBN 90 04 10672 3 Roger Owen, State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, 2nd edn, London and New York, Routledge, 2000; pp. xvi +259; ISBN 0 415 19674 4 Roger Owen and Sevket Pamuk, A History of Middle Eastern Economies in the Twentieth Century, London, I.B. Tauris, 1998; pp. xviii + 310; ISBN 1 86064 276 4


Youssef M. Choueiri




Youssef M. Choueiri




Youssef M. Choueiri





Journal of Contemporary History Vol 37 No 4 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 37 No 4 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 37 No 4 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 37 No 4

Magnus Persson, Great Britain, the United States and the Security of the Middle East, Sweden, Lund University Press, 1998; pp. 368; ISBN 91 7966 523 3 Armando Salvatore, Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity, Reading, Ithaca Press, 1997; pp. xxvi + 283; ISBN 0 86372 273 3 Naomi Shepherd, Ploughing Sand. British Rule in Palestine, London, John Murray, 1999; pp. xiii + 290; ISBN 0 7195 6322 P.J. Vatikiotis, The Middle East. From the End of Empire to the End of the Cold War, London and New York, Routledge, 1997; pp. xi + 284; ISBN 0 415 15849 4 Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Making of the Modern Gulf States, Reading, Ithaca Press, 1998; pp. xii + 200; ISBN 0 863 229 6

Modernity was introduced into the Middle East as a result of a number of developments, both internal and external. The internal factors consisted of the awareness by Ottoman officials of the relative decline of their empire in com-

parison with European powers, particularly their performance in the battlefield and various naval engagements. It was initially thought that by the mere

adoption of new military techniques and weaponry, the state of decline could be reversed and political stability restored. Such an outcome would then allow the Ottoman Empire to resume the expansion of its frontiers and reclaim its status as the most formidable Islamic power, spanning the three continents of

Africa, Asia and Europe. Thus, towards the end of the eighteenth century, an earnest movement for reform was set in motion, officially sponsored and con-

sistently supported by a succession of Ottoman sultans. This official endorse- ment lent the process of reform a momentum of its own and in the long run made it an irreversible programme of action.

Moreover, internal reforms and responses became all the more urgent in the wake of disastrous Ottoman defeats at the hands of the Russian armed forces in 1769-74. To make matters worse, the military defeat led to the loss of the Crimea and its annexation by Russia. Furthermore, this particular humiliation was preceded by the steady advances of the Habsburgs against the Ottoman

presence in the Balkans. Although the Ottoman Empire had by that time

managed to contain the menace of Persian encroachments into its domains in

Anatolia and Iraq, and maintain its grip over the Arab world, except for the

outlying provinces such as Oman and Morocco, its administrative machinery began to break up or reconstitute its parts into autonomous chieftaincies and

local interests. Such an outcome, coinciding with agricultural stagnation and diminishing

trade, tended to focus attention on the absolute necessity of setting up an effi-

cient system of tax collection in order to reappropriate lost revenues deemed vital to fund the intended reforms. Consequently, centralization of imperial administrations and military modernization went hand in hand, lending











































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Choueiri: The Middle East: Colonialism, Islam and the Nation State Choueiri: The Middle East: Colonialism, Islam and the Nation State Choueiri: The Middle East: Colonialism, Islam and the Nation State Choueiri: The Middle East: Colonialism, Islam and the Nation State

Middle Eastern entry into the modern world of the industrial revolution a particular colouring.

By the time Sultan Abdulhamid II ascended the throne in 1876, a new Ottoman polity had been built, with the Sultan acting as a powerful autocrat. Hence, between 1876 and 1905, the Middle East witnessed a flourishing culture of anti-despotism and trends of liberalism opposed to authoritarian rule. This culminated in the 1908 Young Turk revolution, and the brief constitutional period in Persia in the first decade of the twentieth century. Moreover, alongside liberalism there began to sprout various nationalist movements which asserted the need for decentralization and the necessity of turning imperial structures into viable representative institutions. This was particularly the case in the eastern part of the Arab world. The defeat of the Ottomans in the first world war spelt the end of an entire era and signalled the beginning of a different process, exemplified by the establishment of separate states, either as the result of local initiatives, as was the case in Turkey, or the direct intervention of European powers.

As a matter of fact, throughout the nineteenth century the European powers exerted direct or indirect financial, military, economic and cultural influences of a decisive nature. Such influences dictated in large measure the local responses and forced Middle Eastern elites and communities to adjust their pace of development in conjunction with particular western pressures.

Selim Deringil, in his The Well-Protected Domains, chronicles the desperate struggle of Abdulhamid II to preserve a world that was slipping from under his feet. He shows how the Sultan devised various strategies to breathe new life into the Ottoman Empire and salvage its reputation by inventing policies which had the capacity to legitimate his rule. In this endeavour, he was supported by a diverse Ottoman elite, who tried to steer the ship of the state into safer waters. The legitimacy crisis was managed by creating new mythologies, finely tuned to represent the ideology of a reformed state. Abdulhamid II used the political imagery of the Sultanate and the Caliphate, turning his personage in the process into a holy symbol of Islamic power and Ottoman invincibility. His retreat into a world of his own accentuated his myth as an omnipresent ruler by the sheer fact of his absence as a physical presence. His constant reference to Islamic themes and motifs, buttressed by a legion of propagan- dists, security men and ceremonial pomp, was meant to salvage the state and protect it from internal and external enemies. Contrary to common belief, Deringil demonstrates how this Hamidian enterprise brought forth and made popular ideas and concepts associated with the Enlightenment, such as civilization, progress and social change.

Perhaps the codification of Islamic law, administrated by the Royal Edict of 1839, signalled more than any other measure the advent of a clear Ottoman national identity. The Ottomanization of the Shari'a was thus more than an administrative measure and announced the vision of equal citizenship operat- ing under standardized rules. This unified legal system introduced orderly procedures and embodied the notion of Ottomanism as a new allegiance for
















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both Muslims and non-Muslims.' Such efforts at inventing and creating a new Ottoman ideology can be glimpsed in the field of education and indoctrina- tion. The old traditional system was overhauled and replaced by a modern one based on European models in both scientific and literary subjects.2

These Ottoman efforts at administrative centralization and nation-building were to lead to unexpected consequences in due course. The most apparent consequence was the crystallization of local identities within an overarching imperial structure. This was the case, for example, in the unlikely tribal environment of Arabia. According to Frederick F. Anscombe, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar emerged into the modern world as 'durable dynastic states' as a direct result of Ottoman efforts. As a regional power, the Ottoman Empire in the age of reform attempted to bring eastern Arabia under tighter political and fiscal control. By doing so it helped to set in motion a process of territorial definition. The definition of a dynastic territorial state took place against the background of fierce rivalries between European powers and Ottoman policies. Anxious to protect its trade routes and ensure the security of colonial India, Britain was finally drawn into the internal politics of the Gulf and ended up as the preferred and most reliable protector of the nascent

political order. Hampered by poor communication, lack of funds and indeci- sive officials, the Ottoman plan to modernize the Bedouin and tribal areas of east Arabia came to a sad conclusion. In contrast,

. . .although hampered by limited resources around Arabia, the British usually achieved

objectives because they used what they had very efficiently. Modern ships reached trouble

spots at short notice, showing to advantage in comparison to the slow-moving Ottoman

military. These ships were also useful in gathering intelligence, which was passed quickly to

India and London. This contributed to Britain's crucial comparative advantage over Istanbul

in policy making. Information gathered from a variety of sources reached the central government almost immediately thanks to the telegraph.

While the eastern Arabian periphery was slipping away from Ottoman control and consolidating under British tutelage into defined dynastic territories, the centre of the empire began to undergo drastic changes with the onset of the

1908 Revolution and the deposition of Sultan Abdulhamid a year later. Ottomanism and Islamism, preached and turned into an ideological formula to hold the empire together, were consequently restated and refined to take

account of the different nationalities and their specific demands. In this con-

text, Arabism, a marginal and vague concept in the nineteenth century, moved

centre stage and was destined to claim the attention of the new rulers of the

empire, represented by the Committee of Union and Progress. The aim of the

revolutionary political elite was to focus allegiance on the Ottoman state,

thereby creating a sense of patriotism that extended beyond the personage of

the Sultan.

1 Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains, op. cit., 50-6. 2 Ibid., chap. 4. 3 Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf, op. cit., 141.


















the Sultan.



















the Sultan.



















the Sultan.


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Hasan Kayali considers the above-mentioned developments with a view to presenting a more nuanced interpretation than hitherto proffered by Arabists and Ottomanists alike. To him, Arab nationalism in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Transjordan, in addition to Arabia, was more than a movement of rejection or an expression of anti-Turkish opposition. It rather sprang from a process of socialization, engendered by the 1908 Revolution and included competitive mass politics, the appearance of a liberal press and a more inclu- sive educational system. With greater opportunities, there developed greater expectations and the awareness of distinct ethnic rights and histories.

The idea of Ottomanism, managed and controlled by a centralized state, took hold and began to manifest itself in various applications under the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). This committee, representing a wide spectrum of army factions and civilian associations, envisaged a unified Ottoman state striving for progress and competing on an equal footing with other European powers. In this sense, its policies were to a large extent hitched to preserving the territorial integrity of the empire, and its failure to live up to such promises was bound to diminish its popularity and encourage the rise of opposition groups. The loss of Bosnia-Herzegovina to Austria, coupled with Bulgaria's declaration of independence, so soon after the revolution, were immediately perceived as a sign of disastrous incompetence. Enjoying, for the first time, the freedom to express these views in public meetings and in the press, these opposition groups took this unprecedented opportunity to articulate a liberal agenda based on decentralization. In December 1908 parlia- mentary elections were held, pitting the centralists of the CUP against the decentralist liberal party of Prince Sabahuddin, a nephew of Sultan Abdul- hamid and an advocate of free market economics. The CUP, while acting as an informal party, won the majority of the seats in the new parliament. However, its grip on power was challenged by an uprising of conservative elements in March 1909. In its decisive response to the challenge of religious students and supporters of the old regime, it achieved a temporary respite, culminating in deposing Abdulhamid and installing in his place the Sultan's pliant brother, Mehmed Resad. Moreover, by using the Third Army to suppress the uprising, it heralded the entrenchment of centralist policies under the direction of military imperatives. In addition to preserving imperial territorial integrity, it now faced the task of meeting the demands of its diverse ethnic communities: Greeks, Armenians, Serbs, Kurds, Albanians and Arabs. In its former task it had to contend with the increasing pressures and expansionist drive of major European powers, while in its latter challenge it had to respond to the growing and vociferous voices of its communities clambering for autonomy, decentralization or outright separation. It was also in this period that Zionism was becoming better organized and all the more insistent in opening up Palestine for settlement as a future Jewish homeland.

The opposition to centralized policies was most succinctly expressed in the demand of Arab deputies, notables and intellectuals to adopt Arabic as the official language of their provinces instead of Ottoman Turkish. What tran-










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spired in the end was a clash of two different policies which polarized the Ottoman Empire as it increasingly lost most of its European possessions and assumed the character of a Turko-Arab state. Although 'Turkification' was never adopted as an official policy, it proved to be a convenient charge to be levelled against unionist attempts of centralization in general. Furthermore, the emergence of non-governmental cultural societies and associations with a pronounced Turkist agenda raised the possibility of seeing Turkification as the ultimate objective of a Turkish-dominated government and parliament, not to mention the armed forces. Another complaint was soon to resurface and con- cerned the secular dimensions of Ottomanism at the expense of Islam as the religion of state and the majority of the subjects.4

The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, represented by a wide spectrum of notables, landowners, merchants, lawyers, army officers, journalists and teachers, were at first committed to the integrity of the Ottoman state, provided certain vital demands were heeded and met. These ranged from assigning Arabic official recognition to the allocation of a fair proportion of governmental and civil service posts, to setting up a decentralized political system which by 1913 came to mean a Turko-Arab partnership. Whatever the particular circumstances which served to accelerate such a trend, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the Arab educated 6lite, along with their local constituencies, had developed a sense of national identity that could no longer be ignored. The reluctance of Turkish officials to offer the minimum concessions which were likely to satisfy at least a substantial section of the Arabs began to erode this ideal of

partnership. Moreover, instead of embodying the concept of Ottomanism in

meaningful practices and institutional arrangements, the CUP after 1913 decided to shift its ideological ground to a pronounced version of Islamism.

By that time, Britain had been in occupation of Egypt since 1882 and the Sudan since 1898. Libya had fallen to Italy, while France had become the dominant colonial power in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, and the eastern coastal fringes of the Arabian Peninsula had been turned into a British sphere of direct influence. The only areas which were still under Ottoman rule -

Greater Syria, Iraq, Western Arabia and North Yemen - were consequently being coveted by either Britain, France or Germany, with Russia hoping to

capture Constantinople, the old seat of Christian Orthodoxy. While Russian officials supported the Orthodox communities, particularly in the Balkans and

Palestine, Germany chose to espouse pan-Islamism as an ideology calculated to embody Ottoman culture, on the one hand, and as a weapon against British

domination of Muslim lands or subjects, on the other. As for the British, they perceived Arab nationalism to be the most effective instrument of wresting the eastern Arab world from Ottoman control, while at the same time being mind-

ful of Islamic sensitivities in their imperial domains across Africa and Asia. The French, already with vast imperial possessions, including most of North

Africa, tended to view both pan-Islamism and pan-Arabism as movements


































4 Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks, op. cit., 82-96. 4 Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks, op. cit., 82-96. 4 Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks, op. cit., 82-96. 4 Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks, op. cit., 82-96.

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detrimental to their own interests, and opted by and large to hitch their fortunes to the aspirations of minority and sectarian groups, such as the Maronites of Lebanon.

Donald M. McKale, using German, British and American archival documents, shows how German intrigues in the Middle East, the Indian subconti- nent and East Africa to subvert British influence, determined to a large extent local alliances with one European power or another. Although Britain and France had the lion's share of Ottoman foreign trade and financial trans- actions, Germany was being treated as the main partner of the Ottoman Empire, particularly in the military field and the granting of concessions to build railways. During his visit to the Near East, the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, is reported to have written from Damascus to Nicholas II of Russia that his visit to Jerusalem made him think of adopting Islam as a religion, had it not been for the fact that he already had one.5 Paradoxically, pan-Islamism seemed at the time to be the most natural and logical ideology to adopt. From India to North Africa, it created the illusion of a tidal wave that was about to engulf the entire Middle East. The Sanussis of Libya, Ali Dinar of Darfur, the 'Mad' Mullah of Somalia, the conversion of Ethiopia's heir-designate to the throne to Islam, the resurgence of Wahhabism in Arabia and the ambitious plans of Sharif Husayn to reclaim the Caliphate for the Arabs, all served to lend cre- dence to the claim that pan-Islamism was gathering momentum as the wave of the future. The adoption of an Islamist discourse by the Ottoman ruling trium- virate - Enver, Tal'at and Jamal - as well as their attempts to bolster the credentials of the Ottoman Sultan as the Caliph of all Muslims, added to the credibility of the new ideology.

According to McKale, both Germany and Britain sought to weaken each other by fomenting local revolts, using them in their Middle Eastern rivalries to enhance economic and strategic interests. While Germany, together with its ally, the Ottoman state, concentrated on inciting the Egyptians against British occupation of their country, the British responded by adopting a curtailed version of Sharif Husayn to liberate Arab lands from Turkish tyranny.6 Britain hoped that by supporting an Arab Caliph, the 'sting' of pan-Islamism would be expunged, or at least made to work in its favour. Even the French, worried about repercussions of Islamism in their North African colonies, arrived at the same conclusion. Germany, on the other hand, having convinced itself of the potency of a regenerated Islam, pressed the Ottoman Sultan to call on Muslims to wage jihad as a religious duty incumbent on all able-bodied men.

However, there was a noticeable indifference to the jihad in the Arab world. Two Ottoman assaults on the Suez Canal failed, and the only meaningful revolt, known as the Arab Revolt, occurred in Arabia against Turkish rule and in conjunction with British war strategies.

The war ended with the defeat of Germany as well as the fragmentation of

5 McKale, War by Revolution, op. cit., 237, note 34. 6 Ibid., 72.



















655 655 655 655




the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires into their constituent parts. Britain and France were thus able to resume their expansionist drive in the Middle East and reclaim more territories to be placed under their control or domination. However, the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution and American notions of the right of self-determination coincided with the emergence of indigenous national movements aimed at achieving political independence. At first, European statesmen, officials and colonial civil servants were reluctant to

acknowledge the genuineness or viability of such movements. Adopting the tenets of what has become known as orientalism,7 European powers postu- lated the Middle East as a backward area incapable of launching its own

development or creating stable political institutions, which had, therefore, to be guided, supervised and instructed on how to manage its own affairs. According to Derek Hopwood,' those who had to carry out imperial policies on the spot, or became interested in the Middle East during this period, did not

simply act out of straightforward political motives or were possessed of the

high ideals of serving their country, but were to a large extent impelled by a desire to escape their own culture or to resolve personal dilemmas brought about by a combination of failures. Although these personal failures, or fail-

ings, did vary from one individual to another, they were in the main grounded in sexual fantasies, tragic love affairs, strict public school disciplines and a desire to re-invent themselves by fleeing into an oriental setting. Consequently, their actions, strategies and adventures were shaped or influenced by the

imperial ethnocentric situation.9 Against this background, their personal dramas were conflated into overarching theoretical pontifications on the mys- terious East with its seductive allure embodied in its veiled women, the harem and the powerful impact of Islam. Hopwood is, however, highly aware of the

contradictory aspects of this uneven encounter between East and West. He,

therefore, offers a nuanced interpretation of his individual subjects - spanning British and French officials, writers and anthropologists, both men and

women - endeavouring to avoid sweeping statements which tend to obscure

the sincerity of some of these individuals or deny the efforts made by them to

arrive at a better understanding of Middle Eastern culture. Be that as it may, following the end of the first world war, the East and the

West were set on a collision course, whereby the struggle for independence acted as the crucial factor in determining European responses. Roger Owen'? charts the contours of the emergence of the modern Middle Eastern states

beginning with the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the

political institutions of a colonial state. He then concentrates on the inter-

action between the new political space, created or re-established by colonial

powers, and the rapid growth of centralized administrative institutions. In this

7 See in particular, Edward Said, Orientalism (London 1995) and Rana Kabbani, Europe's

Myths of Orient (London 1986). 8 Hopwood, Sexual Encounters in the Middle East, op. cit.

9 Ibid., 152. 10 Owen, State, Power and Politics, op. cit.





























































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regard, he treats the political history of the Arab world as a separate entity which had a different trajectory from those of Turkey, Iran and Israel.

However, Owen's account is heavily tilted towards an institutional descrip- tion, which sees these institutions as historical entities developing over time, interacting with each other and creating their own momentum of internal conflict and resolution. Seen in this light, the army looms in most major Middle Eastern states as either the engine of institution-building or the stimulus for introducing modernity in a more thorough and persistent way than previously practised or attempted. Moreover, the army itself never acted on its own or in a vacuum of political and social forces. Rather, its decisions and actions were the result of a dynamic field of contested priorities, often championed by coun- tervailing forces, such as trade unions, political parties and regional interests.

The merit of Owen's excellent comprehensive analysis of Middle Eastern political systems is an acute historical sense that is constantly aware of fluidity, social conflict and development over time. Hence his determined effort to eschew facile essentialist explanations which postulate a primordial factor, such as religion or frozen culture, as an underlying determinant accounting for all the major events in their Middle Eastern context. This is largely done by seeing modernity as a worldwide movement on the one hand, and studying the modern and contemporary Middle East as a sub-region of the Third World, on the other. Although Owen does not fully spell out the manner in which the Third World differentiated itself from the first and second worlds, implicit in his diagnosis is the contention that all societies are subject to the laws of change and have to be understood within this broad assumption. Consequent- ly, certain institutions and policies are grasped as immediate responses to particular circumstances or socio-economic junctures. Such an approach becomes all the more relevant when democracy, economic structures and political practices are discussed as historical entities to be dissected and taken seriously, rather than being treated as repetitive phenomena with no energetic life of their own. Hence, some Middle Eastern political systems entered the modern world with a liberal type of government (Egypt, Syria, Iraq), then adopted single-party regimes, and yet again reverted to a limited practice of multi-party politics in the last decades of the twentieth century. Economic policies and programmes followed a similar pattern in a number of countries, whereby socialism, for example, was adopted and then discarded under the impact of globalization and the new world order following the emergence of the USA as the sole superpower (Chapters 7 and 8). As to the role of Middle Eastern armies, it extends beyond that of ensuring national security and managing internal conflicts, be it peacefully or violently. Being the final arbiters in most countries of the area, 'it is quite easy to imagine the Middle Eastern army remaining part of the powerful coalition of forces which opposes privatization, the retreat of the state and the further introduction of court-based ruler of law'.1










11 Ibid., 218. 11 Ibid., 218. 11 Ibid., 218. 11 Ibid., 218.

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This thematic and historically-grounded analysis of Middle Eastern politics is carried further in its nuanced details by Beverley Milton-Edwards.12 Although Turkey is left out in this analytical survey, its historical thrust brings out the rich traditions of non-state actors and their relevance to the other forms of politics associated with religion, gender or ethnicity. Some of these issues were broached and competently treated in Owen's survey, but Milton- Edwards foregrounds these topics as significant factors in the political development of the area. This is most noticeable in her account of the politics of gender (Chapter 7) and her meticulous attention to the ethnic rights of Middle Eastern minorities (Chapter 8). Both Owen and Milton-Edwards deal with the recent phenomenon of political Islam in a refreshingly unbiased and non- essentialist approach. However, whereas Owen places his analysis at a certain distance from political Islam, seeing it as part of a wider wave of fundamentalist resurgences affecting Muslims as well as Christians and Jews (Chapter 9), Milton-Edwards chooses to single out and concentrate on the particular aspects of modern Islam, with a clear and sympathetic, but often sweeping, point of view."3 Moreover, the question of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Middle East process rears its head on more than one occasion in both accounts.

The Arab-Israeli conflict had its origins in the rise of the Zionist movement towards the end of the nineteenth century and its claim to resettle the dis-

persed Jews of the world in Palestine. This claim was to be made less abstract with the announcement of the Balfour Declaration by the British government in 1917. Thus, the Declaration committed Britain to the establishment of a 'National Home' for the Jews in Palestine, thereby sowing the seeds of the conflict which was to plague the Middle East for the rest of the century and

beyond. In her book, Ploughing Sand,14 Naomi Shepherd charts the genesis of the British mandate in Palestine in all its controversial aspects and contradic-

tory promises, paying particular attention to 'the men' who were put in charge of carrying out the policies of their colonial masters. Pledging themselves to

support self-determination for the Palestinian Arabs and the creation of 'a National Home' for the Jews, the British ended up by alienating both communities. Their mandate was consequently abandoned in a unilateral decision,

leaving Palestinians and Jews to settle their differences on the battlefield in the

spring of 1948. Shepherd's work represents a sample of a growing body of literature which

tries to strike a balance between the claims of the Jews and the Arabs. Needless

to say, performing such a balancing act requires all the skills of a diligent historian who shuns hackneyed positions and goes on to examine the available

evidence with a keen interest in the details of her subject. The conflict between

12 Milton-Edwards, Contemporary Politics in the Middle East, op. cit.

13 Ibid., chap. 5. Her contention (133), that my book, Islamic Fundamentalism (London 1990,

1997), views 'any Muslim who is a believer' as being 'a fundamentalist' is unacceptable and miss-

es my main argument. 14 Shepherd, Ploughing Sand, op. cit.














































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Jews and Arabs involved two main issues: immigration and land. These issues were in turn caught up in a colonial administration incapable of grasping their implications for the future of Palestine. The British never managed to embody the principle of self-determination for Palestine's Arab majority in viable institutions, nor were they able to spell out their concept of a National Home for the Jewish minority. Having accepted the mandate, the British were under an obligation to encourage Jewish settlement in Palestine on the one hand, and prepare the indigenous Palestinians for eventual independence on the other. As Jewish settlement began to grow by leaps and bounds, leading at the same time to the loss of more Arab land, the British wavered between curbing Palestinian anger with brutal force (as they did in 1936-39) and stamping out illegal Jewish immigration. Despite the steady increase in the rate of immigration, the Jewish population of Palestine, which had reached 17 per cent of the total by 1931, made up only 31 per cent by 1946 and by 1947, just before the end of the mandate, comprised slightly less than one third of the population of Palestine.15 What seems to have tipped the balance in favour of Jewish settlers was related to a combination of three factors. First, the failure of British officials to devise long-term policies designed to protect Palestinian peasants, by means of improving the conditions of their daily life, carrying out a thorough agrarian reform and creating a proper and unambiguous system of land ownership. After all, the Palestinian peasantry formed the majority of the population but were often treated as an insignificant number. Second, the harsh measures used by the British to stamp out Palestinian resistance throughout the country. This was particularly apparent during the 1936-39 revolt. Third, the high degree of organization and co-ordination which ani- mated Jewish agencies and institutions in Palestine, ranging from agricultural settlements and industrial enterprises to military formations.

Thus, the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was almost a foregone conclusion. It was made all the more possible by the sudden British withdrawal from Palestine, the mounting support of Zionist aims by the USA and the con- flicting and chaotic nature of Arab strategies and tactics. Since then, Israel has fought at least four wars against various Arab states and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the search for an ever-elusive security, despite its overwhelming power and nuclear arsenal. This paradoxical state of affairs is explored by the Israeli writer and journalist, Amos Elon.16

According to Elon, Israeli society and politics have been steadily veering towards the right, particularly since 1967, in the wake of the euphoria which accompanied the defeat of three Arab armies. Within days, Israeli forces were able to occupy the whole of Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The mythology which grew out of these exploits gave rise to a volatile mixture of nationalism and religious fundamentalism, accompanied by the

15 Ibid., 98. Jewish emigration to Palestine was at its height during the nazi period in Germany, particularly between 1934 and 1939. 16 Elon, A Blood-Dimmed Tide, op. cit.













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Joural of Contemporary History Vol 37 No 4 Joural of Contemporary History Vol 37 No 4 Joural of Contemporary History Vol 37 No 4 Joural of Contemporary History Vol 37 No 4

revival of the memory of the Holocaust. The end result has been a sharply demarcated political landscape, pitting secularists, often of European origin, against Zionist diehards. Although Elon represents a liberal secular trend within Israeli society, and his pronouncements accord with a growing con- sensus in western intellectual circles regarding the right of the Palestinians to self-determination, his diagnosis conveys a gloomy appreciation of the peace process and the future of the Middle East as a stable region.

Such a future has often been debated and planned in advance by western powers and local rulers, only to be postponed yet again under the pressure of either widespread misunderstandings or missed opportunities. More intrigu- ingly, security plans, defence arrangements and political solutions concerning the Middle East seem to follow a recurrent pattern of secret diplomacy or con- spiratorial plots hatched by intelligence agencies. This pattern is brought out into the open and revealed in its full convoluted repercussions in Magnus Persson's documentary study of the intrigues which surrounded the Baghdad Pact in the 1950s.17 Thus, while the USA and Britain were publicly discussing the merits of the Baghdad Pact for the defence of the Middle East against Soviet penetration or aggression, they chose at the same time to develop a joint plan in 1955 to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. The plan, code-named

Operation Alpha, was to be implemented by 'secret diplomacy', whereby both Arabs and Israelis were to be approached but not fully apprised of its details.

By aiming to link Arab states, under the umbrella of the Baghdad Pact, to

Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, and eventually Israel, the two western powers correct-

ly saw the Arab-Israeli conflict as the major stumbling bloc. Nevertheless, the

opposition of the Egyptian leadership to the Baghdad Pact, Anglo-American rivalries and Israeli reluctance to offer concessions scuppered the plan. In

1956, following the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Nasser, who engi- neered the downfall of King Faruq in 1956 with his fellow free officers,

Britain, France and Israel hatched a secret military accord to invade Egypt, topple Nasser and set up a new Middle East order. In the event, the accord succeeded in its military aspects without achieving the desired political out-

come. American and Soviet pressure forced the invading armies to withdraw

from Egyptian soil and Nasser emerged as the hero of Arab nationalism in a

Middle East increasingly dominated by the competing interests of the two

superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union.18 The Oslo Accords of 1993

between the PLO and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Rabin, worked out in utter secrecy in a Norwegian villa and other hideouts, is another

example of Middle Eastern diplomatic secrecy. This is a theme which remains

largely unexplored, particularly in the repeated failures of its meagre results, as

well as the mythology surrounding the necessity of utter secrecy while con-

ducting negotiations in a Middle Eastern environment.

17 Persson, Great Britain, the United States and the Security of the Middle East, op. cit.

18 C. Ernest Dawn, 'The Quality of Arab Nationalism' in Hopwood (ed.), Arab Nation, Arab

Nationalism, op. cit., 55.
































































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Moreover, the history of Middle Eastern economies has also generated controversial debates, owing to the lack of reliable statistics and data regarding a number of vital issues such as budgetary figures, infant mortality, population censuses and adult illiteracy rates. A case in point is the confusion and ambi- guity surrounding the actual total population of one of the most important Middle Eastern countries, namely Saudi Arabia.'9 Nevertheless, Owen and Pamuk, while confining their Middle East to the eastern Arab world (including Egypt) and Turkey, succeed in offering a convincing periodization of economic development and cycles. Curiously, both seem to endorse the desir- ability of integrating the Middle East into the latest wave of globalization, exemplified by market forces, profit incentives, the privatization of public sector facilities, and the encouragement of foreign investments.

For all Middle Eastern countries, the first half of the twentieth century was the most difficult in economic and human terms. The devastation of two world wars, the Great Depression, and diminishing external trade meant a low growth performance. By contrast, during the second half of the twentieth century, characterized by policies of import substituting industrialization or substantial oil revenues, rates of growth became exceptionally high. Nevertheless, by the 1970s the same economies began to show signs of stagnation in both the agricultural and industrial sectors. This was all the more apparent with the plummeting of oil prices in the 1980s. The Gulf War of 1990-91 marked the final and irreversible entry of the Middle East into the world of globalization represented by the policies of international agencies such as the IMF and World Bank.20

As the Middle East is rapidly being economically integrated into the world of globalization, its politics seem to be harking back to a distant past. One example is the survival of anachronistic systems of government in the Arabian Peninsula, in spite of their oil wealth and modern infrastructures. This is the theme of Rosemarie Said Zahlan's excellent survey of the political history of various modern Gulf States.2' Another example is the emergence of fundamentalism, both in its Jewish and Islamic varieties.

While Vatikiotis is anxious to relate the rise of Middle Eastern fundamentalism to socio-economic factors, the stalled peace process and the hybrid political culture of the national elites,22 both Nieuwenhuijze and Salvatore adopt a post-modern analytical approach based on delineating the inner dynamics of religious discourses.

Salvatore juxtaposes modernity and Islam, seeing the latter as 'a complex civilization' as well as 'the flexible medium of a collective identity' and the former as a political discourse, mediated by intellectuals and marked by the concept of 'rationality' in its social embodiments. By defining both in this

19 Owen and Pamuk, A History of Middle Eastern Economies in the Twentieth Century, op. cit., 211. 20 Ibid., 101. 21 Zahlan, The Making of the Modern Gulf States, op. cit. 22 Vatikiotis, The Middle East, op. cit., chap. 10.



















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manner, Salvatore treats his species in their historical dimensions and their interaction as intellectual traditions. Consequently, he uses 'spatial-geometric images' in order to capture their discourses in a sequence of 'circles' tied to a 'hermeneutic chain'. His Foucauldian genealogical approach, coupled with unattributed reliance on Kuhn's diagnosis of scientific revolutions in their quest for problem-solving and the consequent shifting configurations of models or discourse types punctuates the text with a jarring jargon. However, Islam is dubbed 'a symbolic communicative system' which produces 'particular disposi- tions among the actors' leading at the same time to a higher order of specialized conceptual construction mediators by discourse manipulators. Modernity, on the other hand, is seen to reside in the final triumph of the idea of 'civil society' in the West and the subsequent constitution of autonomous subjects. In this sense, his allusion to 'the transcultural dimension of communication' rever- berating between the West and Islam bridges the familiar gap of otherness without, however, succeeding in disguising the decisive intrusion of the West in formulating Islamic modernity itself.23 The end result is a theoretical effort aimed at demonstrating the capability of Islam to chart its own path to modernity.

It is in this context that an anthology of articles by the Dutch scholar van Nieuwenhuijze on the struggle for authenticity in the Middle East becomes an index of western attitudes towards Islam.?4 By 'authenticity' he seems to mean the search for identity under the shadow of globalization. His verdict vacillates between granting Islam a unique personality and driving it back to the Middle

Ages. However, his text is shot through with a heightened humanist endeavour, anxious to institute a field of dialogue between Islam and the West. More

importantly, this dialogue is supposed to take place between a post-Christian secular culture and another which takes Islam as its 'predominant frame of reference', with the aim of 'enhancing reciprocal empathy'.2>

It has become fashionable nowadays to reduce the Middle East to a con-

gealed core of religious beliefs and practices. However, viewed from the long- term historical perspective, this may turn out to be an illusion in spite of the

contemporary raucousness of its advocates and the spectacle of crusading armies. It is for this reason that Nadje Al-Ali's study of Middle Eastern women26 breaks new ground and points to a future programme of original and

refreshing research. Her main concern, intelligently prosecuted and diligently delineated, is to foreground a deep-rooted tradition of secularism within

an anthropological approach and first-hand knowledge of the area. Perhaps some of the energy being expended on chasing the illusive essence of Islam could be spared by future historians, political scientists and anthropologists

23 Salvatore, Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity, 54 where 'the direct influence of

colonialism' is specifically singled out. 24 Van Nieuwenhuijze, Paradise Lost, op. cit., 230. 25 Ibid., 8-9. 26 Al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East, op. cit., 135-42.


































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Choueiri: The Middle East: Colonialism, Islam and the Nation State 663

by grappling with the rich and multi-layered culture of the Middle East in its optimistic penchant to outlive all reductionist modes of thought or practice.

Youssef M. Choueiri is Reader in Modern Middle Eastern History at the Institute of Arab

and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. His publications include Arab History and the Nation State, 1820-1980 (London 1989), State

and Society in Syria and Lebanon (Exeter 1993), Islamic Fundamentalism (London 1990) and Arab Nationalism (Oxford

2001). He is currently editing the Blackwell Companion to the History of the Middle East.





















colonialism and islam

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