I think this is an interesting series but I disagree with the contention that Islam is the real settler-colonialism. I think the whole idea of Settler-Colonialism is somewhat flawed but if we are going to apply the lens then Islam has been engaged in it the same way other groups have been. Maybe I am misreading but you seem to suggest in this piece that Christianity really didn't do any colonialism or at least not compared to Islam and, again, I feel like once you take on the Settler-Colonialist approach you have to include Christianity.
Not my intention at all to suggest that Christianity didn't do any colonialism! Thanks for mentioning this, so I can clarify. I would call your attention to these parts:
"That all changed when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion. Bishops became politically powerful, and the cross and sword traveled together. The Roman settler-colonial project became a Christian settler-colonial project. Depending on how you define it, this state persisted through late antiquity and the middle ages, even into the nineteenth century if you count the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the Americas.
In the early part of this era of “imperial missions” Christian emperors and kings waged wars of expansion throughout Eurasia, subjugating pagans and converting them en masse to the Trinitarian religion. In the 15th century and following, Catholic friars blessed the conquest of Central and South America and assimilated the Indigenous Americans by converting them to Christianity....
In the Protestant mercantilist empires of the 17th century and following, the ties became even looser. Protestant missionaries “felt the call” to proselytize “natives” in the colonies of their Euro-American powers, and they were welcomed by said colonial governments, but the primary outcome of this was secularization and/or highly syncretic new flavors of Christianity."
or...
"From supporting wars of conquest (as in the Reconquista of Iberia and subsequent conquest of the Americas) or inspiring and leading them (as in the Crusades), Christianity was no stranger to “holy war.” Indeed, following the Protestant Reformation, Christian Europe spent centuries soaked in blood, due to conflicts justified by a mix of political and religious exigencies."
I think where we may differ in opinion is the extent to which church authority was the direct agent of colonization as opposed to playing a supporting role, especially in later eras. The overall contrast I was drawing (or attempting to) is that even when Christian colonization was happening, there was still a concept of the secular as separate from the religious. The glory days of Islam and its reformist movements today make no such division.
Thanks for the helpful clarification, I may have just been reading too fast!
I wouldn’t down play the relationship between the church and state so much but, in contrast to Islamic states, I do think it is an important point that one group is clearly still more dominated by clerics at all levels of military and government.
I am thinking of examples like the 16th-century Spanish priests who were working to curtail the slave trade in the Americas, as an example of distance between religious and secular authority. (They convinced the monarchs, but then it was reinvented in other forms, and non-Christian slaves were imported from Africa as a "solution.") OTOH, the Inquisition was a horrible overreach of ecclesial authority, even if they then handed their victims over to the secular power for execution.
So I get your point that this is a contestable area.
Excellent piece. I don’t think Christianity is solely “Western” even though it is mostly now. Also, I think the diverging paths of the 3 Abrahamic faiths were contingent on their philosophies, ie. both Christianity and Islam were convinced they were better than Judaism and spread their ideas to whoever would accept them - as opposed to the Jews, for whom their spirituality was and is part of their core identity as a people, not simply a religious ideology that anyone could adopt easily. Jews don’t prosthelytize, and besides, it’s harder to spread your ideology when it’s tied to being part of a particular society. I also question Islamic/Arabic claims to being decendents of Ishmael. What proof of lineage do they have? I’d like to see that, if anyone can share something. The only thing I’ve ever seen is that Israelite kings sometimes hired (pre-Islam) Arab freelance warriors for their archery skills - something Ishmael was famous for. The only reason I care about that is because of Islamic usurping of Jewish history that allows them to do things like build a mosque on the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
In terms of conversion to Islam, it’s historically often been pushed by more than just intermarriage and even persecution. Given that Muslims have many privileges over non-Muslims in Islamic states, including tax exemptions and potential career advancement, it’s not surprising that many non-Muslims have willingly converted after conquest. I think a similar trend has been seen in some Medieval Christian societies where the aristocracy converted first – it becomes prestigious and rewarding to convert.
Interestingly, the early generations of Muslim leaders were in no hurry to encourage conquered peoples to convert (despite Islamic law recommending it), preferring to keep their privileges and the exclusive nature of Muslim status. This didn’t last, though.
Slavery basically does *still* exist in parts of the Arab world, notably Qatar and Yemen.
A slightly tangential point, but you talk about the claim that Islam needs a “Reformation.” This may be semantics, but I’d argue it actually needs an “Enlightenment.” The Reformation was mainly about the role and authority of the papacy, indulgences and the nature of the mass (transubstantiation and also who gets to partake of what). As you say, it led to over a century of bitter religious warfare.
The “liberalizing” of Christianity and Judaism took place as a result of coming into contact with the Enlightenment (which they often initially resisted), ultimately producing more liberal churches, Progressive Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism. The decline of many of these and return to more fundamentalist values makes me doubt that anything like this could happen to Islam soon (some more liberal Gulf States not withstanding).
Great points! I'm in complete agreement with you on Reformation vs Enlightenment. What it would take for a Muslim Spinoza, Voltaire, or Locke to gain a mass following and shape the future is an open question. So far, the folks who I would nominate for such a role (e.g. Salman Rushdie) have had a better reception (to put it mildly) outside the Muslim world of ideas than within it.
Between the Reformation and the Enlightenment was the French Revolution, executions of non-juring priests, the conquests of Napoleon (including abolition of the Papal States, Spanish Inquisition, Holy Roman Empire etc).
That is, centuries of bloody upheavals that violently broke the back of the medieval Church and forced it to adapt to secularism.
I don’t see how Islam gets to have its Enlightenment without going through similar pain. Somehow neither European colonial administrations nor secular Arab nationalists were willing to have this fight and now that window of history appears to have passed.
I read your part one, and this is an interesting sequel. It is very difficult to capture the relevant differences between European colonialism and Islamic colonialism in brief, but you have done a pretty savvy job here. You've done a pretty good job dispelling some of the more common historically blind arguments many have used to establish the historical "goodness" of Islam as a faith and political ideology.
Since it seems your next piece aims for what Islamic colonialism and its various attributes mean for non-Muslim communities today, I'll provide you some of the more frequent talking points on this subject for you to contend with. If you've heard these before, feel free to ignore.
—The violent backlash against the Soviet Union, U.S. , Europe, Israel, and the global phenomena of jihad are responses to a non-Muslim controlling and frequently violent presence in Muslim lands (this is one of the worldly arguments tepidly employed in the bin Laden letter to America).
—The modern iteration of violence from Islamist, and Jihadist groups are motivated by politics and not the religious doctrine itself. Even in examples where explicit theological motivation is stated, it is always, at bottom, a matter of politics. (This is a surprisingly common argument for those determined to uncouple the faith from the extremist groups that arise claiming the faith).
—Finally we have everyones favorite, the oppressor and the oppressed. A Marxist idea that casts groups as one or the other, and adjudicates morality in favor of the perceived oppressed and against the oppressor at all times. A true 'tennis without the net' argument, where one only ever has to establish that the side of their advocacy is "oppressed" in order to be right and justified in all other things. This idea appears to have been identified by Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah to cultivate greater sympathy from the Western political left that subscribe to it.
I like this article because it joins my personal theories about Islam rather well and I think you are missing a few points a dhimmi would not get.
Every civilization is between 2 poles, to give an example Western civilization is between left/right, the Chinese one is between Legalism and Ruism (Confucianism) and Islam is permanently between the cosmopolitan andalusi-humanistic view (what Muslims use to defend Islam) and religious fundamentalism. These 2 views are basically symbolism and literalism. Lets keep this in mind for later.
Something you alluded very correctly is that Islamic civilizations have a huge insecurity that is poignant because they are the choosen people of God, yet every non-choosen group is further ahead from them in all objective metrics. The superior people is inferior, and thus because of the Islamic axiom you mentioned of following the earlier example (ironically Islam very confucian). Thus you get in the late 18th century and early 19th the major crisis of Islam, Napoleon in Egypt and the Cross being stronger than the Crescent. The answer was basically « return to tradition » not because of the prophet axiom only but because by that point the main philosophical/legal idea was that interpretation of religion is the only way to extract information from reality (Al-Ghazali) and thus we are falling behind because we are not following hard enough.
Here is where it gets interesting, indeed the main reflex of Islam is to « return to tradition » but early on before the 20th century there was a battle that we should return to a symbolic interpretation of Islam (more exemplified by Enlightment influenced Islamists like Jamal al-Din Al Afghani) or a return to literalism (follower of Salafism/Wahabbism). Due to materialist (imperialism, Al-Ghazali influence, Islamic condescendance of philosophers and thinkers) reasons the symbolic approach lost its luster and the « return to tradition » spirit took the shape we see today of Saudi Arabia and increasingy the Islamic World.
And for long I read and thought about why the symbolic axis of Islamic civilization was so in retreat, lately I have been seeing more IQ related arguments but I think the non-materialist one is that the insecurity and tension of Global Inferiority/Islamic Superiority makes it so the more humanist strand cannot take place. Add to that the unlucky phenomenon that the more literalist areas were #blessed by oil and used it to crush any symbolic/humanist brand by creating Wahabbi school in all lf the Islamic world, pushing anti-Sufi and anti-moderate ideas and you get why Islam is, and will keep going the radicalization path and why what you mean by settler-colonialism is gonna increase.
I am even gonna go into predict that you will talk about SEA because they are the ones who have more recently and more abruptly gone from a more symbolic approach of Islam to a more literalist.
Also a last point, a pivotal moment in Islam is when the ulema became the lapdogs of the rulers and started manufacturing fatwas to oppress the civil society. In al-Andalus most tolerant times tou always had ulemas (priestly class), rulers and civil society (merchants) against each other and after the mongols it transitioned into a ruler+ulemas against the world.
I think this is an interesting series but I disagree with the contention that Islam is the real settler-colonialism. I think the whole idea of Settler-Colonialism is somewhat flawed but if we are going to apply the lens then Islam has been engaged in it the same way other groups have been. Maybe I am misreading but you seem to suggest in this piece that Christianity really didn't do any colonialism or at least not compared to Islam and, again, I feel like once you take on the Settler-Colonialist approach you have to include Christianity.
Not my intention at all to suggest that Christianity didn't do any colonialism! Thanks for mentioning this, so I can clarify. I would call your attention to these parts:
"That all changed when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion. Bishops became politically powerful, and the cross and sword traveled together. The Roman settler-colonial project became a Christian settler-colonial project. Depending on how you define it, this state persisted through late antiquity and the middle ages, even into the nineteenth century if you count the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the Americas.
In the early part of this era of “imperial missions” Christian emperors and kings waged wars of expansion throughout Eurasia, subjugating pagans and converting them en masse to the Trinitarian religion. In the 15th century and following, Catholic friars blessed the conquest of Central and South America and assimilated the Indigenous Americans by converting them to Christianity....
In the Protestant mercantilist empires of the 17th century and following, the ties became even looser. Protestant missionaries “felt the call” to proselytize “natives” in the colonies of their Euro-American powers, and they were welcomed by said colonial governments, but the primary outcome of this was secularization and/or highly syncretic new flavors of Christianity."
or...
"From supporting wars of conquest (as in the Reconquista of Iberia and subsequent conquest of the Americas) or inspiring and leading them (as in the Crusades), Christianity was no stranger to “holy war.” Indeed, following the Protestant Reformation, Christian Europe spent centuries soaked in blood, due to conflicts justified by a mix of political and religious exigencies."
I think where we may differ in opinion is the extent to which church authority was the direct agent of colonization as opposed to playing a supporting role, especially in later eras. The overall contrast I was drawing (or attempting to) is that even when Christian colonization was happening, there was still a concept of the secular as separate from the religious. The glory days of Islam and its reformist movements today make no such division.
Thanks for the helpful clarification, I may have just been reading too fast!
I wouldn’t down play the relationship between the church and state so much but, in contrast to Islamic states, I do think it is an important point that one group is clearly still more dominated by clerics at all levels of military and government.
I am thinking of examples like the 16th-century Spanish priests who were working to curtail the slave trade in the Americas, as an example of distance between religious and secular authority. (They convinced the monarchs, but then it was reinvented in other forms, and non-Christian slaves were imported from Africa as a "solution.") OTOH, the Inquisition was a horrible overreach of ecclesial authority, even if they then handed their victims over to the secular power for execution.
So I get your point that this is a contestable area.
Excellent piece. I don’t think Christianity is solely “Western” even though it is mostly now. Also, I think the diverging paths of the 3 Abrahamic faiths were contingent on their philosophies, ie. both Christianity and Islam were convinced they were better than Judaism and spread their ideas to whoever would accept them - as opposed to the Jews, for whom their spirituality was and is part of their core identity as a people, not simply a religious ideology that anyone could adopt easily. Jews don’t prosthelytize, and besides, it’s harder to spread your ideology when it’s tied to being part of a particular society. I also question Islamic/Arabic claims to being decendents of Ishmael. What proof of lineage do they have? I’d like to see that, if anyone can share something. The only thing I’ve ever seen is that Israelite kings sometimes hired (pre-Islam) Arab freelance warriors for their archery skills - something Ishmael was famous for. The only reason I care about that is because of Islamic usurping of Jewish history that allows them to do things like build a mosque on the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
Fascinating article. Some minor points:
In terms of conversion to Islam, it’s historically often been pushed by more than just intermarriage and even persecution. Given that Muslims have many privileges over non-Muslims in Islamic states, including tax exemptions and potential career advancement, it’s not surprising that many non-Muslims have willingly converted after conquest. I think a similar trend has been seen in some Medieval Christian societies where the aristocracy converted first – it becomes prestigious and rewarding to convert.
Interestingly, the early generations of Muslim leaders were in no hurry to encourage conquered peoples to convert (despite Islamic law recommending it), preferring to keep their privileges and the exclusive nature of Muslim status. This didn’t last, though.
Slavery basically does *still* exist in parts of the Arab world, notably Qatar and Yemen.
A slightly tangential point, but you talk about the claim that Islam needs a “Reformation.” This may be semantics, but I’d argue it actually needs an “Enlightenment.” The Reformation was mainly about the role and authority of the papacy, indulgences and the nature of the mass (transubstantiation and also who gets to partake of what). As you say, it led to over a century of bitter religious warfare.
The “liberalizing” of Christianity and Judaism took place as a result of coming into contact with the Enlightenment (which they often initially resisted), ultimately producing more liberal churches, Progressive Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism. The decline of many of these and return to more fundamentalist values makes me doubt that anything like this could happen to Islam soon (some more liberal Gulf States not withstanding).
Good point about Islamophobia.
Great points! I'm in complete agreement with you on Reformation vs Enlightenment. What it would take for a Muslim Spinoza, Voltaire, or Locke to gain a mass following and shape the future is an open question. So far, the folks who I would nominate for such a role (e.g. Salman Rushdie) have had a better reception (to put it mildly) outside the Muslim world of ideas than within it.
Between the Reformation and the Enlightenment was the French Revolution, executions of non-juring priests, the conquests of Napoleon (including abolition of the Papal States, Spanish Inquisition, Holy Roman Empire etc).
That is, centuries of bloody upheavals that violently broke the back of the medieval Church and forced it to adapt to secularism.
I don’t see how Islam gets to have its Enlightenment without going through similar pain. Somehow neither European colonial administrations nor secular Arab nationalists were willing to have this fight and now that window of history appears to have passed.
I read your part one, and this is an interesting sequel. It is very difficult to capture the relevant differences between European colonialism and Islamic colonialism in brief, but you have done a pretty savvy job here. You've done a pretty good job dispelling some of the more common historically blind arguments many have used to establish the historical "goodness" of Islam as a faith and political ideology.
Since it seems your next piece aims for what Islamic colonialism and its various attributes mean for non-Muslim communities today, I'll provide you some of the more frequent talking points on this subject for you to contend with. If you've heard these before, feel free to ignore.
—The violent backlash against the Soviet Union, U.S. , Europe, Israel, and the global phenomena of jihad are responses to a non-Muslim controlling and frequently violent presence in Muslim lands (this is one of the worldly arguments tepidly employed in the bin Laden letter to America).
—The modern iteration of violence from Islamist, and Jihadist groups are motivated by politics and not the religious doctrine itself. Even in examples where explicit theological motivation is stated, it is always, at bottom, a matter of politics. (This is a surprisingly common argument for those determined to uncouple the faith from the extremist groups that arise claiming the faith).
—Finally we have everyones favorite, the oppressor and the oppressed. A Marxist idea that casts groups as one or the other, and adjudicates morality in favor of the perceived oppressed and against the oppressor at all times. A true 'tennis without the net' argument, where one only ever has to establish that the side of their advocacy is "oppressed" in order to be right and justified in all other things. This idea appears to have been identified by Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah to cultivate greater sympathy from the Western political left that subscribe to it.
Good work so far.
Thanks, and great comment!
I like this article because it joins my personal theories about Islam rather well and I think you are missing a few points a dhimmi would not get.
Every civilization is between 2 poles, to give an example Western civilization is between left/right, the Chinese one is between Legalism and Ruism (Confucianism) and Islam is permanently between the cosmopolitan andalusi-humanistic view (what Muslims use to defend Islam) and religious fundamentalism. These 2 views are basically symbolism and literalism. Lets keep this in mind for later.
Something you alluded very correctly is that Islamic civilizations have a huge insecurity that is poignant because they are the choosen people of God, yet every non-choosen group is further ahead from them in all objective metrics. The superior people is inferior, and thus because of the Islamic axiom you mentioned of following the earlier example (ironically Islam very confucian). Thus you get in the late 18th century and early 19th the major crisis of Islam, Napoleon in Egypt and the Cross being stronger than the Crescent. The answer was basically « return to tradition » not because of the prophet axiom only but because by that point the main philosophical/legal idea was that interpretation of religion is the only way to extract information from reality (Al-Ghazali) and thus we are falling behind because we are not following hard enough.
Here is where it gets interesting, indeed the main reflex of Islam is to « return to tradition » but early on before the 20th century there was a battle that we should return to a symbolic interpretation of Islam (more exemplified by Enlightment influenced Islamists like Jamal al-Din Al Afghani) or a return to literalism (follower of Salafism/Wahabbism). Due to materialist (imperialism, Al-Ghazali influence, Islamic condescendance of philosophers and thinkers) reasons the symbolic approach lost its luster and the « return to tradition » spirit took the shape we see today of Saudi Arabia and increasingy the Islamic World.
And for long I read and thought about why the symbolic axis of Islamic civilization was so in retreat, lately I have been seeing more IQ related arguments but I think the non-materialist one is that the insecurity and tension of Global Inferiority/Islamic Superiority makes it so the more humanist strand cannot take place. Add to that the unlucky phenomenon that the more literalist areas were #blessed by oil and used it to crush any symbolic/humanist brand by creating Wahabbi school in all lf the Islamic world, pushing anti-Sufi and anti-moderate ideas and you get why Islam is, and will keep going the radicalization path and why what you mean by settler-colonialism is gonna increase.
I am even gonna go into predict that you will talk about SEA because they are the ones who have more recently and more abruptly gone from a more symbolic approach of Islam to a more literalist.
Also a last point, a pivotal moment in Islam is when the ulema became the lapdogs of the rulers and started manufacturing fatwas to oppress the civil society. In al-Andalus most tolerant times tou always had ulemas (priestly class), rulers and civil society (merchants) against each other and after the mongols it transitioned into a ruler+ulemas against the world.