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Islam and Arab’s encounter with the west is as old as Islam itself. There is a mention of Al-Rum, the Romans, in the holy book of Islam Qura’n. The relationships between the two people are not always been in ease. While west is a rather secular concept but it also indicates the land of Christendom. On the other hand Islam and Arabs are not synonyms either. Giving that the process of naming is always problematic. Therefore any adjective and concepts requires clear definition. The majority of Arabs are Muslim. While the majority of Muslims are not Arabs. Islam makes Arab identity, even in its secular versions. While concerning the relationships between West and Christianity. The two at the same time are intertwined and antagonistic to each other.
West especially Europe has a troubled history with Islam. When the Arabs first issued from the desert, they advanced very rapidly. This early clash and challenge to the authority of the Roman Empire resulted in resentment and abhorrence from European side. Edward Gibbon described them as “robbers” (Atiya, 1958: 19). The Arabs have been surprised and surprising others at the ease and rapidity of their success. “Forty-six years after the flight of Mahomet from Mecca, his disciples appeared in arms under the walls of Constantinople” (Gibbon, 1788). As Gibbon continues “they were animated by a genuine or fictitious saying of the prophet, that, to the first army which besieged the city of the Caesars”.
The Arabs and Muslims were in incredulity of their own success because not for long time ago they were Bedoweens (nomads) in scattered communities in the desert. The primitive life style and harsh condition of the nature surround them, made survival the priority in their life and no any purpose beyond that.
With the establishment of Islam, Arabs established their own first state; with its strong belief the novel state similar to any other power also developed the appetite for expansion. Islam like any other religion has a nature of dominance. It is duty on Muslim to do Jihad, either through preaching, book, or through sword. However some (Madden, 2007) argue “the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword”. This is historically not correct since Islam spread in South East Asia only through merchants. But the nature of dominance is undisputable as many centuries later founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Al-Banna, puts it “it is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet” (Taheri, 1987). Islam spread in the three contents in a matter of less than a century. According to Braudel the reason of that fast expansion was that Islam was not opposing the other culture and religions but it was merely a continuation of them. Despite the similarity among all the three religions as Islam call them ahl-al ktab, people of book. The history of the region shows that there has never been any sort of integrations between the two sides of the Mediterranean. The hatred and the discourse of othering is the dominant view. Both Christian and Muslims killed each other as a holy act. The both sides act has been justified in various ways throughout the history. In the late 11th century, the Pope of Rome Urban II declared a crusade to take Jerusalem from the Arabs, who had held the city for centuries. In just a few years, European knights seized the city, slaughtering most of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. According to Madden (2002) the “Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them”. Thus would begin two centuries of holy war. “The crusade had an educational and liberalising effect on Europe. They found a society in many respect more refined and dignified than their own” (Atiyah, 1958:68). The Muslims were upper handed until the birth of the European Renaissance.
The beginning of decline
From the crusade to the Renaissance Arabs in the Middle East were under Ottoman Empire. Ottomans were fierce Turkish warrior tribe that originated in the central and eastern Asian grassland, the homeland also of the Scythians, Huns, and Mongols. Like Mongols they were great horsemen, and their skill with bow gave them considerable military prowess. They were racial mixture, some resembling the Chinese in skin colour and facile feature, others like Caucasians (Simons, 2004:173).
Ottomans success against the other can be explained as the conflict between civilised and barbarian. Like previous barbarian groups Mongols and others, Ottoman expanded rapidly and conquered vast lands in the region and beyond. “In 1534 Suleiman despatched the Grand Wazer Ibrahim Pasha to commence the conquest of Iraq” (Simons, 2004:175). The Ottoman Empire destroyed what they come a cross and during their tenure they failed to built anything, no city, no school, no palace, and no civilisation. In 1638 Sultan Murad IV conquered Iraq and divided into three Villyats; Baghdad, Basra and Musil.
Ottoman expansion went as far as North Africa. But the vast bulk of their Empire was in the Europe. The Ottomans despite their success in the frontiers their Empire at home was getting more and more corrupted. Many factors contributed to the decline of the Ottoman Empire; problem with dynastic successions, administering a vast empire, the harem system, factional competition for power, weakening the unity of the empire.
As their previous Arab Abysid Empire, Ottomans as soon as established their power they immersed themselves in the business of pleasure seeking. Power and sex corrupted the empire to a degree the brother overthrowing the father, this milieu of distrust led to bloodshed among empyreal families. The rise and decline of the empire was explained before by the Muslim philosopher called Ibn Khaldun in his famous book Al-Muqaddimah as translated to Latin as Prolegomena. He believed that an empire, “seldom outlives three generations” (Nicholson, 1922). “The first maintains its nomadic character, its rude and savage ways of life” as it was in the early stage of the Ottoman Empire. The second generation “comes a change”. The change according to Ibn Khaldun occurs because “possessing dominion and affluence, they turn from nomadic to settled life, and from hardship to ease and plenty”. In this stage, after the clam “The authority, instead of being shared by all, is appropriated by one, while the rest, too spiritless to make an effort to regain it, abandon the glory of ambition for the shame of subjection”. Here Ibn Khaldun blames the “spiritless-ness” of the ordinary people as a cause for the emergence of the despotic rulers. While the “third generation at this stage men no longer take delight in glory and patriotism, since all have learned to bow under the might of a sovereign and are so addicted to luxurious pleasures that they have become a burden on the state; for they require protection like women and young boys” (Nicholson, 1922).
But Ottoman Empire emerged in a time when the Arab was falling. Therefore, the Arabs initially saw Ottomans more as a blessing than a curse. As Ibn Khaldun puts it: “when the state was drowned in decadence” (Lewis, 1999:90). The state he considers is the Arab kalifa in Baghdad. Then he continues “it was God’s benevolence that He rescue the faith, by reviving its dying breath and defending the wall of Islam. He did this by sending to the Muslims, from the Turkish nation ruler to defend them and utterly royal helpers” (Lewis, 1999:90). This claim is far from truth. The Ottomans were not Muslim but became Muslim. Their aim was not to revive Islam but to use it as a state ideology. But Ibn Khaldun beliefs as result of this “Islam rejoices in the benefit, which it gains through them, and the branch of the kingdom flourish with the freshness of the youth” (Lewis, 1999:90).
This might explain why Arabs were fine with Ottoman rule as long as the state ideology was Islamic. The Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd that is known in Latin as Averroes proclaimed in 1175 that there are “two truths religion for the uneducated masses and philosophy for the educated elite”. But in this case religious truth for the masses and hedonism for the elite rulers. The weakness of the centre resulted in a new structure of the empire. The Ottomans appointed local mutasarrifiya (governorate) from the local people, however that was a sign of the weakness of the centre but resulted in coexistence throughout much of Ottoman era.
However the royal family had a very special and unique method to docile the local representatives. According to Ali Al-Wardy in his book the Modern History of Iraq
Royal authority had sodomy with the Valy’s (the appointed local chief) as a way to domesticate and docile them and then according to the tradition of the region they will not rebel. Since sodomy was common among Turks, as one European traveller put it “they {Turks] loath the natural use of the woman” (Al-Azmeh, 1993:124).
When the Ottoman Empire reached a level that they could not stand in front of Europeans, the dilemma began. The painful question was why they are defeating and losing to the Europeans. This realisation was unbearable, since for a many centuries the Ottomans regarded themselves in a same level as the Europeans. The need for Ottomans to be like the Europeans or become Europeans is and old and complicated feeling. “When in 1856, following to the Crimean War, during the Paris Conference held at the Quai d’Orsay, the great European powers declared that the Ottoman Empire was now part of the European circle and that its territorial integrity was guaranteed by European states. The ottoman press was enthusiastic and kept on repeating: We have all become Europeans” (Sirmen, 2007).
Becoming European was not an easy metamorphosing process. If in the Kafka’s text “one morning, Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed. Then he asked what’s happened to me. It was no dream”.
What happened to Gregor Samsa during the night in his bed it happened to the Ottoman Empire also. The metamorphosing process was called Tanzimat, an Arabic origin Turkish word for organizing. As Ali Sirmen put it “During the period of the Tanzimat in the 19th century, the Turks believed that by aligning themselves with Europe they would have become more civilized, progressed economically, etc… But ultimately the Empire crumbled” (2007).
Before the Europeanisation attempt the identity of the Empire was Islamic. Therefore when the Ottomans entered Syria in 1516 they did not face any resistance from the local. For the local the entering was not a change, it was still Islamic (Zaenadin, 2007).
The Tanzimat
Tanzimat Declaration which is officially known as the “Imperial Gulhane Decree” of 1839 read by the Grand Vizier Mustafa Reshid Pasha in the name of the Sultan (Finkel, 2005: 447). The previous reform was known as New Order, which emerged during Selim III. The sole aim of this reform attempts was to modernise the Ottoman army. Modernising was a concept meant renewal; strengthen, to a level that could fight the western army. It was a process ambiguous and complex. Through the change in the army the aim was also to change the face of the Empire. The empire was loose and had a multiple nationality, languages, and identities. It was not a Turkish Empire “the alleged ‘Turkish domination of 400 years’, is a historic forgery” (Ali Sirmen, 2007).
Beside the reform in army the modernisation process had other aims also. The Tanzimat was reorganising the whole empire in way to survive the new era. One of the main tasks was to establish a new identity to the Empire. A special school opened in Istanbul in Galatasaray, it was called the Galatasaray School. The school was founded in 1868 to create an ottoman identity. A new identity was Turk. Turk during the empire was a name for people who lived outside cities. It was not a privilege for one to be a Turk. Members of the Ottoman Empire were calling themselves as Osmanly. According to Ali Sirmen the school failed to establish its aim. “On the other hand, it quite managed to transmit a national Turkish identity” (Ali Sirmen). When Ottomans failed to coin an identity Turk became their identity. This was especially in the hand of the Young Turks movement and their party Itihad o Taraqi Union and Progress. The party came to power in 1908 and ruled till 1918. With Ithad o Taraqi the European form of identity arrived namely nationalism. “Ottoman rule was tolerant of the others ethnicity and religion tolerance became both religious prospect and part of political practice” (Pappé, 2007:15). Looking at the composition of a city like Istanbul during the Ottoman Empire indicates how cosmopolitan the Empire was. The city was home for many different minorities; Kurds, Arabs, Albanians, Greeks, Jews, beside that the city was attracting various kind of people for arrange of reasons, land, interest, profit, leisure refugee” ( Rohat Eski Istanbul Kurtleri “By 1893 only half of its population was Muslim. Ottoman was an Empire without an ethnic identity” (Pappé, 2007:15).
Therefore the aim of Itihad o Taraqi was to construct an ethnic identity, to build a nation, to centralise the empire, to make the Turkish language a Lingua Franca of the empire. This step, or rather steps, which was called reform, marked the arrival of the idea of a nation and nation state from Europe into the Middle East. The reform was the formative period for Arab and Turkish nationalism. As Antonio’s claims that it was the Young Turks' policy of 'turkification' that kindled the flames of nationalism among non-Turkish subjects of the Ottoman state (Antonius, 1937). However it’s hard to know what Antonius means by nationalisation. He frequently refers to the subjects of his book as "the Arab race.
At that time the question of modernisation and becoming modern was not limited only to Istanbul. The questions about modernity were asked in every provincial capital like Beirut, Baghdad, Cairo, Aleppo and others. These questions were asked by intellectuals, who were merely member of, middle class city dwellers as (Watenpaugh, 2006) recalls:
On the evening of 2 January 1910, Fathallah Qastun, a newspaper editor in Aleppo, one of the most important cities of the Ottoman Empire, addressed the inaugural meeting of the Mutual Aid Society. Simply titled "Becoming Civilized," the text of the speech, complete with parenthetical notations of spontaneous applause, was published in Qastun's own Arabic-language newspaper, al-Sha'b [The People]. Qastun began his speech by asking: "Why have we not yet become fully civilized and in particular, why have we not borrowed more from Europe?"
Since the Ottoman Empire and its changes is beyond the concern of this paper, therefore, rather the impact of that changes in the Ottoman Empire on the Arab Middle East will be taking into consideration. Ottoman were concerned about their empire. The reform they were initiated was mainly aiming to centralise the empire and making it a Turkish empire through a process of tukification.
This Turkification process was an emulation of the western style without any understanding of the nature of the empire. When the Ottomans pushed for making Turkish the language of the Empire the step backlash, the Turkification was embedded with Turanism or pan Turkism. The founder of this movement was a man called Ziya Gokalp.
At the end of the Ottoman Empire the country was in a major political and intellectual crises. Those were the days of the Meșrutiyet, a Turkish word for constitutional regime founded by the Young Turks after the 1908-9 revolution. The Turkish intelligentsia was torn between three conflicting ideologies: the liberalism of the Tanzimat period, which demanded assimilation to the West and hoped to save the multi-national Ottoman Empire by granting equal rights to all its citizens without distinction of religion and race (Ottomanism); the clericalism of the orthodox Muslims who insisted that Islam must retain its dominating influence on politics, culture and social life and serve as an indissoluble link between the Muslim nations inside the Empire, particularly Turks and Arabs, and those beyond its borders (Islamism or Pan-Islamism); and Turkish nationalism which in its first, romantic period fought for closer relations between all peoples of Turkish race in the hope of eventually uniting them in one Empire (Pan-Turkism or Turanism). After some hesitation Gökalp rejected the first two ideals and supported the Turanian movement. With the change of political circumstances, however, he took exception to its extreme aims and developed his own ideology which he called Turkism (Türkçü lük) and which is in fact a kind of synthesis of the trends mentioned above with the emphasis on the element of nationalism. Like most members of his party, Union and Progress, Gökalp in the beginning favoured Ottomanism (Osmanlicilik) (Heyd, 1950:71).
There are a lot of fogs around this all process. Whether the idea of nationalism defused into Arabs as a reaction to the process of centralisation or as emulation of the Turanism, is not quite clear. One can conduct a philological research, like those research mostly done by the oreintalsit Bernard Luis, and reach a result that for instance there is a concept of Eroba which means Arabism as same as Turanism. But without doubt the alteration of the Ottoman Empire from an Islamic empire into a nationalistic nation-state, as Heyd put it “At first, however, the new ideals brought only harm to the Turks. The Christians, and after them the non-Turkish Muslims (e.g.Albanians and Arabs) in the Ottoman Empire, took up the cry of nationalism with enthusiasm and threw off -- or tried to throw off -- the yoke of Turkish rule (1950: 104).
The idea of nationalism diffused from west to Turkey and in the hand of thinker like Gokalp went through a Trukification. This can be regarded as a moment of the commencement of modernity, a process which has not finalised yet. As Pamuk put it:
“Istanbul is geographically confused. So is the Turkish nation. 60 percent are conservative, 40 percent are looking for westernisation. These two groups have been arguing among themselves for 200 years. This situation of being in limbo, in between East and West, it’s a lifestyle in Turkey.” (Smith, 1995)
The Turkish attempt to centralise their empire was a plan doomed to failure. The causes of the failure were many among them the looseness of the empire. In the area like “Arabian Peninsula the Ottoman power had not been very effective. For the most part of the various local princes and sheikhs enjoyed large measure of autonomy, if not virtual independent” (Atiyah, 1958: 91). The Young Turks had to engage in confrontation with an identity more robust, than their required new identity, with the deeper roots in the society and the psyche of the people. This was especially with Muslims. Those Muslims who spoke Arabic retained a pride in their language: God revealed the Qur'an in Arabic to an Arab prophet in the seventh century. They also celebrated the history of the early Arab conquests, which carried Islam from the Oxus to the Pyrenees. And they took pride in their genealogies, which linked them to Arabia at the dawn of Islam.
When the Ottoman Empire started to decline there was a rescue process within the Empire, the rescue process was emerging in a three lines. Two of these of three lines their ideological geneses were from the West. Tanzimat group were advocating and canvassing for liberalism. They vowed to introduce the concept of citizenship and equal right for without distinction of religion and race (Heyd, 1950:71).
The second line which had its ideological genesis in the West was Turkish nationalism “which in its first, romantic period fought for closer relations between all peoples of Turkish race in the hope of eventually uniting them in one Empire (Pan-Turkism or Turanism)” (Heyd, 1950:71).
The line, which countered these, two was the line of the “clericalism of the orthodox Muslims who insisted that Islam must retain its dominating influence on politics, culture and social life and serve as an indissoluble link between the Muslim nations inside the Empire, particularly Turks and Arabs, and those beyond its borders, these were (Islamism or Pan-Islamism) (Heyd, 1950:71).
Among the three lines or ideologies two were from outsides, liberalism and nationalism. The third line or ideology was recycling of the tradition. This formula indicates that the Turkish intelligentsia were more in favour of the outside alternative rather than their native. This dialectical or rather none dialectical relationship between outside and inside is a mirror of a situation that is rather more complex. Liberalism and nationalism are ideologies belong to modernity. This is indicates that the Turkish intelligentsia were aware of the process of modernity and enlightenment in Europe and they came under a direct influence of it.
The failure of liberal lines and the decline of the Islamic line show the nature of the problem that the empire was facing. The empire was in decay and the dream of its elites was to recover and maintain the dominancy like the past but with the modern tools. Liberalism was not a suitable ideology to establish an empire or to recover an empire. The mission required dedication, blind belief, romanticism and irrational collectivist. 'Liberalism’ provides the model of political institutions that “the individual liberty which a 'government under the law' had secured to the citizens” (Hayek, 1982:119). In this process what was required was merely anti-liberalism. It was required from the individual to give up its liberty and imagine himself as a part of the newly invented notion of nation.
While Islam did not disappear or vanish it was merely an exhausted ideology, an ideology of the ancient regime. Or in reality it was never an ideology. The empire was Islamic but in its domain people lacked every sense of politics. They were never being citizens they lived a static life without any contradiction or antagonism. Therefore, it does not change or develop into a higher stage of social formation. "The Asiatic form necessarily hangs on most tenaciously and for the longest time. This is due to its presupposition that the individual does not become independent vis-à-vis the commune; that there is a self sustaining cycle of production, unity of agriculture and manufacture etc." (Marx, 1973:486). Islam backs this form of static and unity and continuity without change. Islam sees strength in unity. As Maqsood Jafri (2007) puts it “When the sand grains unite they become a vast desert. When the sea drops unite they become a boundless ocean. The unity of people makes an invincible strong nation. This is the reason Islam lays great stress on the importance of unity”. And this sense of unity and oneness is also stressed on in the Qur’an, (49:10) “The Mu’minoon (the Believers) are but a single Brotherhood”. The Islamic concept of Towhid is the word for becoming one, for eliminating differences. This as the result becomes a barrier in front of any different view, any opposition, and throughout Islam always argument solved by force. i.e. restoration of unity. The Arab poet Mohammad Ahmad Said known as Adonis (2006) regards the “emergence and glorification of dictatorships - sometimes in the name of pan-Arabism, and other times in the name of rejecting foreigners” to the concept of “oneness”. “I believe it has to do with the concept of 'oneness,' which is reflected - in practical or political terms - in the concept of the hero, the savoir, or the leader. This concept offers an inner sense of security to people who are afraid of freedom. Some human beings are afraid of freedom”.
For these reasons the Islam was not seen as an option for the change and recovery of the empire. But despite that the Turkish elite could not free themselves from Islam and Islamic view especially epistemologically. The Turk moved from an Islamic despot to a modern or Asiatic despot. The emergence of Turkish nationalism was one of the main contributors into the awakening the feeling of nationalism among Arabs in the Middle East.
Dawn of the Arab Nationalism
When the Turkish nationalism reached the power as the result they made sultan an irrelevant entity. They regard Islam, as well as any other religion, as a historicalphenomenon subject to change and dependent on the social circumstances in which it developed” (Heyd, 1950:82). This approach was revolutionary in his days. Since Arabs were regard themselves as the people who Allah chose them “You are the best nation raised up for mankind” (Al-Imran 110). However this verses does not mean Arabs particularly but the Arab nationalism utilized it in its rhetoric. This felling of being alienated and striped from the culture and religion drove Arabs to alienation.
Therefore the early Arab nationalism was against the Turks not the Europeans. For the Turkish nationalist the non-Turks become the Other. The origin of the Turkish nationalism was merely German. German nationalism namely Fichte and Herder but not Kant. According to Fichte the world is a coherent whole and it is manifestation of ego” (Ozkirimli, 17: 1988).
Understanding Fichte might help to shed a light on the nature of the nationalism that emerged in Turkey and later on in the Middle East. Fichte’s famous book Reden an die deutsche Nation (Addresses to the German Nation) arguably constitutes one of the founding texts of nationalist political thought. The book appeared eighteen years after the French Revolution: it comprises thirteen addresses that Fichte delivered at the Berlin Academy on Sundays during the winter of 1807 to 1808. Berlin was under French occupation at the time, and the foreign occupiers are the targets of Fecht’s polemic: his stated goal is to rouse the German nation from its slumber to assert its freedom and throw off the Napoleonic yoke (Abizadeh, 2005).
The Fechte was appealing more any other thinkers because of the relative similarity of the circumstances. Fichte was staunchly republican by his youth, but during the French occupation of Germany he change in favour of Romantic nationalism and even pan-Germanism. This change from an individual based republican into a collectivist
Chauvinistic state helps to clarify many puzzles in the nature of the Middle Eastern nationalism. Turkey as same as Germany felt weak toward other European nations and its territory was under constant threat from every side.
This felling of losing the country, the empire, the imperial status pushed Turkish nationalist to regard every Other as enemy and not hesitate to use violent toward them. This is reached its climax during the Armenian genocide. For Charles Andler (1917) and (Rudolf Rocker, 1937:189), Fechte particularly in his Addresses, provides one of the primary philosophical sources of the chauvinistic pan-Germanism thought to be at the root of the German aggression in World war1. This is also indicates how and why the pathological modernity or counter modernity reached the Middle East and accepted rather than the individualistic liberal modernity.
At the mean time apart from the reaction to the Turkish Modernity movement, there were other lines, which through it the Western modernity reached the region. One of these notable lines was the role of the Christian minorities in Levant. According to Atiyah (1958: 81) the “Christian intellectual movement started in Syria and particularly in Lebanon during the rule of the Ibrahim Pasha who had allowed American and French mission school to be opened in the country”. People of the book had right to keep their faith in Islamic community, and during Ottoman Empire they were allowed to that mainly for the economical reason. A significant none-Muslim population was necessary for the Poll-tax revenue” (Finkel, 2005:460). However this taxation is not been always for the economical reason. The act has a root in the Qur’an (Surah Al-Tauba 29) “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His apostle nor acknowledge the religion of truth (even if they are) of the People of the Book until they pay the Jizya [poll or capitation tax] with willing submission and feel themselves subdued. According to Abul 'Ala Mawdudi, (1993:183) “the Muslims should feel proud of such a humane law as that of Jizya [the poll-tax]. For it is obvious that a maximum freedom that can be allowed to those who do not adopt the way of Allah but choose to tread the ways of error is that they should be tolerated to lead the life they like”. This act is standing as a barrier for the idea of citizenship in Islam.
Differences of taxation demonstrate distinctions in citizenship. As a symbol of subjection, it signifies that the state is not really the common property of all its permanent residents, but only the Muslims. The non-Muslims are conquered outsiders. It demonstrates their inferior condition. It also punishes them for their disbelief in Islam. Islamic law makes it very clear that the Jizyah is punitive in character and it is to levy with humiliation.
This hostile atmosphere toward minorities or dhimma as it is known in Islam result in situation that these dhimma, or zimma in Ottoman Turkish which closer to its Arabic pronunciation, had to wait until the power of the Empire weakened. “In 1866 the movement had made such progress that the Americans were founding the Syrian Protestant College, later to become famous throughout Middle East as the American University of Beirut. A few years later, the Jesuits founded, in the same city, their university of St. Joseph. Later on English, Scottish, German and even Russian schools were to follow” (Atiyah, 1958: 81). These missionary movements were actively working to spread their faith not only among eastern Christians but also among Muslims. For this purpose they even “engaged women on a large scale … as active agents in "heathen" countries” (Anders Bjørkelo).
With the emergence of the Reformation and Protestantism in the west, especially in the America, the new churches launch their own missions. The new missionary saw the people of the region Muslim and Christians equally as people who “sunk in ignorance and sin to a degree that makes the present salvation of any hopeless” (Smith, 1833: 386). The protestant people were not exclusively from North America they were also from Nordic European countries especially women. These Women missionaries saw it as their main priority to include non-Christian women in what they perceived as the collective of Christian, liberated women. “This solidarity with non-Christian women was based on the Protestant belief in the right of all women to salvation and the spiritual equality of men and women.
The ambitions of improving women's conditions of life were very much the motivation behind the establishment of a German boarding school for Arab girls (the "Talitha Kumi") outside Jerusalem in 1851, the Swedish "Jerusalemförening"'s girls school established in Jerusalem in 1902 and the Danish Women's Missions work among Armenian women and children. Scandinavian missions had strong ties to German Protestant organisations and the "Jerusalem-Verein zu Berlin" encouraged the Swedes to establish a school for girls in Jerusalem. This school was open to both Jewish and Arab children. However, the greater majority were Arab children dominated by various Christian backgrounds. The Danish Women Mission Workers (Kvindelige Missions Arbejdere) gave priority to work among the Armenian population (Markkola, 2000).
This group did not only attempt to transfer their modernity to the local people but also tried to modernise the native [classic Arabic] local culture. The Americans mostly favoured the archaeological process of reviving the classical works. However the missionary lead to westernise the Christian communities in the Middle East, but Christians did not push for christianisation of the Muslim society. They rather advocated nationalism. Today it is an "orthodox" view to identify Christian Lebanese intellectuals as the main social actors of the revival of the Arab Nationalism. However many scholars have challenged this view among them Ernst Dawn (1991:3) “the Christian explanation faces insurmountable difficulties. Its exponents present no persuasive evidence or arguments”. For Dawn the Christians did not play that important role. There is an exaggeration about the role of this group as one of the main Arab scholars Hourani put it “the Lebanese Christine movement was not a major factor” (Dawn, 1991: 4).
If this line of penetration of modernity was not effective then the most effective line was the Napoleon invasion to Egypt. Although there never was a time when contact between Europe and the Near East was completely interrupted. Bonaparte's occupation of Egypt in 1798 can be taken as marking the beginning of a new relationship between the two worlds and a new age in Egypt. According to Atiyah (1958:73) “if any one date to be chosen as a marking the end of the long Arab sleep, it will be the day on which Napoleon set foot on Egyptian soil. Until that day the Arabs were still living in the Middle Age. Napoleon invaded Egypt to invent it. According to Said (2003:80) “Napoleon had been attracted to the Orient since his adolescence”. The source of these attractions was mostly the texts that he read during his adolescence. Said calls this “textual” (2003:81) i.e. the source of imagination, of knowledge of desire of Napoleon about a place like Egypt was originated from texts, books, and other peoples experiences. Does Napoleon come to modernise the place, to Frenchinase the Egypt, to practise an imagination.
Modernisation before anything else is a dream. In case of the Middle East is a dream dreamt by someone else. In the process of realisation of that dream; the place, the location, the inhabitants, the culture, the materials, are all becoming just a tool that could be used to fulfil the dream. In this realisation process: “all fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned” (Marx & Angles, 1848).
When all fixed, frozen, relations melt into air, there would be some to support this meltification and some other to oppose. The supporters are the collaborators and the opposers are the oppositions. Napoleon showed curiosity about the customs and manners of those he ruled.
He [Napoleon] set himself to learn them and even adopted theoriental mode of dress, hoping by so doing to make a beginningin the work of reconciling the differences between the Frenchand the Egyptians. By studying the doctrines of Islam hethought he would be able to win over the Egyptians and roothis government in their acceptance. The more he tried, however, the more he was rejected. Al-Jabarti records in his journalalmost daily signs of resentment against the army of occupationand against the Copts and Syrian Christians who became thenative auxiliaries of Napoleon's government. 'Woe unto you,
Nazarenes and French' was a common cry and made it impossible
for the French to have a single day of peace (Ahmed, 1960:1).
What becomes clear through the expedition of the Napoleon to Egypt is the complex nature of modernisation. “In most of the historical literature on Napoleon's invasion, the French are depicted not as an invading army but as a benevolent expeditionary force, awakening Egypt from its centuries of sleep” (Owen, 2007).
Napoleon had a dream. The dream was modernisation. The modernisation of Egypt meant annexing it to France. The first step of his modernisation plan was making Egyptian people to trust him as a result accepting him as one of them. He did that by studying the doctrines of Islam he thought he wanted to win over the Egyptians and root his government in their acceptance. “The more he tried, however, the more he was rejected” (Ahmed, 1960:1).
This attempt to win the heart and mind and be accepted is always been the hard part of war. Napoleon believed by uttering some words he could pacify the native and win over them. What makes this expedition distinguishable from all it previous ones is its mission civilisatrice. The French beside the army they brought; scientists, architects and draftsmen. This combination of power and knowledge divided the native. Some accepted the knowledge and others resisted the army. According to Aljabri (2005) the Napoleon invasion divided the consciences of the Arabs ever since. This division lead to a schizophrenic attitude from the Arabs toward west attitude of resentment and admiration, resisting and emulating. This division of the Arabs attitude toward the West commenced then and has not ceased yet. It is one of the main issues when it comes to modernising the region.
With the French army the Idea of nation “those who spoke the same language and shared the same collective memories should live together in an independent political society” (Hourani, 1991:269) reached Egypt. This idea of the nationhood resulted into crisis. Crisis in identity, in worldview, in realisation that the image they had on themselves was not belonging to reality. When the Napoleon army arrived Mamluk responded with contempt and disbelief “let the Franks come; we crush them beneath our horses’ hooves” (Aljabarti, 1965: 285). When the battle occurred soon enough the Arabs swallowed their words. They were completely defeated.
The defeat and the short occupation sent shockwaves throughout the Ottoman Empire. How had the Europeans gained such superiority, and how could the Muslims catch up? Questions are concerning the Arabs to the present days. There is realisation for a burning need for a reform. But, the question is how to reform? did the reform mark Westernization or a local modernity forged by traditional intellectuals? Intially Egyptians were not impressed with liberalism and the French Republic. Consider the Egyptian chronicler Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti's reaction to the French and their political ideas:
[Napoléon] saying "[all people] are equal in the eyes of God the Almighty," this is a lie and stupidity. How can this be when God has made some superior to others as is testified by the dwellers in the Heavens and on the Earth … those people are opposed to both Christians and Muslims, and do not hold fast to any religion. You see that they are materialists, who deny all God's attributes.… (p. 31).
The defaet and the weakness of the Ottomans, the unecpcted leave of Napolion left Egypt in chaos. At that time an Albanian tobbaco dealer sent to Egypt to take command on the Albanian regiment there. This man called Muhammad Ali. He admired Napoleon and tried to emulate him, “I was born the same day as Napoleon” he liked to boast (Karsh & Karsh, 2001:28). He began to tear down traditional structures that have been part of Egyptian life from time of immemorial, his land, tax, industrial, religious, and educational. Reforms seems nothing short of a revolution to his Egyptian subjects. Muhammad Ali as Napoleon was an outsider, even European, but Muslim. Like Napoleon he also had an imperialistic dream.
I am well aware hat the [Ottoman] Empire is heading by the day toward destruction, and that it will be difficult for me to save her. And why should I seek the imposable. On her ruin I will build a vast kingdom… up to the Euphrates and the Tiger (Karsh & Karsh, 2001:28).
This grandiose ambition lead his to commit massacre know as “the castle massacre”. The same ambition regarded by many contemporary Arab intellectuals as the moment that establishes the elite state. Especially when Muhammad Ali massacred the Mamaliks and ended the power of the clergies over the society and state for the sake of establishing a strong central state (Nwaehz, 1992: 203).
The Muhammad Ali family ruled Egypt until the July coup in 1952 in the hand of the freedom officers lead by Nasser. According to his biographer Aburish (2004: 1), Nasser was a “pro-West Egyptian army colonel who assumed power in 1952 with the knowledge of the CIA”.
