 brief history of the Middle East. Lecture four. OK, let us start. Good morning, everybody. OK, let's summarize, since we had a day off, and you've probably all forgotten about Islamic history. Between the 9th and the 11th century, there was an Islamic golden age that was the consequence of the rediscovery of Aristotle, which is translation into Arabic. That golden age comes to an end when basically the Muslim intellectuals decide the reason is impotent that the way to the truth is through mystical revelation. What follows is stagnation and decline through the era of the Ottoman Empire, although the Muslims continue to dominate militarily until the 17th century. In 1683, they suffer their first major loss to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire when they try to take Vienna and lose. And in retreat, they ask, why did this happen? Here we were, the mightiest power on Earth. The Europeans even viewed the Ottomans as the real threat to Europe. What happened? How come the Europeans are now more advanced technologically, militarily, financially? They've gone around Africa, and now they dominate the eastern trading routes. Where did we go wrong? Well, one explanation, which is consistent with El Ghazali's rejection of reason and adoption of faith is that the failure is a result of the Muslims abandoning their old ways. It is a failure of the Muslims to live up to real Islam, to the standards of real Islam. Now, the problem here for the Ottomans was that it was not just that the Muslims were declining, but that the West was rising. So many people within the Muslim world said, well, OK, so we can understand that we're declining because we're not good Muslims and God is punishing us. But why is he rewarding the infidels? Why are they achieving so much success? Why are they doing so well? So that this explanation about we're not good enough Muslims was not the dominant explanation, at least in the 17th, 18th, and as we'll see, 19th century. It is becoming today maybe the dominant explanation. But back then, they tried, at least, to look for other explanations to what was going on. They obviously saw that the West had something that they lacked. And the question was, what was that? And for the first time in Muslim history, in that culture's history, they sent emissaries and ambassadors to the West. Before this, they had viewed the West as barbarians. They wanted nothing to do with them. They would conquer them, but they never sent emissaries to learn about the East. Now, again, contrast this with the West, who are always sending our people, at least from the very early Renaissance out to Marco Polo to travel all the way to the East. And as a consequence of the Crusades, there were always Westerners in Arabia and in the Middle East. The East had never sent emissaries to the West until this point. So they sent them over there to examine, what was unique? What's special about the West? And they wrote lengthy reports back to the Ottoman rulers. They mission to find out why the West was most superior. OK. So this became very difficult. One of the consequences of, for example, of the Muslims never traveling is they didn't know the languages of the West. They had to go and study the languages. Now, many of these emissaries were sent to what the Ottomans viewed as the powers, the center of power in Europe. And that was the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. So they were sent to Vienna and to the German states. And they were very impressed, as anybody would be, with German efficiency with regard to civil and military government. And they viewed this as the West's advantage. Here they were. They were better organized. They had a better bureaucracy than the Ottomans had. And they sent back, these emissaries sent back detailed recommendations regarding applying this new bureaucratic structure to the Ottoman. All this failed. So they sent students to study at Western universities. Now, again, this was very traumatic for the Muslims. It was bad enough that they had to come to the realization that the infidel was somehow superior to them and that they were sending out emissaries to try and figure out what was going on. But to actually have the infidels as teachers was extraordinarily traumatic. They actually had to have the religious leaders say that it was OK. But OK for only one reason. It was OK to learn from the West for one reason. And that is to learn from them so that they could be defeated ultimately. Copying from the West was one thing. Actually going and living in their countries was completely another. And having them as teachers, as I said, was so. What did they learn? Well, they learned that the West was somehow modern. It had technology, especially military technology. So as a consequence, the first thing the Ottomans did was input large amounts of arms from the West. They had Westerners rebuild their Navy. They artillery. Indeed, the Ottoman Navy was rebuilt by the French in the early 19th century. The French also helped the Ottomans build new factories, producing muskets, equipment, and uniforms. In 1797, the day of Algiers, the rule of Algiers, asked for American aid to build and equip ships that would ultimately use, by the way, for piracy. Now, Jefferson foresaw the danger, but Congress voted, in spite of that, the funds to build these ships, and these ships were actually delivered to the Algerians. The governor of Baghdad ordered arms and ammunition from the East India Company in Bombay and asked for training from the British, which he got. Now, note this early Kissinger-like foreign policy on behalf of the West, on the people that ultimately you will be fighting. Every war that the West fought in the Middle East, it fought against armies that were trained and armed by the West. Now, this failed for the Muslims. Buying the arms, getting Western training, getting sophisticated Western equipment, failed. They continued to lose war after war. After they had adopted the equipment, they said, well, maybe it's the uniform. The West have better uniforms. They adopted Western uniforms. That failed. They even tried Western military bands, orchestras, playing Western marches. That didn't work either. They bought in Western military advisers, trainers, builders. Now, this often created hostility within their own military men. For example, Tahir Fasher, the vice admiral of the Ottoman fleet, had to work with Europeans to upgrade his fleet and to do the training and to understand how the arms worked. But it is described that in his heart, he hated them. Quote, particularly because he was unable to carry on some work of the arsenal without them. That is, he became dependent on them, and he hated that. Quoting again, hating them the more, because he was not allowed to vent his wrath upon the bodies of those in his pay. So he had been taught, educated, that the infidel should be slain, and here he was having to rely on them, dependent on them. Now, this all continued to fail. So, to come to the conclusion, it's not arms. It's not cannons. It's not training. It's not uniform. So what is it? They're still searching. Well, the West has a modern economy. They have an industrial revolution going on. Maybe that's the secret. So the Ottomans built factories, originally primarily to supply the army, and that failed. But also other types of factories. They imported basically whole assembly lines, or they weren't assembly lines in those days, but whole mechanized factories into the Ottoman Empire. It failed. They brought in Americans to survey for minerals, leading to the opening of the coal industry in Turkey. European companies laid the first Turkish railways between 1857 and 1866. They built telegraph lines and submarine cables. The Suez Canal was dug by Europeans between 1856 and 1869. Now, all this gadgetry, all this industrialization, all this mechanization fell on them from the sky. Again, they had no knowledge of what it took to establish industry. They had no sense of a market economy that would clear the products that were being built in these factories. And indeed, much of the technology, particularly the telecommunications, particularly the railroads, was used by the rulers primarily as improved method to oppress their own people. Now they could hear about revolts on the other side of the empire much, much faster. They could get troops there much, much quicker. And many of the people in the Ottoman Empire came to resent this technology because it was being used against them. These arms that were now very useful in fighting the West were very useful in oppressing their own citizens, who could not resist. So the innovation was used by Muslim rulers to increase their power, to concentrate it, and better monitor their subjects. They also started publishing newspapers, but the newspapers were immediately captured for purposes of propaganda. There was never free press in the sense that we understand it in the West. It was always controlled by the government and used for their purposes. And as a consequence of all this, industry, of course, did not go well. There was no knowledge of what it actually took, what was actually required. And fundamentally, there was no freedom. As we know, freedom is a requirement for an economy to work. Most of the time, the economic investments from the West, the debt taken on by these countries, which was financed by the West, in order to make these investments, led to mismanagement of the projects, which ultimately led to bankruptcy. If you look at Egypt, the Ottomans, and almost every other Arab entity in North Africa and in the Middle East, followed the same pattern. They wanted to impress the West by industrializing, by modernizing. They borrowed money from the West, brought in Western expertise, and they couldn't pay back their loan. This often led to Western takeover of the projects and Western takeover of these countries and to colonization. Now, at some point in the 19th century, in dawn on the Muslims, that the West was more politically free, that maybe this was the essential difference between them and the West. Now, this was a major leap for them, because they had been looking for material differences. This is the first time they stepped back and found an ideological difference. And as we know, an actual real one, an important one. But to them, modern politically, more advanced politically, even political freedom, meant primarily that the governments of the West were more efficient somehow. And even freedom to them had a different meaning. Freedom to them meant not being a slave. There was no other concept of rights or individual freedom or individualism that existed in Muslim culture. They had two ideas. In the Quran, it talks about free men and about slaves. And free men are not slaves. They're Muslims ruled by a caliph, ruled in a totalitarian state, but they are considered free. And that was a concept of free. There was no concept of individual rights. For Muslims, the converse of tyranny is justice, not freedom, justice of a benevolent dictator. That is the only political model. The idea of representative government or free speech were completely alien. And few attempts were made in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere in the Muslim world to implement them. And when they were implemented, they were implemented only partially because they never had a full understanding of the concept. And as a consequence of only partially implementing what happens when you get a mixed economy of anything, a mixed political system, it fails. And the failure is always blamed because of the lack of understanding on that part that is free that is better. So what you get is attempts at constitutional government in the Ottoman Empire, in Egypt, in other places in the Middle East that always fall back to totalitarianism because they're never implemented right, they're never implemented completely. You should note that the only real experience with political freedom that the Middle Easterners have is with Europe. They do not, there's very little evidence, there's no evidence to suggest that the Middle Easterners made any study of the Declaration of Independence or the American Constitution or that they traveled to the US to learn about the American system. They focused, the West for them was Europe. They were much more attracted, for example, to German ideas than they were to British ideas. German political power was much more consistent with their view of political power versus British representational government. Now, when there were attempts to reform, as I said in a second regarding constitutional government and attempts as representational government, they were always done, or they were usually done, under Western pressure to change, and as I said, they almost always failed. I'm in Glendale and found love in the South Bay. Yes, I find myself in an LA long-distance thing. Guests who help make it work, AT&T. I bought one phone, got another one on them and romance is alive on the 101. Come into an AT&T store, buy a smartphone and get one on us. More for your thing, that's our thing. Limited time in areas, select devices. 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Requires new line subject to credit and third activation fee speed, maximums, use rules and restrictions apply. Yeah, Jake. Sorry, you might be just getting to this. But I thought I heard that Lebanon before we're sitting here in Nigeria was relatively free compared to the rest. Is that not? I mean, yes. What Lebanon had was relative freedom. It had relative free speech and freedom of the press and so on in the 1940s and 1950s. They had a really bizarre screwed up constitution which allocated power based on ethnic origin. So the Christians had the presidency. The Muslims had the government. And so it was never truly representation, of course, because of that ethnic construct, which is actually established in the 19th century by the French who came in there and thought this was a cure for Lebanon's problem of many, many ethnicities and many, many religions, or many, many religions. They're all really Arab. And that's, you know, it all fell apart, obviously. But yes, Lebanon was the only country that was relatively free. Yeah. Who financed all the military hardware and the factories? Western bankers, Western governments. Why? Why? Because they thought they could make a quick buck. I mean, from the Western government's perspective, this was, what does Kissinger call it? Something engagement. Constructive engagement. I mean, that's how they view it. I mean, there was a lot of pragmatism in foreign policy in the 19th century. It's not a uniquely late 20th century invention. Less so in the United States. But as I described, Congress voted that money for Algiers in spite of Jefferson's objection. So the Muslims understand constitutional government, for example, to address the question of how to distribute power, not constitutional government as we understand in the United States as a recognition and protection of individual rights, so that the early attempts at constitutional rule always turned into tyranny. To quote Bernard Lewis, quote, there are no parliamentary representative assemblies of any kind, no councils or communes, no chambers of nobility or estates, no municipalities in the history of Islam. Nothing but the sovereign power to which the subject owed complete and unwavering obedience as a religious duty imposed by the holy law. End quote. For the last 1,000 years, quote, the political thinking of Islam has been dominated by such maxims as tyranny is better than anarchy, end quote. So obviously the Western political system doesn't work for us, the Muslim says. What else? Well, the West has a modern educational system. Maybe that's its secret. The solution is to bring in more education into the East, to expand the scope of science and knowledge, and indeed technical schools opened up throughout Egypt and in Turkey. Translation offices were set up by the Turkish government to translate Western works primarily in science. In the mid-19th century, they started establishing printing presses and translating and publishing and printing European works in Arabic and in Turkish. The idea was that the Europeans could only be resisted, could only be defeated using their own methods and skills. They brought in Western advisors, teachers, missionaries, traders, and they encouraged them to come into the Middle East. Public schools were opened up, and they sent their young, particularly the wealthy Arabs, sent their young to study in Europe, and we will get back to that. At the same time, though, tragically, their leading universities in the Arab lands were still teaching only Islam. And the classical example of that was El Azhar, which was the leading university in the Arab world, which is in Cairo, which was an Islamic university. That's what they taught. But they made attempts at bringing in science. But again, this all failed. So to summarize, the Arabs, the Turks look for causes, but they cannot find it. They mistake effect, uniforms, arms, military success, industrialization, factories, wealth, for the cause. They ignore the cause, or they never identify the cause and choose to try and gain their effect without the cause. And in a sense, they are too late to look for causes. For even in Europe, they don't know and don't understand the cause of their success, of their own success. Even the Europeans, if asked, cannot identify the real reason why Europe is doing so well. Now, what is the real reason? The real reason is reason. The real reason is the relegation of religion to a minor part in life. And the respect that reason gains from the Renaissance on in the West. And that's what leads to political freedom. That's what leads the science. That's what leads the industrialization. That's what leads the military success because now you have better weapons and better organization. But that is what the Muslims cannot or will not identify. And what this leads to is ever-going frustration. And ultimately, it leads to more and more involvement of the West in the Middle East, which we find as a pattern in the Middle East, of behavior and colonization by the West. The despots want to Westernize. They built up the military. They even introduced a Westernized legal code to replace the Islamic law. They invest. They borrow. They improve education. They spend lots and lots of money primarily on the military. They have financial crisis. They go bankrupt. They attempt further reforms in order to attract more Western money. Doesn't it sound like Brazil and Argentina? They have an internal uprising by the military because they're now upset because their power maybe is being reduced because the country is becoming more Westernized or by some Islamic group. There's chaos. There's civil war. And a European army enters the picture to settle things, to calm things down, and of course stays and becomes the protectorate or the actual colonizer of the region. This happens in Tunisia. This happens in Algeria. This happens in Egypt. This happens all across. This happens in Yemen. It happens all across the Middle East. And France, Britain, and Italy start colonizing these areas. France in particular, by the time the French had kicked out of Algeria in the 1950s, there are a million Frenchmen living in Algeria, a million people who were originally born in France. In Egypt, for example, every time the West is not occupying Egypt, it reverts immediately to despotism. And this is a pattern that continuously repeats itself. Under colonialism, these territories, Egypt and Algeria and so on, exhibit relative calm and progress. But what I found fascinating doing this research in which I did not know is that the colonial powers were very weak, very weak morally and very weak in the use of military force. And the later you get, the closer, the more you get into the 20th century, the weaker they are. They tolerate violence. They tolerate terrorism. They support tyrants. They don't use their power and the position that they're in in these countries to help bring about real cultural change. And I think this has to do with the fact that they now, the West, the French, the British, the Italians, don't understand what it really takes, are slowly losing confidence in their own superiority, in the superiority of Western values. There's a whole Orientalist movement in the late 19th century, early 20th century, that adores the primitive West. Wherever there are true liberal movements within the Arab countries, they do not gain the support of the West. And often, what the British and the French like or prefer is a strong tyrant to a weak liberal government to replace them as they leave some of these colonies. They allow the Arabs to use force against them and go unpunished. There's these examples of Yasser Arafat-like people in Egypt, for example, that inflict terrorism on the British, the British exiled them for a while. And then later on, they bring them back and hand Egypt over to them. I mean, I thought this was all new to the West, this type of political pragmatism. But this has been going on for at least 100 years. Time and time again, the West sends a message to the East, to the Middle East. Force will get you what you want from us. Just keep doing it. Just be consistent. Don't give up, and we'll fold. Now, the West allowed this to happen by rationalizing, as American social scientist, Moral Berger writes, and I quote, really believe the West, really believed in the inalienable right to be exploited by people of their own nationality. So as long as the Arabs were being exploited by Arabs, that was okay. I mean, in a sense, they bought into the Arab concept of freedom, right? The Arab concept of freedom was freedom of foreigners, freedom of colonialism. As long as we have an Arab enslaving us, that's okay. It's just we don't want to be slaves to a fauna, to an infidel. The European intellectuals, almost from the beginning of Western colonization in the Middle East, in the mid-19th century, were apologetically gawning colonialism. When Arab students went to study in the West, they were taught to hate the West, and to value their own culture. They teachers hated imperialism, and taught them about nationalism, and about socialism. Remember, this is Kant's heyday in academia, primarily in Germany, where a lot of these students were going, and in Paris. It is the West that introduced the ideas of the evil of colonialism to these Arab students. Because the Arabs, the Turks, never had any problem with Turkish colonialism when they went into Europe and took Europe over. It's European colonialism, they object to, and it's European intellectuals providing them with intellectual ammunition. It is no doubt that the Middle East benefited tremendously from the presence of the colonial powers there. Just to give you a sense, in Egypt of 1913, under British rule, there were 282 independent newspapers with real freedom of the press, freedom of speech, as Abdallah Sebet, a Turkish, a Turk writes, quote, the West, in the early part of the 20th century, the West is our teacher. To love it is to love science, progress, material and moral advancement, end quote. Unfortunately, his was a rare voice. But they were present. Unfortunately, many of the Arabs who adopted more classical liberal ideas felt that the West had betrayed them and that the West was abandoning them. So what was the solution that they came up with, the Arabs? Well, in the 19th century, the solution that they were being taught in European universities, the solution that they could see happening in Europe was nationalism, which was obviously sweeping Europe during the 19th century. And this nationalism is an idea that attracts the secular Muslims who travel to Europe and get their schooling there. It is the nation state and its emphasis on collective identity that attracts these young intellectuals. To quote Fahudah Jami is a current Arab, might be Persian, might be Iranian intellectual, who's very good. To quote him, from its very beginnings in the late 1800s, Arab nationalism had been a project of the intellectuals. An idea flung in the face of a political order that was always torn by all sorts of conflict. So here was a unifying idea. Instead of this Turkish empire, instead of the Caliphate that ruled the entire Muslim world, let's divide up into countries, into nations, let's establish an ethnic identity, a national identity, above and beyond that ethnic identity. And that is the solution. Look, it works for Europe. Look what's happening in Europe. We've got Italy, we've got the German states uniting to form a new state. We've got Central Europe forming all these states out of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, later on in the early 20th century. We've got the Greeks rising up against the Turks. We've got the Bosnians rising up against the Turks, or the countries in what was Yugoslavia. This is the solution to our problem. So the rallying cry in Egypt was Egypt for the Egyptians. Now, if you remember that freedom again for the Arabs did not mean this individual liberty. It meant this collective freedom, the freedom of this collective from the infidel, from control by a foreigner. So this is one solution offered in the 19th century, and we'll see how that evolves within the Arab world in the 20th century. There's one other voice that rises up in the 19th century, in the mid-19th century. And it rises up from two different sources, one more Western and one from Arabia itself. The ones from Arabia, although are hobbies who today ideologically control Saudi Arabia and we will talk about them tomorrow. I'd like to talk a little bit about a more Western, but similar approach by an intellectual, probably the leading intellectual, Arab intellectual, or Muslim intellectual of the 19th century, Al-Afghani, and that's A-F-G-H-A-N-I. Al-Afghani was convinced that the West, particularly the British, were out to destroy Muslim culture as such. He believed that the British and the West was inherently wicked and that all the bad things that were happening to the Muslims was because they were trying to adopt Western values. Only Islam, according to Al-Afghani, only the religion itself could actually mobilize Muslims and challenge the West. He wrote only one book, and the title was The Refutation of Materialism, in which he attacks the European Enlightenment as materialistic, immoral, and destructive. He calls on the Muslims back to Islam. He believes in a unified Muslim empire, a re-establishment of a true caliphate. And while he advocates Arab nationalism for a while, that is only an interim step before all Arab countries or Muslim countries unite in this one Muslim empire. He wrote, quote, Muslims know no nationality apart from their religion and their faith. Now, note that this is exactly the language used by people like Bin Laden today. He was very influenced by Westerners and he spent most of his intellectual career in Paris and in London. He was very interested by Ernst Renan, a French intellectual, who had this to say about nationalism, quote, a large aggregate of men, healthy in mind and warm of heart, creates the kind of moral consciousness, which we call a nation. So long as this moral consciousness gives proof of its strength by the sacrifices which demand the abdication of the individual and the advantage of the community, it is legitimate and has a right to exist. So the right for nation to exist, for country to have a right to exist, is derived from the sacrifice of the individual to the community. Any community that can generate that kind of sacrifice from the individual has a right to exist as a nation. This is the kind of nationalist ideology that the Arabs are adopting. The West to them is viewed as Christian as infidel in essence. El Afghani once wrote that it is amazing that it was precisely the Christians who invented Krupp's cannon and the machine gun before the Muslims. Now, notes that he says that it's the Christians that invented Krupp's cannon, not Krupp that invented Krupp's cannon, because I'm sure Krupp's cannon is named after Krupp. To him, only groups can invent. Only collectives have identity. Individuals do not exist. Christians invented the cannon. Christians invented industry. Christians invented science. It's not individuals. There's no concept of individual achievement. Again, to quote El Afghani, the Europeans have now put their hands on every part of the world. In reality, this usurpation, aggression and conquest have not come from the French or the English. Rather, it is science that everywhere manifests its greatness and power. Ignorance has no alternative but to prostrate itself humbly before science and acknowledging its submission. So, he's an advocate of science, but science in kind of a collective sense and indeed he, and again, if you go back to Bin Laden and modern Islamic fundamentalists, they're all advocates of science. They all think science is wonderful and they all think that Islam invented science back in the Golden Age and the thing they don't link science to ever is what? Reason. To them, science is a gift given a culture by God. It is floating because look, the Muslims were really, really religious during that Golden Age according to the fundamentalists and yet look at all their achievements in science. Achievements are real. What they don't get is that that was based on respect for reason and it was the Tilean logic and Greek philosophy. They attributed it to Muslim faith and to God's gift to them. Yeah, Evan. The Muslims were a universal religion, as you explained, and anyone, a very ethical background could be a Muslim by protesting with faith. Wasn't that universalism which was deep in the religion always in conflict with nationalism? The question is, wasn't the universalism of Islam in conflict with nationalism? Yes, it was. And Al-Afghani is trying to bridge that by saying nationalism is okay if it achieves getting rid of the West and then we can unite and form this Muslim state. Note that nationalism was the secularist solution not the fundamentalists. The fundamentalists always wanted a Muslim entity and we'll see what happens to nationalism. Nationalism was also presented as a Western solution. So these were the more educated, intellectual, westernized Arabs who were introducing nationalism into the Muslim world. It was not the religious entity. Okay. Now influenced by Al-Afghani he had many, many students who all went and played a significant role some of them in the nationalist movement and some of them in the fundamentalist Islamic movement later on. One of them, Mustafa Kamil in Egypt writes, quote, nationalism is a sentiment before which all nations and all communities bow because it is the feeling of the worth and dignity of man of the bounty of God and his care of the meaning of existence itself. End quote. Note that the collectivism here is just phenomenal. And of course he dedicated, Kamil dedicated himself to ridding Egypt of the British. So that's one strand of of Al-Afghani students who became very, very much nationalists. Another student, Muhammad Abdu I quote him, the Orient needs a despot who would force those who criticize each other to recognize their mutual worth. A despot who would never take any step without his primary consideration being the effect on the people he governs so that all personal good fortune which befell him would be quite secondary. So here's this notion of which is again part I think of Islam this notion of a benevolent dictator. That is the ideal. The ideal is a, you know, and if he benefits if he makes a lot of money off of this that's secondary as long as he creates a harmonious Muslim society. You know, by getting rid of all disputes and of course how do you get rid of all these disputes by shooting people who disagree with you. Now these are the key intellectuals of the late 19th century in the Muslim world, early 20th century. The Ottoman Empire is falling apart. Much of its territories have been colonized by the West. We enter the 20th century. There's failure all around. The intellectuals are going off to study in Europe and we'll see, you know, we've seen a little bit of what they study and we'll see a little bit more. And then World War I breaks up. And the Ottomans make a gamble. They basically decide to go with that party that is not currently occupying their lands. And they side with the Germans and Austrians in an attempt to rid themselves of the French and the British. Of course this turns out to be a disastrous mistake for them. And the French and the British occupy the entire Middle East. They even enter into Turkey itself. In 1916 they had a conference known historically as the Sykes-Picot Conference named after the British and the French. The French and the British divvy up the Middle East between them. So much here for a newborn. We need to start planning his baptism and his holiday outfit and his birthday party. Sure, but how long are you planning to stay? If you're one of those who goes to meet your newborn nephew and stays until his first birthday party, switch to Cricut Wireless. Use your phone as many days as you want in Mexico without extra cost. Smile, you're on Cricut. Requires eligible plan, minimum $55 per month. Data speed usage and other restrictions apply coverage not available everywhere. See store for details. Let's see. This is a map of the Middle East in 1930. So this is post. You can see that, let's see. The green is French territories. The red is British. The yellow is areas that have been granted independence by 1930. The pink is Italian, that's Libyan. The League of Nations establishes a mandate for the British, for example, over what is Palestine, that's a little slither of a thing between Egypt and Syria. The British promised this new, this area, this Palestinian area in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 to the Jews, they promised to establish a state there. But they make a lot of promises to a lot of different people, to a lot of the Arabs in order to align them with them so that they will help them defeat the Turks. They promised to the Arabs, for example, Sheikh Hussein, or the sheriff Hussein who is in Saudi Arabia, is promised Saudi Arabia. But then they also promised Saudi Arabia to Abdullah. So they go back to Hussein and say, well, we can't give you Saudi Arabia, so how about we give you Syria and Iraq? And maybe we'll throw in, ultimately they will throw in Jordan in the mix as well. So the British make here a number of deals with Arab tribes in the area, and that's all they really are, particularly in the Saudi Arabian area, in an attempt to get their help in defeating the Turks. And indeed, by the end of the war, they have defeated the Turks completely. The Turks and disarray, yeah. What was the motive of the British to have the Balfour Declaration? Why did they have that time when they created Jewish slaves? I think they had multiple motives. I think one was just a political clout that the Jews in Britain had and had used that clout effectively in lobbying for a Jewish state. It was also clear at that point that there was a real problem in Europe with Jews. Up until the First World War, Jews were fleeing Europe in the millions and going where? Going to the United States. But the United States in World War I once shut down its border, and the Jews could go nowhere, so that there was a Jewish problem that needed solving in Europe. They were being murdered, particularly in Russia and in Eastern Europe, and we know what is going to happen in Western Europe, and some people are ready for seeing real problems. So there's a real problem that they need to resolve, and the Jews have chosen this place to settle. The British are divvying this up. They might as well give this place that nobody wants, nobody's laid a claim to, to somebody. Now the whole concept of countries, the whole concept of a Syria and a Lebanon and an Israel and a Jordan and a Saudi Arabia and an Egypt is completely foreign. There never were countries in this place. You know, there were tribes and there were empires, and that was it. So from the British perspective, here was a piece of land relatively uninhabited, full of swamps and deserts that nobody wanted and the Jews wanted. So what the hell? You know, they could get a lot of bounty points for this, and the Jews were already moving in. They were cultivating the place. They were building industry. They were building agricultural sediments. Tel Aviv had just been established as a little town, but they were founding things, creating things. There was actually activity there. More activity that the Jews had brought in just 20 years to this little sliver piece of land than the Arabs had created in hundreds of years of presence there. You know, suddenly this place showed signs of life. And why not reward those people who were, you know, putting all this effort and it actually created something or started to create something with their own country? Given that nobody else was doing anything in the Middle East at that time. This was the most active place in terms of economic progress of the entire Middle East, even as far back as 1917. Now, Turkey was in a mess. Turkey, you know, went through a series of miniature civil wars and conflicts between the military and between various desperate rulers until in 1922, in November, Ataturk, who was born in 1881 and died in 1938, deposes the last Sultan and takes over. To quote Ataturk, I shall follow no personal interest or ambition but the salvation and peace of my fatherland and nation. Ataturk is a real nationalist. He dissolves whatever remnants they are of religious institutions, of a religious hierarchy within Turkey. He gets rid of the Sultan and the Caliph, who is still a spiritual entity within Islam. This, by the way, when Bin Laden says 80 years of humiliation by the West, he's talking about 80 years ago was when the Caliphate was dissolved by Ataturk. He, from 1922 until his death in 1938, refashioned Turkey based on the idea of modernization and secularization. The old Islamic posts, the old Islamic schools, all these religious foundations that we know all across the Arab world, all the religious orders, they're all abolished in this manner. A new legal code is implemented based, generally, on a Western model. Civil marriage becomes obligatory. Alcohol is legalized. Arabic is replaced everywhere by Turkish. And he builds Ankara into a new capital. He changes the name to Ankara. It's a new capital for a completely new nation. Now, Ataturk is not, though, a modern leader in a sense of representational government, in a sense of freedom of speech, in a sense of a Western leader. Ataturk is a desperate. He's, if you will, what the Arabs are asking for. Now, the Turks are not Arabs. What the Muslims are being asked for is, you know, he's what they view as a benevolent leader, a benevolent dictator. He's not a very benevolent though. Ataturk is brutal to his enemies. He tortures them and murders them. He doesn't easily, calmly, shut down these religious orders. He eliminates them by force. And he eliminates religion from our public life by force. He is a brutal desperate. But he wids Turkey much of Islam's influence. And by 1950, 12 years after his death, Turkey becomes democratic. Now, between 1950 and today, there have been various military coups, temporary military regimes, and then democracy re-established and it kind of swings back and forth. The latest was, I think it was in the early 90s, when in a vote, in a democratic vote, the Islamic fundamentalists won a majority and actually were forming a coalition government. They didn't win a majority, but they were the largest party in the parliament and they were forming a coalition government. And the military stepped in and said, we will not have any of this. We will have Muslims running our country and they re-established kind of a military rule for a few years until they got a sense that the Islamic fundamentalists will never win again and they re-established democracy. So it's the most western by far, the most western freest country in the Middle East other than Israel. There is no doubt about that. And it's interesting that the two countries that are the freest in the Middle East are the two countries that are not Arab in the Middle East. And where Islam is not a factor, a small factor. Now, as I said, Islam is making a comeback in Turkey. Unfortunately, it has made a comeback. Okay, let's quickly look at the interim period between World War I and World War II and what happens during this time. And let me quote again from Fahudah Jami. And I quote, since the 1920s and 1930s, Arab nationalism had fallen under the spell of dramatic theories of nationalism. The unity of the folk, the bonds of race, the entire baggage of German populism, this strain of nationalism found particularly fertile soil in Iraq. End quote. And indeed, in this formation of nationalism, race becomes crucial. Thus, you don't just have Muslim versus infidel, but you have Arab versus Persian. You have Arab versus Jew. But even with any Islam, Arab versus Persian, Arab versus Kurds. The Kurds are Sunni Muslims, yet the Arabs in Iraq hate the Kurds and fight them. So the enemy could be a Muslim. So this new dramatic times of nationalism brought this ethnic identification into the Middle East. An ethnic identification that did not exist as a significant force within Muslim culture beforehand. During the 20s and 30s, there was a struggle, for example, in Egypt between the Waft Party, which was mostly liberals and leftists, and the fascist bands of young Egypt who wore green shirts that drew inspiration from European fascists, primarily from Mussolini. The slogan, the young Egyptian slogan was, quote, Allah, Fatherland, and people. According to Ajami again, quote, for every admirer of luck and liberal thought, there was someone on the other side of the divide who was thrilled by the example of Mussolini and his black shirts. Indeed, the cult of Ilduche drew on dissatisfaction with British rule, end quote. So the liberals within the Arab world in the 1920s and 30s were outflanked by the collectivistic movements of fascism, socialism, nationalism, and Islamism. And we'll see the rise of Islamism in Egypt during this period tomorrow. In addition, they struggled in the shadow of a foreign power, of the British, who was favoring the nationalists over these liberal voices. A nationalist leader in Iraq declared, and I quote, the national movement is democratic, socialist, popular, and cooperative. Now, note the combination of nationalism and socialism, which we are all familiar with. However, more accurately, another Iraqi writes, my quote, Arabs yearn for stronger political leaders to preside over their destiny. This is the admiration from Mussolini and Hitler. Nationalism tries to go beyond religion. What identifies one is nationality, whether Christian, Jew, or Muslim. But this never worked. Indeed, a lot of the nationalist movement, a lot of the intellectuals within the nationalist movement were Christians, both in Egypt, where there was a Christian-copped community, still is, fairly large, and in Lebanon, which was always a very intellectual community, and where the Christians were most intellectuals, they were the big nationalists. But the fact is that the Christians and the Muslims never got along. They always hated each other, and Lebanon, of course, has worked out that way. We saw what they did to each other in the 80s, in the 70s and 80s, and the way the Egyptians today and over the last 20, 30 years have been treating their cop Christians is another illustration of that hatred. So pre-World War II, the British helped establish independent countries to help establish, divide the land, and create these states. And the predominant ideology driving the intellectuals in these countries is national socialism. And while World War II breaks out, the Muslim intellectuals, the Muslim political leaders, to the extent that the British allow them, flock to the Nazis, and the amazing thing here again is the tolerance which the British had. I'll give you one example, because we have just one minute. The leader of the Palestinian movement, Haj Amin, who was the leader of the Palestinians from the 1920s through really the establishment of the PLO, just before the establishment of the PLO. The leader of the Palestinian movement was a fascist and identified himself as a Nazi. He visited Hitler on several occasions. There are pictures of him proudly standing with an SS uniform. Now this is a man who traveled in and out of Palestine while Palestine was ruled by the British who were waging a war against the Nazis. And yet they never stopped this guy. They did not arrest him, they did not restrain him. He was also responsible for uprising against the Jews on several occasions during the 20s and 30s and against the British in the 1930s. Yet they continued to tolerate his existence. They never... I mean they imprisoned him for a short period of time and then released him. So this tolerance for violence and terrorism, this tolerance for fascism and even cooperation with the Nazis, unfortunately it was typical of British involvement in the Middle East. Let me just one other note. During in Egypt, which was, you know, a battle line between the Nazis and the British, both the king at the time, Egypt was a kingdom, and Sadat, Anwar Sadat who would later become president and at the time was a young lieutenant, both worked with the Nazis, both worked with Ramel to try and defeat the British. And in Syria, the Syrian National Socialist Party. And it was an explicit fascist party and there was another group in Syria that called themselves the Black Shirts. So fascism was everywhere in the Arab world during World War II and at the end of World War II and we will start on that tomorrow. This course concludes with Lecture 5. So much here for a newborn. We need to start planning his baptism and his holiday outfit and his birthday party. Sure, but how long are you planning to stay? If you're one of those who goes to meet your newborn nephew and stays until his first birthday party, switch to Cricut Wireless. 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