Nationalism in the Middle East
Nationalism in the Middle East
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The Emergence of Nationalism in the Middle East
Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities defines a nation as “an imagined political community- and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson 6). He describes a nation as imagined because most of the people never meet each other or hear about each other, yet they feel a sense of belonging to the same community. Anderson’s idea can be applied to the history of the Middle East. The growing power of Europe threatened the Ottoman Empire leading it to reform through the Tanzimat (centralization and secularization) that created new institutions that forced the Ottoman people to develop new national identities in the period before and after World War I. The development of new identities took place in three stages: Islamic Modernism, tried to reintroduce unity under religion after Ottoman secularization, Arab Nationalism, emphasized the unity of the Arab people under their culture and language, and finally territorial nationalism created a sense of unity and belonging within the borders of the newly created Arab states. These events helped build the “imagined communities” that make up the nationalism that exists in the Arab states today.
Europe became more powerful and expansionist as the Ottoman Empire grew older and weaker. As a result, the Ottoman Empire needed to reform in order to survive European domination. The Europeans started interfering with Ottoman rule over the Middle East by introducing new ideas of technology and science as well as seizing territory from the Ottomans in Eastern Europe. Europe had a separation of church and state; it experienced the enlightenment that stressed human reason over religion. This threatened the Ottoman way of life and its base of culture and religion.
The Ottoman leader Rashid Pasha introduced the Tanzimat reforms to reorganize Ottoman society by secularization of government institutions to show the Europeans that the Ottoman Empire, the “sick man of Europe,” could recover from its ‘backwardness’ and compete with Europe. Those reforms took place between 1839 and 1876. The Tanzimat were defined by two royal decrees in 1839 and 1856. These decrees promised Ottoman subjects, regardless of their religion, administrative reforms including the abolition of tax farming, the standardization of military conscription and the eradication of corruption (Cleveland 83). These decrees made everyone, Muslims and non-Muslims, equal before the law giving them the same obligations in military service and opportunities in government employment and state schools. This broke down the Millet system to create a sense of Ottomanism throughout the empire—breaking down the religious order that made Muslims superior (Cleveland 83). Although the Ottoman government did not completely implement these decrees into their system, they projected an image of reform to their European audience. The decrees satisfied the European and Christian population in the Ottoman Empire. According to Celik “Concepts of equality, liberty, and human rights entered the Ottoman political discourse. However, these terms, quick and superficial adaptation from French revolutionary vocabulary, were not geared toward the masses; they accommodated instead the international commercial bourgeoisie then settling in the empire” (Celik 32).
The Tanzimat also secularized education by introducing new European ideas of science and the scientific method of reasoning. It created new jobs by expanding areas of higher education for civilians and the military. For example, institutions for training officers and doctors for the armed forces were developed. Before the Tanzimat reforms, the Ulama (Islamic religious scholars) played a central role in collecting Zakat and managing the Waqf land. The Ottoman government created the ministry of Waqf in 1826 to weaken the Ulama. They further secularized by replacing the Shari’a law with the French Mejelle system and the Napoleonic code. In 1876, Ottoman state adopted the Belgian constitution. However, this constitution was soon dismissed (Cleveland 84).
In the provinces of the empire, people became aware that although the Ottoman Empire was secularizing to protect itself from Europe it gave up its culture and religion in vain because Europe was still a threat. This led to several religious movements arising in different areas to protest secularization and recreate unity under Islam. In Arabia, for example, there was a movement to go back to the Quran and Hadith because they were the only legitimate sources of the interpretation of Islam. In Libya, there was a similar movement to recreate the original community of the Prophet that became the basis of the modern Libyan state. In Sudan Muhammad Ahmad claimed himself Mahdi and established a short-lived true Islamic state under himself. He also preached Jihad against Egyptian rule, which later developed into Sudanese nationalism.
These events became the precursors of Islamic Modernism a movement that tried to revitalize the faith to unite the Ummah against European domination. Islamic Modernism taught activism. The two most influential men in this movement were Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Mohammad Abduh. Both men believed that Islam is for every age and that it has all the ingredients of the modern world (Haddad 33). They also believed in fundamentalism, going back to the original faith, through individual interpretation of the Quran. Their ideas where new and controversial in the region and they were seen as a threat. They were exiled from Egypt and went to Paris where they published an Arabic newspaper al-urwa al-wuthqa that spread their ideas and emphasized the importance of political unity under Islam (Haddad 32).
Al-Afghani wanted to unite Islam and did not believe in the divide between Shiite and Sunni. He believed that Muslims were weak because they had lost true belief and meaning of their faith. The Middle East could not apply European ideas directly and had to alter Western ideas and technology to fit into the Middle Eastern context. For example, they cannot separate Islam from the state because it is a belief in reason so the Ottoman government should allow Ijtihad, interpretation of the faith, to be able to incorporate science and technology into religion (Cleveland 125). Mohammad Abduh was one of al-Afghani’s disciples who actualized al-Afghani’s ideas by working within the Egyptian system; the British appointed him Mufti of Egypt. Abduh thought that Egypt was weak externally because Europe was strong and internally because the ulama corrupted the faith and the Ottomans did not have enough schools to teach people to interpret the Quran for themselves (Haddad 35). He wanted to awaken Muslims trough education by expanding the Egyptian school system to increase literacy (Haddad 50). He started the reform of al-Azhar by calling for a new Ijtihad for people to interpret Islam as active participants of the faith (Cleveland 126).
Islamic Modernism introduced a new way to stop European intervention in the region by uniting and modernizing under religion instead of “Europeanizing” the Ottoman Empire. It reminded the Muslims of their previous glory and superiority and reintroduced Islam as part of modernization. The main legacy of Islamic Modernism is activism. Al-Afghani was the first man to publicize his discontent with the Ottoman reforms and to preach change at a large scale. There were many followers of his method of activism.
A reaction to both the Tanzimat and Islamic Modernism was Arab Nationalism. It gained a new identity from the institutions established through the Tanzimat as well as the activism learned from Islamic Modernism. Before WWI, with the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, the CUP tried to solidify their rule by centralizing the government. This centralization “Turkified” the government. Prior to centralization, the government officers in the Arab provinces did not have to speak Turkish because their work was translated before it was sent to Istanbul. As the government centralized, however, the official language of the Ottoman state became Turkish.
In the early stages of the Ottoman Empire, the subjects of the empire united under the Sultan, because he was the leader of the Ummah (the Muslim community). It did not matter that the Arabs were following a Turkish leader, because their loyalties did not belong to their race but rather to their religion. However, the CUP’s Turkification highlighted the difference between Arabs and Turks and isolated the people in the Arab provinces. Many people lost their jobs because they did not speak Turkish. As a result, Arabs were compelled to seek their own sense of belonging in “Arabism.”
Arabism, in addition to being a way to protest the CUP, emphasized the Arab cultural identity and its misrepresentation in the CUP government. The Arabs looked back into their history and saw that they were the ones that received the message of Islam and Arabic was the language of the faith. The “Golden Age” of the Islamic Empires was the Abbasid Empire and it was when the Arabs led the Ummah. Arabs saw their accomplishments in spreading and solidifying the faith under the Abbasid Empire, as well as having the most advanced civilization of the time. This led to the realization that Arabic, not Turkish, should become the official language of the Arab provinces, and that the CUP should reappoint Arabs to government posts (Cleveland 141). Although Arabists still believed in Ottomanism and did not call for national independence, Arabism marked the beginning of the development of an Arab identity.
Although the CUP had many reform programs throughout the empire, the success of their military reforms were limited. This was evident in the years leading up to WWI when the CUP was losing land to the Europeans in the Balkans. This drove the CUP to seek outside help from Germany in order to help modernize the Ottoman military (Cleveland 151). This newly formed alliance proved to be a success during WWI as the Ottoman forces managed to defeat Allied forces at Gallipoli.
As the CUP was busy fighting the war, the British starting to pay attention to the Arab provinces of the empire, recognizing the impact that the Arab people could have on the war effort if they chose to rebel against Ottoman rule. The British sought a loyal ally in the Arab provinces. Sherif Husayn, the governor of Mecca and Medina and a member of an influential family called the Hashimites, was weary of the CUP and was worried about losing his political power in the area. Although he was not an Arab Nationalist, he did not want the CUP to continue controlling the Holy sites because that would decrease his autonomy over the area. He allied with Britain forming the Hashimite Solution.
The British wanted Husayn to form an Arab revolt to help weaken the Ottoman Empire. In return, he would receive control of an Arab state, funding and weapons for the revolt and recognition of an Arab Caliphite. Although the borders of Husayn’s promised Arab state remained vague, he and his son Faisal started the Arab revolt in Hijaz moving up the Red Sea to Aqaba, then through Amman and Damascus. They tried to convince people to start jihad, a struggle, against the Ottoman Empire by telling them it was an enemy of Islam. They called for the unity of the Arabs in order to reestablish Arab rule of the Ummah. After Faisal gained enough support, he changed his strategy from preaching jihad to preaching Arab nationalism. Despite the lack of support for this new idea, Husayn started the Arab Revolt in 1916 when he took control of the majority of the Hijaz. In 1918, Faisal captured Damascus and established the Arab state that the British promised his father. The establishment of an Arab state appealed to the Arab people, and they united under Faisal’s cause in Syria. Only after the establishment of an Arab state did the majority of the Arab people embrace nationalism.
On the other hand, the Arabs were not aware of the Allied plans for the division of the Ottoman Empire, and they did not know that Britain promised Syria to France. They were also unaware of the Balfour Declaration that promised the Jews a homeland in Palestine. After WWI, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the French and British took over the Arab provinces—dividing them into mandates. The French controlled the land that is now Syria and Lebanon, while the British controlled what is now Palestine and Jordan. The separation of the Arab lands into different areas under separate managements isolated the Arabs and broke them up into different groups that developed their own distinct territorial nationalisms. Although the British and French drew up the borders of the new mandates, each country created its own “imagined community” within those artificial borders.
The French did not set up a government in their Syrian mandate; instead, they divided Syria into three smaller political units and exercised direct control over them by keeping part of their military in the area. In the north, there was the region of Aleppo, in the middle Damascus and in the south the Druze area. Although the boundaries of this “Syria” were artificial and there was no Syrian state or unity, people started to realize their “imagined community” of Syrians and Syria became the center of nationalism and intellectualism. Several reasons caused this realization. First, with France’s new control of Syria, they overthrew Faisal’s government and drove it out of Damascus. With the replacement of his Arab state with the French army, the Arabs in the area noticed immense change in their leadership. Before the French arrived, every leadership Syria had was under Arab Muslims or Turks (who were also Muslim). The Arabs were never ruled by Christian foreigners before this time so it was difficult to understand how they came under French rule. The people in Syria knew that their rulers were not like them; they did not have the same religious beliefs and did not share a common history or culture. This made the Arabs distinguish themselves by their own culture and history. This differentiation caused the Arabs to feel like the French usurped their land and were imposing their rule. Idilbi demonstrates this through one of the characters in her novel Sabriyya that describes the French presence when he said, “We live in our own country, oppressed and despised” (Idilbi 78).
Second, all the government documents by the French, such as marriage and birth certificates, were stamped with “Syria.” This led to people realizing that the French administered their land as a single unit called “Syria” that was newly cut off from the rest of the Arab lands. Third, these new artificial borders made it hard for Arabs to travel across the Middle East (which was not a problem under the Ottoman Empire). This actualized the divide of Syria from the other Arab provinces because people felt the physical divide that the new borders created.
Although France was the birthplace of modern nationalism and independence, the French did not implement their beliefs in their Syrian mandate. As mentioned earlier, the French did not create institutions of a Syrian state; they simply used French institutions in Syria. This became problematic as it created a contradiction within Syrian society. The French wanted to have complete control over the Syrian mandate yet the French schools in Syria taught students French history and culture; this created an awareness of French revolutionary ideas. Idilbi, again, demonstrates this through one of the characters in Sabriyya who explains her nationalism through her French education: “They teach us to love our country without them realizing it….We learn it when we study their history, which is full of sacrifice for freedom and independence” (Idilbi 78). In 1925, the French encountered the first organized revolt of the Syrian people in the Druze areas. This revolt spread to the area of Damascus encompassing most of the Syrian mandate. It took the French two years, and the increased involvement of their military, to put down the revolt. In 1927, the French reconsidered their policy in Syria but little changed.
The British mandate underwent similar difficulties of governance and control of the Arab people as they developed their national identities. In addition to foreign rule and the isolation of Palestine from the other Ottoman provinces (as was the case with Syria), other factors that built up to Palestinians’ creation of their “imagined community” started during the Ottoman Empire. By controlling the area of Palestine as one unit the Ottomans instilled the idea of the “land of Palestine” in the Arab population of the area as early as the late 1800’s (Khalidi 151). The Palestinians started to feel an increased attachment to their land as the Europeans poured in year after year to go on pilgrimages of the Holy sites. This made the inhabitants of the area appreciate their position as residents of the area that attracted so much attention from all three monotheistic faiths.
Another important determinant of Palestinian nationalism was the special interest that the Europeans had in the area. Since the first crusades tried to seize control of the city of Jerusalem, the inhabitants of the area had felt the need to protect the Holy city from any outside threat. In the early twentieth century, the Europeans plotted control of Palestine once again. This time, Palestine was to become, first, a British mandate, then the Jewish homeland (Khalidi 153). This outside threat of taking the land away from its current residents caused an increased attachment to the land and the identification of a “Palestinian” nationalism as the people united under the struggle of keeping Palestine for the Palestinians. Khalidi, in his book The Formation of a Palestinian Identity, expresses the intensity of this Palestinian nationalism by quoting a newspaper of the time referring to the loss of the land of Palestine, “we are a nation threatened with disappearance in the face of this Zionist current in this Palestinian land” (Khalidi 155).
Khalidi explains how national identities do not form in a vacuum. The influence and pressure of an external power forces people to identify with a “nation” to seek unity and safety from the intruder. Khalidi articulates this very clearly referring to the Palestinian case, “the Palestinians exist not as an independent entity with an independent narrative, but only in relation to another entity and another narrative” (Khalidi 147). This does not apply solely to the Palestinian case but to all the movements discussed previously. As early as Islamic Modernism, it was the influence of an outside force, Europe, which created the need for a new unity under Islam to avoid the weakening of the Ottoman Empire and its domination by Europe. In the case of Arab nationalism, the Arabs saw the Ottomans as the outsiders and united against them during the Arab revolt. After WWI, with the creation of the mandates, territorial nationalisms found different inspirations for unity. (In Syria, the Arabs united against the French while in Palestine, the Arabs united against the British and Zionism.) Therefore, it is clear that in every case, it was an outside force that created new identities and “imagined communities” amongst the Arab people.
Works Cited
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 1991.
Celik, Zeynep. "The Nineteenth-Century Background." The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century USA: University of Washington Press, 1986.
Cleveland, William. A History of the Modern Middle East USA: Westview Press, 2004.
Haddad, Yvonne. “Muhammad Abduh: Pioneer of Islamic Reform.” Pioneers of Islamic Revival. New Jersey: Zed Books, 1994.
Idilbi, Ulfat. Sabriyya. Massachusetts: Interlink Books, 2003.
Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Disclaimer
The above essay was written by Nada Abu-Issa and merely states opinions by a college student. However, if you feel strong about responding to the opinions stated, please write to articles@directorym.com and express your concerns.
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