2023-11-02 17:07:02
We apologize for Arab and Ottoman colonialism. No, no Islamic leader visiting Africa or Asia said this phrase. The last in chronological order to publicly recognize the suffering caused by imperialism to a subjugated people was King Charles of England during his visit to Kenya yesterday. His gesture added to the long list of official repentances that heads of state, heads of government and monarchs throughout the West have made.
Missing from the list of these just admissions of historical responsibility are the exponents of other colonialisms. The Arab and Ottoman empires are important in light of what is happening in the Middle East, and of the debate on the Palestinian issue which is also inflaming and tearing our societies apart. In American universities, for example, it is an almost universal dogma that Israel is a modern colonial power and the Palestinians are the victims of an imperialist occupation. The fact that many Western countries showed solidarity with Israel after the massacre of Jewish civilians and children carried out by Hamas on 7 October was interpreted on campuses and in street demonstrations as a confirmation of the diabolical complicity between the white powers guilty of colonialism, and Israel .
Hamas’ struggle is defended by many young Americans as a resistance struggle, and therefore legitimate even when it massacres innocents. An overview of history courses taught in many American and European universities indicates that the evils of Western colonialism are studied and denounced; the others don’t. But the Palestinians did not originally speak Arabic, nor were they necessarily destined to practice the Islamic religion. Moroccans and Algerians, Tunisians or Egyptians are not of Arab origin. Today everyone speaks Arabic. Why? Language and religion were imposed on their lands by one of the greatest imperialisms in history, the Arab one.
The advance of the Arab armies brought Islam to many parts of Africa (from Sudan to Nigeria) and, in the opposite direction, reached India, Indonesia and Malaysia. It is a world religion because it became so through weapons and colonial conquest. The Arab empire itself was a great profiteer in the slave business, even before the white powers entered the trade in human beings. The Arab Empire was then replaced by the Ottoman Empire, with its center in present-day Turkey, but still of Muslim religion.
The Ottoman Empire had phases of religious tolerance and respect for minorities — including Jews — but inherited a scale almost comparable to the Arab conquests, and still imposed foreign rule over large areas of North Africa and the Middle East until to the First World War. Then its intercontinental dominion (Europe, Asia, Africa) reached the twentieth century. The coexistence between Jews and Palestinians also experienced tensions under Ottoman domination (e.g. the Jews have lived in that land for millennia, they were not catapulted in 1947 by England and the United States to compensate them for the Holocaust, as is told in the legends of university campuses Americans).
But neither the Saudi monarchs nor Erdogan have ever mentioned apologizing to the peoples subjugated by their empires, or for the role they played in the history of slavery. To tell the truth, it does not appear that African leaders have ever demanded this apology, while they demand it from Western leaders. Is it just a chronological question, i.e. does it only matter that the most recent Western colonialism is therefore fresh in the memory? A recent questionable definition. Almost all of the former Western colonies became independent in the 1960s.
Today an African girl or boy is born with three post-colonial generations behind them. For many African countries the period of submission to Western empires lasted only eighty years, the post-colonial one is now approaching seventy. That alone in quotation marks must be related to the stories of other parts of the world that were colonies of the West for much longer, from India to Indonesia. The real conquest of Africa by Europeans actually began at the end of the nineteenth century with the international conference in Berlin. It is questionable whether the effects of European colonialism were deeper, more lasting, more harmful than those of Arab and Ottoman colonialism.
The idea that colonialism inflicts indelible damage that compromises development capabilities is refuted by stories of Asian economic miracles ranging from Singapore (formerly English colony) to Vietnam (formerly French colony), from India (English) to Indonesia (Dutch ). In the 1960s, at the time of its independence, Singapore was poorer than many African countries and sent government delegations to study the virtuous model of Kenya: the country where King Charles yesterday recognized the sins of colonialism. If King Charles went to apologize to Singapore today, one would doubt his mental health: that city-state in terms of per capita income is almost twice as rich as the United Kingdom.
The debate is not just about historians. The one-way teaching that is imparted in American universities has concrete consequences in the political climate that is influencing Joe Biden these days. His party was torn over the Middle East, just as it had not been over Ukraine. When the Washington Chamber of Deputies voted on a resolution condemning the Hamas carnage, 15 parliamentarians from the left wing of the Democratic Party dissociated themselves. Subsequently, a broad coalition of movements calling themselves progressive issued a Gaza Declaration referring to the 2024 presidential elections. It states that radical activists will not vote for Biden unless American support for Israel, its ethnic cleansing and the genocide taking place in Gaza.
Returning to the atmosphere of universities, I have already talked about the pro-Hamas doctrine that dominates among many students. Creepy incidents continue such as that of pro-Hamas students who go around tearing down and destroying posters glued to the walls with photos of hostages Hamas civilians. Focusing on young people however risks being misleading. The professors are no different. This week an open letter from one hundred faculty members at Columbia University in New York called the Hamas massacre the military response of a people who have suffered oppression and state violence at the hands of an occupying power.
This ideological climate is already influencing Biden. Yesterday the White House announced the launch of the first national strategy to combat Islamophobia. The announcement appeared as a concession to the left wing of the Democratic Party, which denounces a climate of aggression, racial hatred and intimidation directed solely at America’s Muslims. There is no doubt that the tragedy of October 7th and the war in Gaza are also reviving animosity, racism, aggressive impulses and hate crimes in American society, a bit like what happened after September 11th 2001. The most frightening case was the killing of a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy in Chicago. But according to data provided by the FBI there is no proportion between the growth of Islamophobia and that of anti-Semitism. Jews make up only 2.4% of the US population but are 60% of the victims of hate crimes.
November 2, 2023, 4:06 pm – edit November 2, 2023 | 9.23pm
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
#Western #leaders #apologize #colonialism #Arab #leaders #dont #time.news