When the West wanted Islam to curb Christian extremism: In 1836, many Europeans saw the Ottomans as the only bulwark of Europe against Muscovy, of civilization against barbarism. Russia represented, in some accounts, a backward, superstitious society where peasants still labored in semi-slavery and monarchs ruled as tyrants, unchallenged by parliaments and liberal sentiment. The Ottomans, who were embarking on their own process of reform, looked favorable in comparison. David Urquhart, an enterprising agent who served a spell with Ponsonby in Istanbul, became one of the most energetic champions of the Ottoman cause and Islamic culture in British policy circles. His writings on the threat of Russia shaped the opinions of many in Britain at the time, including a certain Karl Marx. And Urquharts time spent among the tribes of the northern Caucasus set the stage for decades of romantic European idealizing of the rugged Muslim fighters in Russias shadow. ... Casting his eye to the territories the Ottomans controlled, Urquhart praised the empires rule over a host of Christian communities -- for example, the warring Druze and Maronites in the Levant, or feuding Greek Orthodox and Armenians. In a passage cited by the historian Orlando Figes in his excellent history of the Crimean War, Urquhart credits Islam under the Ottomans as a specifically tolerant, moderating force: What traveler has not observed the fanaticism, the antipathy of all these [Christian] sects – their hostility to each other? Who has traced their actual repose to the toleration of Islamism? Islamism, calm, absorbed, without spirit of dogma, or views of proselytism, imposes at present on the other creeds the reserve and silence which characterize itself. But let this moderator be removed, and the humble professions now confined to the sanctuary would be proclaimed in the court and the military camp; political power and political enmity would combine with religious domination and religious animosity; the empire would be deluged in blood, until a nervous arm – the arm of Russia – appears to restore harmony, by despotism. Flash forward to 2014, and the conversation has curiously flipped: Pundits bluster about the centuries-old war between Sunnis and Shiites. Christians are a persecuted, beleaguered people in the Middle East. Without ruthless strongmen aligned with the West, were told, the Muslim world would descend into a chaotic bloodbath where terrorist organizations would gain sway. The history lesson above is not meant to denigrate the Russians and praise the Ottomans, an empire that was guilty of many of its own misdeeds and slaughters. Urquhart himself had plenty of detractors and opponents back home, particularly those who wanted Britain to be less openly antagonistic toward Russia. (Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France eventually engaged in the largely pointless and very blood Crimean War in the 1850s.) But it goes to show how much the politics of an era shape its conversation about cultures and peoples. Thats no less true now than it was almost two centuries ago.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 13:35:01 +0000
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