NEW PATRIOTISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1939, Page 8

NEW PATRIOTISM

NATIONALISM IN ISLAM OLD RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. RAPID MODIFYING PROCESS. Present-day Islam is an important yet uncertain factor in world politics, states Lothrop Stoddard in the "Christion Science Monitor.” Fully 250,000,000 Mohammedans stretch from Morocco to India, and beyond. Moslems have a distinct sense of religious solidarity which, in the past, has tended to bind them together politically for common action. The threat of a Moslem “Holy War" has been a traditional bugbear of European chancelleries. However, the historic solidarity of the Moslem world has long been modified by Western ideas, especially by the idea of nationality. During the last two decades, especially, the modifying process has been so rapid that Islam may ultimately repeat the evolution which transformed the mystic unity of Medieval Christendom into a group of secularised, absolutely sovereign nationstates. With Islam in the throes of such a transformation, what are the relative importance of the religious and nationalistic factors? In Palestine, for instance, what factor moves the local Arabs most, and which has the greater effect in enlisting support in neighbouring lands? If Britain rejects the demands of Palestinian Arabs, will Britain merely offend Arab nationalism or anger Moslems everywhere? To such queries there can be no general answer. Each must be examined on the basis of current facts and tendencies. The reason for this is that nationalism has affected the Islamic world most unequally. In the nationalistic transformation there seems to be three trends. TURKEY TRANSFORMED. Nationalism, in the true Western sense, has gone farthest, in the northern tier of Moslem lands stretching athwart Asia from Turkey through Persia to Afghanistan. The genius of the late Mustapha Kemal Ataturk has transformed' his country into fullfledged nation-state with an ardent secular patriotism that supersedes the traditional religious outlook. Of course the Turks are still Moslems, but they are Turks first .and Moslems afterwards. The old “Pan-Islamic” feeling, still strong under the last Sultans, has dwindled to a minor factor. When we turn to the block of Arabic lands centring in Desert Arabia but including Iraq (Mesopotamia), Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, we find a different picture. Here, too, nationalism has struck deep roots. But it expresses itself in curious blend of the new patriotism with old religious sentiments. The basic reason for this is that the Arabs, being kinsfolk of the Prophet and speaking the sacred language of the Koran, have always felt themselves Islam’s “elect,” the fountain-head of both its faith and its culture. To such a people, the secular aspects of Western nationalism could not appeal. IN NORTH AFRICA. It is when we pass beyond Egypt to the vast belt of North Africa which stretches westwards between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert that we encounter the strangest mani ■ festation assumed by nationalism m the Islamic world. North Africa has never hitherto developed internal unity of any kind. The population is basically Berber—a “dark-white” stock similar to those of southern Europe. These Berbers, though tenacious of their language and customs, have always been divided into many small tribes. The Arabs conquered and colonised North Africa over a thousand years ago, but they never made it part of the Arab world, as they did in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Arab and Berber have never really fused. Pure-blooded Arabs abound, often in large tribal groups; yet they are still, in a sense, foreigners. BARBARY STATES. With such factors of discord, North Africa’s political life has always been chaotic. Even in Morocco, the Sultan’s authority never extended over the, mountain tribes. As for the so-called “Barbary States” (Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli), they were little more than pofb-cities along the. coast, the hinterland enjoying complete tribal independence. Over this confused turmoil, the tide of European conquest began flowing with the French capture of Algiers a century ago untill all North Africa became a French possession except Tripoli (Lybia), which was seized by Italy just before the Great War. French rule, though materially beneficient, has gradually welded the natives into a common dislike of European rule and hence has generated a common aspiration toward independence. With no historic pasts, these populations desire the forging of a new North African nationality, whose common bond is Islam. Thus we here get a movement which can be expressed only as Pan-Islamic Nationalism—contradictory though the phase may sound! Such are the three outstanding trends in the accommodation of Western nationalism to the Islamic world. Except in Turkey, they are still in their early stages. Still, by glimpsing their general direction, we may comprehend many happenings which would otherwise be hard to understand.