Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads by Hashmi Sohail H.;

Author:Hashmi, Sohail H.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2012-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

EUROPEAN IMPERIALISM

Upon landing in Alexandria, Egypt, on July 1, 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte issued a proclamation to the Egyptian people that began by justifying the invasion: “For a long time [the Mamluks] who lorded it over Egypt have treated the French community basely and contemptuously and have persecuted its merchants with all manner of extortion and violence. Therefore the hour of punishment has now come.” The proclamation went on to preempt a hostile Egyptian response in the name of religion by making the astounding claim: “The French are also faithful Muslims, and in confirmation of this they invaded Rome and destroyed the Papal See, which was always exhorting the Christians to make war with Islam. And then they went to the island of Malta, from where they expelled the Knights, who claimed that God the Exalted required them to fight the Muslims.”1 The ploy failed. An insurrection broke out in Cairo, provoked in part by ulema who declared jihad against the French invaders. Al-Jabarti, the chronicler of these events, makes his low opinion of the revolt’s leaders quite clear: “This deluded one forgot that he was a prisoner in the hands of the French, who occupied the fortress and its walls, the high hills and the low; fortifying them all with forbidding instruments of war; such as cannons on carriages, rifles, carbines, and bombs.”2

As European imperialism spread in Muslim territories during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the French foray into Egypt proved paradigmatic as far as European rationales and Muslim reactions were concerned. The European justifications for imperialism were manifold, but the rhetoric of just war and crusaderism was prominent. The former is evident in the French proclamation cited above. They were defending their national honor and interests. They were punishing the offenders. These rationales would be repeated time and again. The latter was intrinsic to French perceptions of their mission in Egypt and would figure in Napoleon’s subsequent administrative edicts. It was the notion of mission civilisatrice, which manifested itself in many forms over the coming century. This civilizing mission could be viewed as a modern version of crusaderism. Jonathan Riley-Smith divides this phenomenon into “paracrusading” and “pseudocrusading”:

Paracrusading had within it some elements drawn from the old movement, although chosen selectively and distorted. Pseudocrusading had no correspondence to the old reality, but borrowed its rhetoric and imagery to describe ventures—particularly imperialist ones—that had nothing at all to do with the Crusades, as nations already expressing pride in their crusading past became involved in the scramble for empire.3

Neither of these forms of crusaderism had a direct religious motivation, at least not explicitly. In the program of many missionaries, however, crusaderism was a means to open lands for peaceful proselytizing, analogous in some ways to the intention behind the expansionist jihad of classical doctrine. As such, this crusaderism could be said to have had indirect religious motivations.

Many Muslims interpreted European imperialism as a new crusade. The first modern history of the medieval Crusades, Al-Akhbar al-saniyya fi al-hurub al-salibiyya (Splendid Accounts of the Crusades), was published in 1899 by the Egyptian scholar Sayyid ‘Ali al-Hariri.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.