Paper Topic:
did the people of the middle east attempt to copy any western influences through out the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries? If so which ones, why, and what impact, if any did they have?
Running Head : Muslim response to colonialism Muslim response to colonialism [Name of Writer] [Name of Institution] Muslim response to colonialism At one time the Islamic empire was from India to Spain . The Ottoman Empire was another extension of Islam which saw large parts of South Eastern Europe fall to the Turks . The defeat of the Ottoman Turks in 1683 siege of Vienna began a long decline . The Islamic empires were major military powers with powerful economies and social systems . They began to modify the knowledge and discovered new things using
inquiry and testing . However starting from the 18th century the entire Islamic world except for Turkey , Afghanistan and Oman became colonized by Western powers (Watenpaugh , 2006
There were many responses to colonialism . The Ottoman Empire for instance began a known as tanzimat . This process began in 1839 and was an attempt to modernize the Ottoman army , introduction of bank notes , and reorganization of finance system , establishment of modern schools and universities and giving more rights to non Muslims . However these reforms could not prevent the seizure of provinces by foreign powers and nationalist movements . These reforms did give rise to educated nationalists who created a secular republic in the aftermath of World War I (Watenpaugh , 2006
Another major response to Western colonialism came in the form of nationalism . Arabs began to perceive themselves as nationalists after the end of World War I . Inside Turkey a revolution by Kemal Ataturk led to the creation of a secular republic . Ataturk abolished the Islamic laws , replaced Arabic script with Latin script , encouraged Western dressing , opened modern schools and universities , created a new secular civil and criminal code and banned the veil . His revolution was a successful one since Turkey is a secular republic enjoying an impressive standard of living and a major industrial power . Arab nationalists also seized power in Egypt , Iraq , Syria and Lebanon overthrowing the pro British monarchies . They tried to modernize their economies and societies along socialist lines . However their success was limited as the economic condition of their people remained poor
The third major response to Western incursions was Islamic revivalism Islamic revivalist movements sprung up in various parts of the Middle East calling for the creation of societies modeled on the Prophet Muhammad and his four caliphs (Lewis , 1994 . They also considered all kinds of new ideas as innovations and heresies that had corrupted Islam and was responsible for the stagnation of the Islamic world . An example of this was the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia , Sokoto Caliphate in Nigeria , Mahdist movement in Sudan , Sanusi brotherhood in Libya and Sheikh Abdel Kadir 's jihad in Algeria . Another type of Islamic revivalism was the idea that European ideas could be integrated into Islamic society . Such scholars like Muhammad Abduh argued that Islam and science have no contradictions . They also stressed that this was the spirit of early Muslims but this had stopped in the subsequent centuries . These movements had degrees of success but most of them were unable...
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