The Rise and Fall of Islamism: pt.1

Clinging to their guns and religion

After reading the Iran article, S. in Oakland asked: “I didn't realize how recent Islamism as a political force was, I'm guessing it's part of the larger, global anti-Western sentiment wave? I'd be very interested in learning more about this rise of Islamism in a separate article.”

I put off writing this because it’s looooong: it’s going to be my first 3-parter. This is the Distilled History equivalent of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But I think if you stick with me over the next 3 installments you’ll find this story to be educational and engaging, it has some very unexpected twists and turns. And going back to the earlier days of the blog and writing about Islamism is good for me, because I’ve been doing a lot of American Civil War research lately, and there’s a limit to how much you can read about Colonel Shadrach Hezekiah Meshuga’s 121st Bearded Infantry before it starts to affect your sanity. So come on boys, now that we’ve got them Yankees on the run, let’s switch back to the modern Middle East:

During the 90s there was a sense that the old ideological conflicts had finally come to an end. The battle between socialism and capitalism which had engrossed the Western world for 150 years was now over, and all the remaining dictatorships would eventually wither away and then blossom into market-economy democracies. Colonialism was in the past, and everyone, no matter how poor, would eventually reach a new standard of prosperity through globalization and development. And plus, with the World Wide Web now available to everyone, people wouldn’t have their opinions controlled by the state or traditional media. Information would flow freely, and people all around the world could connect, which would lead to even more peace and prosperity.

And then on a Tuesday morning, a plane smashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, and the world woke up to the realization that global conflict had not in fact come to an end. There was another ideology that had been percolating mostly unnoticed in the background while Westerners were busy congratulating themselves. And over the course of the next two decades it would become obvious that Islamism was something that needed to be better understood, but due to the anger, xenophobia, and outright ignorance of those times, a lot of people didn’t really understand what it was or where it came from. All Muslims were considered suspicious, and the history and motivations of extremists were never explored, which distorted our perceptions of reality. 

Before we get into it, I want to clarify that this isn’t going to be some right-wing “exposé” of the “hidden threat” of Islam. Go on Youtube or social media if you’re looking for Islamophobic content, there’s plenty of it out there. My personal point of view is that Islam is a rather normal religion (objectively less weird than Mormonism), and Islamic societies have made great contributions to human civilization over the centuries. It’s really only in recent decades that some people have taken a violent and intolerant stance in the name of Islam, and I think it’s important for all of us in the modern world to understand where Islamist ideology came from, and what its motivations are. 

Now bear with me for a bit, because a recap of the history of Islam is required to discuss modern Islamism. None of this will make any sense unless you understand the background first. And this covers 1400 years, but we’ll try to go fast. The Prophet Muhammad was born around 570 AD in what is now Saudi Arabia. At age 40, he received a revelation from God and began to spread the word and gain followers. According to Islam, Jews and Christians worship the correct God, but over time they got off track and started believing incorrect things. Islam is a restoration, rather than a new beginning. The cosmology and religious history (heaven & hell, Adam & Eve, Noah, Moses, Jesus, Mary, etc.) are more or less the same as the other Abrahamic religions.

Muhammad was a military leader as well as a prophet, and he led armies that conquered his enemies on the Arabian peninsula. After he died in 632, the religion spread rapidly, mostly through wars against the decaying Byzantine and Persian empires. Within 100 years of Muhammad’s death, the Arab armies had reached France and India. After taking over a new area, the Muslim conquerors didn’t force people to convert. Jews and Christians could continue to practice their own beliefs, but they had to pay extra taxes. Additionally, if you wanted to climb the social ladder it was beneficial to be a Muslim, so people gradually converted. But not entirely: most Muslim countries contained large non-Muslim minorities well into the 20th century, and some areas like Greece stayed predominantly Christian for centuries under Muslim rule. Generally the Muslim rulers didn’t care what religion you followed as long as you respected the authorities and paid your taxes, they were way more tolerant than Christian rulers. Jews especially fared much better in medieval times under Muslim rule than in Christian Europe, where they were regularly massacred.

After Muhammad died there was the question of who should be his successor. The leadership passed to his close followers, and the position of Caliph was created. “Caliph” means successor or steward, but the Caliph wasn’t a king or a Pope-like figure. He was just the overall leader of the Muslims, and the idea was that any Muslim could fill this role. However, there was a dispute: another group thought that the leadership should stay with Muhammad’s bloodline through his daughter Fatima, and thus should pass to Fatima’s husband Ali. This led to a conflict and Ali was assassinated, but his followers continued to hold that the succession should stay in the family (the OG nepo babies). They became the Shia Muslims, as opposed to the majority Sunni who were opposed to a bloodline succession. There aren’t huge theological differences between the two, they mostly believe the same things vis a vis religion, but there are a lot of cultural differences and mutual grievances that have piled up over the centuries.

The caliphs were on a roll back in the 7th century, knocking out opponents left and right, spreading the Word: it seemed like things were going well. But there wasn't a perfect harmony of unified believers, Muslims still struggled for power and fought wars with each other. Two of the early caliphs were assassinated, and then this fighting broke out with the followers of Ali about the succession. But during the early days, despite a few assassinations and civil wars, there was usually one caliph who ruled an empire called the caliphate covering most of the Muslim realms. This was the golden age of Islamic art and science, the Muslims were the most advanced and civilized people in the Western world. Some of the remote areas like Spain and Morocco broke away and became independent, but the core Middle-eastern area was under one caliph most of the time. The golden age ended in the 13th century when the Mongols invaded and sacked the caliphate’s capital of Baghdad. The religion continued to be practiced (the Mongols also didn’t care about their subjects’ religious beliefs), but the days when an Arab caliph was the recognized leader of all Muslims were over. 

The Ottoman Turks, a converted group of people from Central Asia, became the new head honchos of the Muslim world. They destroyed the last remnants of the Byzantine empire in 1453, and the Sultan of the Turks took over the title of Caliph. The Ottomans also conquered the Arab Middle East and spread their rule into Europe, they were clearly the new game in town and the proper recipients of the title of caliph. Again, the caliph was not part of a royal bloodline, it was an office like CEO or President: the caliph is the boss. But at this point Islam had spread far beyond the reach of the Turkish sultans. There were independent Muslim kingdoms in Africa, other independent powers in Central Asia and India, and Muslims in very far away places like Vietnam and even the Americas. The title of caliph still demanded respect based on the history of Islam, but as a practical matter the Sultan couldn’t call on the allegiance of all those people scattered across the globe. 

Fast-forward a few centuries to 1914, and the Turkish Ottoman empire was in bad decline and allied with Germany. When war broke out with Turkey on the side of Germany, the Sultan put on his caliph hat (ok so there wasn’t a literal caliph hat. Figure of speech) and called upon all Muslims worldwide to take part in a global jihad to overthrow Britain and France’s colonial empires. The response: crickets. No one cared. Instead, tens of thousands of Muslims fought for the Allies in the French and British armies, and the Muslim civilian population in the various European colonies ignored the Sultan’s call for holy war. This is really indicative of how well the title was respected by the late Ottoman period: most people were more concerned about questions of national self-determination rather than uniting as a global Muslim community. After the First World War ended, the Sultan abdicated his position as ruler of the Ottoman Empire, and as caliph. The role of caliph ceased to exist, and it seemed like that age was over. 

Alright, you made it through the history of Islam part. That wasn’t so bad, huh? And I bet you even learned something. Now we’re in the modern era. During this period, the 1920s and onward, Turkey looked like the poster child for the future of the Muslim world. Forget about caliphs: the newly secular Republic of Turkey was going to be a forward-looking nation state like the other European powers. Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, ditched the Arabic script for the Roman alphabet, wore a tux instead of traditional clothing, banned the hijab, promoted women’s education and generally secularized and modernized the entirety of Turkish society. From the point of view of Ataturk, the Muslim world’s failure to modernize had led the European powers to steamroll over it. Turkey, and by extension, the Muslim countries colonized by Europe, could only become powerful by emulating the West and embracing modernity. And this vision basically dominated the Muslim world for the next 5 decades. A secular nation-state, maybe even a socialist one, was the key to building up a strong country that could then stand proudly as an independent power. National identity would motivate the people, rather than religion, and caliphs were something for the history books. Every Muslim country from Algeria to Pakistan tried to copy the Turkish model during this period. Religion wasn’t banned or anything, people still practiced Islam and went to their mosque on Fridays, but secular nationalism was the order of the day. Lots of different wars happened during this time, from the Algerian war against France, the Arab-Israeli wars, and the India-Pakistan conflicts, but those were never religious wars. They were wars by and between nations: the sort of thing Napoleon would appreciate. The Sultan’s attempt to declare jihad in 1914 had been an utter flop, and no one else wanted to look silly by trying it again in the subsequent decades 

Turkish poster from Ataturk’s reform era. The nation (in foxy lady form) is progressing while people discard aspects of traditional Islamic culture. 

But some people did dissent from this idea that Muslims needed to secularize and modernize. In the 1920s a group of disaffected Egyptian scholars formed a group called the Muslim Brotherhood. They disagreed with the trend of modernization: secularism had made the Western powers morally decadent, and it wasn’t a failure to modernize that had led the Middle East to fall under foreign domination, it was a failure to stay true to Islamic principles. National divisions were arbitrary and borders only divided and weakened Muslims. The goal should be to boot out the imperial powers, overthrow the new secular rulers, and establish a pan-Islamic caliphate like the good old days. Their slogans were “Islam is the Solution” and “Believers are but Brothers”, emphasizing that they rejected nationalism. As the most populous Arab country, and the home of major Islamic universities, Egypt has always had a lot of cultural clout, and these ideas began to spread to other countries as well. However, the Brotherhood had no clear path to power: all the Muslim states were still under the control of either European powers, or local strongmen & monarchs who weren’t interested in these kooky caliphate ideas. Islamism became an underground countercultural movement, similar to how socialist/Marxist movements operated in the late 19th century. It didn’t look like these intellectuals were poised to take the world by storm.

The next stage of this journey, a vital phase that will eventually lead us to 9/11, takes place in a bastion of Islamic fundamentalism: Colorado.

But you’ll have to wait for the next installment to hear about that. 

Part 2: Say what’s in this drink?

Part 3: So it's us v. them. Over and over again

If you have a question or topic you want me to write about next, email distilledhistory@substack.com