The Ottoman Caliphate is not colonialism

Many people think, due to nationalism and judging the Ottoman Empire in its deterioration time, and the fascinating application of democracy at the European and American people, that the Ottoman Caliphate was in a way or another connecting with the Western colonialism with all its defects and horrors which we have been suffering its visible and invisible impacts today.

Getting affected by the times of weakness and deterioration which the Muslim nation has suffered recently leads us to fall into error when judging the Ottoman Empire which its rule had extended for six centuries.

Professor `Abdur-Rahman `Azzam, the former Secretary of the Arab League, said:

"If the matter had been as people; who were deceived by the impacts of deterioration, oppression and so on; think, the Ottoman empire would not have lasted for six hundred years of which two hundred years were during the deterioration time"[1]

The opposite opinion was held by professor. Muhammad `Abdullah `Anan in his book "Islamic Egypt," who attacked the Ottoman Empire and said that Islamic Egypt has never witnessed calamities and disasters than those happened during the Ottoman conquest because of the strikes that hit Islam due to that rule.

Moreover, he described the actions of the Turks with barbarism and destruction to Islam which was initiated by Hulagu and Tartars by crushing the Abbasid state and Medina, and resumed by Tamerlane in the late fourteenth century.

He also deemed that tranfering scientists and skillful craftsmen whom were driven to Constantinople by Sultan Selim as an exile to them, and considered the transfer of books and precious monuments to Astana a kind of sabotage. [2]

Sheikh Mustafa Sabry interfered to correct this information saying that most of these monuments were religious and scientific manuscripts which the Sultan transferred for more attention after Egypt had been part of his kingdom and there was no difference between Egypt and Astana. So, how could `Anan compare the great action of Sultan Selim with the actions of Hulagu did who threw books into the Tigris and Euphrates?!

As for transferring scholars, scientists, and skillful craftsmen to Astana, the Sultan transferred them to be under his great care and attention and to benefit the entire caliphate from their experience; the Caliphate included many countries where there was no difference between Muslims regarding their nationalities and countries. The purpose of Sultan Selim was to unite Islamic Egypt with Islamic Turkey.

As for the claim that the Ottoman took Egypt from the rule of the Circassians Mamluks, the Mamluks also took Egypt from the rule of the Turkish Naval Mamluks, and Egypt was not at that time under the rule of the Arabs who opened it for Islam.[3]

Indeed, we cannot judge those forms of competitions over power without referring to their historical framework because the international law at that time gave the right to countries to invade and occupy other countries.

Let us evaluate the current international reality and see whether it is different from what was happening in the near and distant history or not? The Third World countries are divided between the two super powers: Russia and USA, and countries in the past lacked the mass media that falsifies facts, and the minds of their rulers were not as smart as the current rulers who invented forms of colonization and dominance such as "guardianship," "Mandate," and others; and they did not establish superficial systems such as communism, democracy, and commonwealth to deceive the people and distract them from knowing the truth.

Let us go back to the views of Sheikh Mustafa Sabry which he cited to defend the Ottoman Empire, so I quote from the book of Dr. Anklhard "The history of the developments of the Ottoman Empire": Islam, which has been the founder of the Ottoman government, has become an absolute ruler over the government because civil laws were in conformity with the Glorious Qur'an. Then he spoke about the intentions of the European Christian countries which have been working to undermine the Ottoman Empire forcibly for five centuries. When they failed, they made a trick to shift the Ottoman Government from spirituality to the mundane by distorting religious rulings as happened in the Christian world.[4]

The main reason for crusades over the Muslim nation since the time of the Seljuk Turks up to now is the role of the Ottomans in defense of the religion and the Muslim countries who were united without discrimination. The only difference was that Crusades started when the Muslim nation was weak and when the Muslim nation became strong in the time of the Ottomans, they started their wars against the European countries to guide them for Islam not for retaliation, and Europe remained afraid of the Muslim Ottomans because they gathered the Muslim world under one banner to stand against the European colonialism.

So, there is no similarity between an occupying and occupied country, and perhaps the most powerful evidence was: Since the separation of Arab countries after the success of the revolution headed by Sharif Husayn, success turned to be an adversity against the Arab peoples because the revolution helped in breaking the power of the Ottoman power in the face of the colonialism ambitions which swooped on the recently liberated countries to usurp their wealth and seize their goods.

Let us compare between what the Ottomans did with non-Arabs in Europe and what did the European do in our countries; is it considered colonialism? Professor `Abdur-Rahman `Azzam said: "When the Ottomans arrived to Eastern Europe, which were full of slavery prisons, they broke prisons and established instead the principles of individual freedom by eradicating the system of feudalism and aristocracy to be replaced by a system where citizens were free and had equal rights. So, slaves have reached the highest positions in the state, and smart people of them became scholars even if they had not an origin but they gained the respect of people, and Easter Europe learned the respect of law at the hand of its liberators."[5]

These values completely deny the charge of Ottoman colonialism, so what did the West do with us? Perhaps we would shock the reader with the reality of his assessment to us which is unexpected because it came from "Montesquieu" the author of the famous book "The Spirit of the Laws" in which he said: "If I was asked to defend our right of taking Negros as slaves, I say: After the peoples of Europe had eradicated the Native Americans, they did not see any harm in enslaving the peoples of Africa to use them in exploitation of all these spacious countries. The mentioned people were just black groups which were hardly to sympathize with. Man cannot imagine that God (Glory be to Him) had placed good souls in those black bodies."[6]