Overview of The History And Teachings of Islam (2/2)

In India, the Mughal Empire, heir to the Central Asian conquerors Timur and Babur, ruled in the Northern part of the subcontinent. The Safavid Empire and its successors ruled Iranian and other Persian-speaking territories.

Important cultural expressions of these regional powers were magnificent crafts and urban architecture. Both influenced urban and courtly culture in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Italian and Indian stone artisans, Chinese and Iranian painters, ceramic and textile artisans, as well as artisans working in steel, bronze, silver and gold circulated among the royal courts and commercial workshops. As Afro-eurasian trade began to link with European and then American trade after the voyages of European mariners, luxury goods for the middle classes were important exports from Muslim ports.

It is fair to say that some of Europe’s emerging industries served their apprenticeship to manufacturing in these regions. The ceramic industry in Europe learned from Turkish, Persian and Chinese manufacturers. Asian and African cloth manufacturers served as models for early European textiles. Indian and Chinese textiles were among the goods most in demand. Indian weavers and dyers produced such variety and quality of cottons, silks and woolens that common textiles today still bear specialized names from the exporting regions. Calico, muslin, canvas, (later khaki), seersucker, chintz, voiles, toile, velvet, satin, cashmere (from Kashmir), damask. Persian and Turkish carpets are still sold for high prices in the West.

By the 1600’s, Europeans bought the products of Asia with silver and gold from its growing colonies in the Americas and Africa. Spices and food products from the Afroeurasian trade combined with new products from the Columbian exchange and stimulated imports and changes in diet and agriculture across the whole world during this period. An enormous trade in sugar, coffee, and tea was another important influence that originated in trade with Muslim and other economic centers in Afroeurasia.

During the nineteenth century, European colonization of Muslim regions increased the economic and political effects of the growing shift in manufacturing and trade toward Europe’s favor. European military and industrial power was twin forces that gradually weakened Muslim states, as it did other powers in the Americas, Africa and Asia. By the early years of the twentieth century, the strongest Muslim power, the Ottoman Empire, had been overpowered.

After World War I, Ottoman territory in the Middle East and North Africa had been divided up among the French and the British, including Palestine, the Holy Land of all three monotheistic faiths. Turkey, in Asia Minor, was all that remained sovereign of the former Ottoman Empire.

After World War II, nearly all of the modern Muslim countries had achieved independence from European powers, which grew weak after two huge wars. Palestine had been divided by Britain and the United Nations so that Israel could be created, and after 1967, Israel occupied all the land that could serve as a Palestinian state in keeping with United Nations intentions and resolutions. Algeria did not gain its independence until the 1960s after a brutal resistance against French colonialism. African Muslim countries also gained independence and suffered many economic problems. Development experts and Western governments emphasized the need for Muslim societies to become secular, which often came to mean repression rather than freedom of religion. The need for oil in the industrial countries of the world brought wealth to the oil-producing nations of the Persian Gulf, but also put these countries in the geo-strategic spotlight. Iran struggled against a Western- favored regime, and in 1979, religious and secular revolutionaries appealed to the Shi’i Iranian population to overthrow the Shah, and established the Islamic Republic of Iran. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Central Asian Muslim states, like other former Soviet regions, threw off Russian rule, and promised to become new oil and gas producers for the world if pipelines could be built.

At the beginning of the third millennium CE, there are more than 50 countries with Muslim majorities, and dozens more with significant minorities. Several countries in Europe had large Muslim minority populations, such as Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany—mostly from former colonies. Several countries in the Americas had growing minorities of Muslims, including between 4 and 7 million living in the United States. About 40% of Muslim Americans were of African American heritage.

Despite oil wealth in some countries, repressive governments and lack of strong economic development and social and political change led to great frustration in Muslim societies. Domestic and international critics point to the failure of many autocratic or militarist regimes in the region that claim to be secular governments. Dissatisfaction has led to the rise of political parties emphasizing a return to Islamic principles of law as a basis for governance, calling with many other groups for more democratic and representative government. In many countries, political parties whose platform called for such Islamic goals and values won significant support from the voters. Electoral victories by such Muslim parties were met with acceptance by some governments, and with repression by others. Political movements both within and outside governments spoke in the language of Islam against injustices, using jihad to justify violent means. They managed to attract some sympathy at home and provoke fear abroad.

The use of prisons, torture and denial of civil liberties stoked the radicalization of these groups, along with their growing frustration over outside intervention by Western nations, particularly the United States. The issue of Palestine grew more violent on both sides for lack of a just and lasting peace, and the lack of balance perceived in the US role in that conflict was shown to be a major source of discontent among Muslims of the world.

The rise of terrorism committed in the name of Islam came to a head in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, causing many to confuse the widely- held peaceful teachings of the faith with modern, radical interpretations. On the other hand, in the name of fighting against terrorism, the United States seemed determined to dominate the Middle East as the US war against Iraq was waged as a pre-emptive and liberating effort against the regime of Saddam Hussein. This open-ended war seemed to many Muslims to be a war against Islam itself, with a population of more than a billion worldwide, although US leaders insisted it was not. The major struggle of the new century for Muslims was to achieve positive social change and build modern, economically and politically strong societies based on enduring Islamic principles and values of the faith. As had happened many times in the 1400 years of Islam, Muslim scholars and ordinary people tried to re-center Muslim thought to restore the balance between rigid or extreme interpretations of Islam, and rejection of the most vital principles of faith in an artificially secular regime.