Read Online Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror by Mahmood Mamdani - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mahmood Mamdani
Ads: Link
system. By the second half of the seventeenth century, the slave trade had become the principal business of European powers on the African coast. One of its main effects was widespread violence in day-to-day life. Among those who sold slaves were Islamic rulers in the region. The crisis was felt most deeply in Berber society, which was caught in a pincer movement between Arab armies closing in from the north and the expanding frontiers of the European slave trade in the south.
Militant Islam began as a movement led by Sufi leaders (marabout) intent on unifying the region against the negative effects of the slave trade. The first War of the Marabout began in 1677 in the same area that had given rise to the eleventh-century Al-Moravid movement. The difference was that whereas the Al-Moravids had moved north, ultimately to conquer Spain, the marabout moved south. The second War of the Marabout culminated with the Muslim revolution in the plateau of Futa Jallon in 1690. Among the Berbers of the north and the peoples of the south, militant Islam found popular support for jihad against Muslim aristocracies selling their own subjects to European slave traders. The leaders of the revolution in Futa Jallon set up a federation divided into nine provinces, with the head of each appointed a general in thejihad. When the last of the revolutionary leaders died in 1751, the leadership passed from the religious marabout to commanders in the army. The new military leaders began an aggressive policy targeting neighbors and raiding for slaves—all under the guise of a jihad. The Muslim revolutions that had begun with the first War of the Marabout had come full circle in the space of eighty years: from leading a popular protest against the generalized violence of the slave trade, they founded a new state whose leaders then joined the next round of slave trading.
The third time jihad was widely waged as a “just war” was in the middle of the eighteenth century in the Arabian peninsula, proclaimed by Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792), who gave his name to a contemporary doctrine identified with the House of Saud, Wahhabism. Ibn Wahhab’s jihad was declared in a colonial setting, on an Arab peninsula that had been under Ottoman control from the sixteenth century. It was not a jihad against unbelievers. Its enemies included Sunni Muslim Ottoman colonizers and Shi’a “heretics,” whereas its beneficiaries were a newly forged alliance between the ambitious House of Saud and the new imperial power on the horizon, Great Britain.
The fourth widespread practice of jihad as an armed struggle was in the Sudan when the anticolonial leader, Muhammad Ahmed (1844-1885), declared himself al-Mahdi (the Messiah) in 1881 and began to rally support against a Turko-Egyptian administration that was rapidly becoming absorbed into an expanding British empire. The battle for a jihad in this context was a battle against a colonial occupation that was both Muslim (Turko-Egyptian) and non-Muslim (British). Al-Mahdi was spectacularly successful as the organizer of the revolt. Armed with no more than spears and swords, the Mahdists (followers of al-Mahdi) won battle after battle, in 1885 reaching the capital, Khartoum, where they killedCharles Gordon, the British general and hero of the second Opium War with China (1856-1860), who was then governor in the Turko-Egyptian administration. So long as they fought a hated external enemy, the Mahdists won widespread support in all regions. But once the victorious al-Mahdi moved to unite different regions and create a united Sudan under a single rule, the anticolonial coalition disintegrated into warring factions in the north—where Messianic interpretations of Islam fought it out against Sufi (mystical) ones—and a marauding army of northern slavers in the south. As the war of liberation degenerated into slave raids, anarchy, famine, and disease reigned. It is estimated that the population of Sudan fell from around
Militant Islam began as a movement led by Sufi leaders (marabout) intent on unifying the region against the negative effects of the slave trade. The first War of the Marabout began in 1677 in the same area that had given rise to the eleventh-century Al-Moravid movement. The difference was that whereas the Al-Moravids had moved north, ultimately to conquer Spain, the marabout moved south. The second War of the Marabout culminated with the Muslim revolution in the plateau of Futa Jallon in 1690. Among the Berbers of the north and the peoples of the south, militant Islam found popular support for jihad against Muslim aristocracies selling their own subjects to European slave traders. The leaders of the revolution in Futa Jallon set up a federation divided into nine provinces, with the head of each appointed a general in thejihad. When the last of the revolutionary leaders died in 1751, the leadership passed from the religious marabout to commanders in the army. The new military leaders began an aggressive policy targeting neighbors and raiding for slaves—all under the guise of a jihad. The Muslim revolutions that had begun with the first War of the Marabout had come full circle in the space of eighty years: from leading a popular protest against the generalized violence of the slave trade, they founded a new state whose leaders then joined the next round of slave trading.
The third time jihad was widely waged as a “just war” was in the middle of the eighteenth century in the Arabian peninsula, proclaimed by Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792), who gave his name to a contemporary doctrine identified with the House of Saud, Wahhabism. Ibn Wahhab’s jihad was declared in a colonial setting, on an Arab peninsula that had been under Ottoman control from the sixteenth century. It was not a jihad against unbelievers. Its enemies included Sunni Muslim Ottoman colonizers and Shi’a “heretics,” whereas its beneficiaries were a newly forged alliance between the ambitious House of Saud and the new imperial power on the horizon, Great Britain.
The fourth widespread practice of jihad as an armed struggle was in the Sudan when the anticolonial leader, Muhammad Ahmed (1844-1885), declared himself al-Mahdi (the Messiah) in 1881 and began to rally support against a Turko-Egyptian administration that was rapidly becoming absorbed into an expanding British empire. The battle for a jihad in this context was a battle against a colonial occupation that was both Muslim (Turko-Egyptian) and non-Muslim (British). Al-Mahdi was spectacularly successful as the organizer of the revolt. Armed with no more than spears and swords, the Mahdists (followers of al-Mahdi) won battle after battle, in 1885 reaching the capital, Khartoum, where they killedCharles Gordon, the British general and hero of the second Opium War with China (1856-1860), who was then governor in the Turko-Egyptian administration. So long as they fought a hated external enemy, the Mahdists won widespread support in all regions. But once the victorious al-Mahdi moved to unite different regions and create a united Sudan under a single rule, the anticolonial coalition disintegrated into warring factions in the north—where Messianic interpretations of Islam fought it out against Sufi (mystical) ones—and a marauding army of northern slavers in the south. As the war of liberation degenerated into slave raids, anarchy, famine, and disease reigned. It is estimated that the population of Sudan fell from around
Similar Books
