Global Intifada

Still too busy to write up a comprehensive post, but here are some points to ponder that I will flesh out in more detail in the future, inshaAllah.

1. One of the fundamental roots of the impotence of Muslim states and communities to promote social justice and fairness in international relations is the absence of an Islamic hegemony and the presence of the nation-state system which fosters disunity and dependence on Western states.

2. The deconstruction of an Islamic hegemony and the construction of the nation-state system was due, primarily, to Western hegemony.

3. Western hegemony today can be broken down into three distinct phases: (a) colonialism, (b) imperialism, and (c) unipolar dominance (the present phase). During the colonialist phase, European hegemony was restricted to coastal regions of non-European states. During the imperialist phase, European hegemony spread into the heartland of various non-European states. During the unipolar phase, a single Western power dominates international relations.

4. The key distinction between the imperial and the colonialist phase is the presence of the industrial revolution which, as Pomeranz and Abu-Lughood have shown, would not have been possible without the previous colonial phases. The discovery of America had a huge impact in enabling Western Europe to escape the Malthusian constraints that created declines in India, China, and Japan, in spite of the last two states having regions that had economic growth on par, if not better, than that of Western Europe.

5. Just like the Western European discovery of America enhanced economic growth at the expense of other regions, the Iberian interference in international commerce assisted in the decline of Islamic hegemons at the time, specifically, the Ottoman Empire.

6. The Iberian interference in the spice trade directly affected the Ottoman Empire by cutting down their revenue from international commerce. This forced them them to increase local taxes on agriculture and land (the Timarot system). However, this undermined productivity and got them into a cycle of diminished economic growth. Their fate, as well the fate of Egypt under Pasha, was sealed when they borrowed large loans from European financiers and were not able to pay them, transferring their economic and political systems to them in doing so and completely negating the possibility of revival.

7. In addition to these external causes, the Ottoman Empire lacked two resources that were essential to its industrial development: timber and coal, two resources that Britain had in abundance and in proximity to its industrializing regions. The Ottoman lack of timber affected its ability to effectively develop a naval force to counter first the Iberians and then the other Western European states. The lack of coal made it difficult to industrialize its economy.

8. Moreover, we see Western Europeans directly interfering in the industrializing efforts of non-Europeans. Egypt under Pasha was able to create sustained economic growth such that its cotton-production exceeded the US during its Civil War, a considerable accomplishment. However, when Egypt began the process of industrialization, both the British and the Ottoman Empire and forced it to deinsustrialize. Similar processes were used by the British in other regions of the world, such as in India, Africa, and the Americas.

9. Thus, the way the world unfolded has less to do with an intellectual or ideological problem and more to do with economics and, to be frank, God-given resources and dumb luck. The problems of science, bid’a, spiritual decline, capitalism lack explanatory power to account for not only the decline of Islamic hegemons and the rise of Western hegemons, but the complete dominance of Western hegemony and the complete annihilation of Islamic hegemony. Marxist accounts of capital accumulation are not sufficient to explain how regions in China, India, Japan did not industrialize in spite of having large concentrations of capital and why areas such as Italy failed to industrialize in spite of having huge accumulations of capital and proto-capitalist institutions.

10. The ideology, institutions, and strategies used in Iberian colonialism were virtually identical to those in the Reconquista and the Crusades. For example, the primary institutions for initial Portuguese expansion was the Order of Christ, which was a remnant of the Knights Templar.

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