ashraf

Salamu alaikum,

In response to Brother Ptolemaic System's question about the reasons behind the decline of the Ottoman Empire. I have posted his question and my answer below for your consideration.

Ashraf

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salamu alaykum,

Ramadan karim,
Dr ashraf, was military backwardness a primary cause of Ottoman decline? I know that when they sieged Istanbul, they had advanced cannon technology and jannissaries, and they were a feared power. If not, then what was it that caused the Ottomans to decline- other than their faliure to keep Allah's covenant. I heard that it was a mixture of factors- could you highlight which were important? Are there any good books on the subject, or books that go over the topic?

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Alaikum assalam,


Allahu akram,


Thank you for your question.

Any of the general texts that I have suggested will contain a discussion of the decline and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The most thorough and detailed account of Ottoman history is the text: “History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey,” by Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw (who is Turkish). The second volume in particular is subtitled: “Reform, Revolution and Republic, 1808-1975.”

There are many theories about Ottoman decline and you are correct that the issue is extremely complex and does not lend itself to easy explanations. Frankly, I am still trying to define my own position on the subject, but the relative material decline of the Muslim Ummah is of such importance, that I have devoted an entire day of our new class to the topic of “European Imperialism and the Conquest of the Muslim World,” which will be covered on Sunday of the first week of my new class.

For the sake of convenience, we can divide the various explanations of relative decline into the following categories:

1) Military-balance of power theories
2) Theories of internal decline
3) Theories of economic decline
4) Knowledge based theories



I. Military Theories

First, there are purely military-material explanations, which emphasize the relative decline of Ottoman military power beginning in the late 18th century. I suppose we could trace Ottoman military decline, relative to the European powers, even further, to the naval battle of Lepanto of 1571, when the Spanish defeated the Ottomans in the Mediterranean, which represents the first clear victory of the Europeans over the Ottomans. But so many Ottoman victories followed Lepanto, that no one really views that battle as the beginning of Ottoman military decline.

Other authors view the Austro-Ottoman war (1683-97) and the Treaty of Carlowitz of 1699 as the starting point of Ottoman decline. Carlowitz is important because the Austro-Hungarian Empire defeated the Ottomans and forced them to cede territory (Hungary, Slavonia, Transylvania, and Podalia) for the first time since the early years of the Empire. The Ottomans were also forced to send a representative with full powers of diplomatic negotiation (or what is called a “plenipotentiary”) to the frontier in order to negotiate and end to the hostilities. This stands in marked contrast to previous Ottoman victories, which allowed the Ottoman Sultan to impose his own terms upon the defeated power directly from Istanbul.

Unfortunately, the story is not so simple, because the Ottomans regained a degree of their lost position a few years later, and so establishing the precise point at which the Ottomans began to “decline” is quite difficult and recent historical research has questioned the entire thesis of “Ottoman decline” as a matter of principle.

However, it is generally accepted that the third Russo-Ottoman war (1768-74), that ended with the Treaty of Kucuk Kaynarji (1774) represented not only a clear defeat for the Ottomans, but also demarcates the point at which we can begin to speak of systemic deterioration of the Ottoman military position. That is because at Kucuk Kaynarji, the Ottomans were forced to give up the Crimea and the Northern Caucasus (to the Russian Empire), and the treaty further permitted the Russians to represent the interests of the Orthodox Christian subject of the Empire. In effect, the Treaty of Kucuk Kaynarji gave the Russians license to interfere regulary with what had previously been internal Ottoman affairs. And so it is not surprising that after 1774, the Ottomans suffered a series of military defeats in the 19th century and the Empire never again recovered its reputation for being a first rate military power.

Why did the Ottomans fail to keep up militarily with their European counterparts? The answer to this question has proved to be very elusive and there may be no way to give a definitive answer.

What we do know is that by the 16th century, the European powers began experimenting with new warfare techniques, modes of military organization and weapon systems. The “military revolution” of the 16th and 17th century is important for explaining the rise of European global hegemony because the new forms of military organization allowed the Europeans to field larger and better equipped armies.

The matchlock was replaced by the flintlock, which eventually, in the 19th century, was replaced by the rifle and finally the machine gun and Gatling gun. Also, naval warfare became increasingly important for maintaining widespread global empires such as those possessed by the Portuguese, Spain, Britain, Holland, and France.

The Ottomans seemed to be relatively successful in resisting the Portuguese and Spanish, but once these powers declined in the 18th century, they were replaced by the much more formidable British and Dutch naval fleets which used enormous naval galleys equipped with large cannons that literally could blast their opponents out of the water. The Ottomans adapted these innovations early on but could not keep up with the rate of military transformation maintained by the British or Dutch.

Eventually, these new technologies were transferred to the Russian Empire, which was by far the most aggressive of the Ottoman Empire’s opponents. Beginning in the early 17th century, the Russians began a steady move south against the Muslim Khanates of Central Asia (that once ruled Russia) and the Muslim principalities of the Crimea and Caucasus. The Russians did not stop there and eventually, their clear military superiority over the Ottomans allowed them to interfere in the internal affairs of the Empire and they even invaded Anatolia proper; during the Crimean War (1854-56), and again during the ninth Russo-Ottoman war (1877-78), as well as during the final Russo-Ottoman war of 1915-17.

This is at best a superficial sketch of explanations that stress military factors, but it does give us an idea of some of the forces at work between the 17th and 19th centuries that are of obvious importance for understanding the military decline of the Ottoman Empire relative to its European rivals.


II. Theories of Internal Decline

Another group of theories stress the internal dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Although the Ottomans faced a string of military defeats in the late 18th and early 19th century, so the story goes, revival of the Empire was possible and it was internal factors such as bureaucratic rigidities and resistance to reforms that spelled the downfall of the Empire.

For instance, institutions which once served the Empire so well, such as the Jannisaries (Yani-shari, or literally, “new men”), who were the imperial shock troops, fiercely resisted the adaptation of new military forms of organization. The Jannisaries are thought to have resisted military reform because they (correctly) believed that the new model army would undermine their own position in the Ottoman hierarchy.

Thus, when Sultan Selim III (1761-1808) began the Nizam i-Cedid reforms, which was a systematic reorganization Ottoman military, the Jannisaries staged a massive revolt. Supported by some disapproving provincial governors and ‘uluma, the Jannisaries declared that the European inspired reforms were “bid’a,” and successfully destroyed Selim III’s reform efforts and even deposed the sultan in 1807.

A decade later, Sultan Mahmut II (1808-39), pushed through Selim III’s reforms and reduced the power of the Jannisaries, who were finally eliminated altogether in 1826. However, before they could be stopped the Jannisary revolt destroyed one of the key Ottoman foundries that were constructed to produce large canons that could match the European artillery batteries.

Another critical internal factor was the spread of nationalism. The spread of nationalism began among the Balkan (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, etc) subjects of the Empire and eventually radiated to the Arab provinces as well. Ethno-linguistic nationalism was not only devastating to the Ottomans, but eventually destroyed the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well and is one of the chief underlying reasons for the outbreak of the First World War.

The idea that each ethnic-linguistic group shared a common heritage and thereby deserved to live in a unified nation state premised upon (an often imagined) common heritage is what led to the Greek War of Independence, which began in 1820 and led to the successful establishment of an independent Greek state in 1830-32. The success of the Greek nationalist revolt led to similar revolts in Serbia (1815 and 1876-8), Bulgaria (Moesia, Sofia, and Rumelia, 1878-85), Romania (Wallachia, 1878), and Montenegro (1878).

Unfortunately for the Ottomans, the spread of the nationalist idea did not stop their, but further infiltrated the Arab provinces as well and led to the Arab revolt of 1917, which put an enormous amount of pressure upon the central government at a time when they were struggling to ward off the incursion of the European powers.

Resistance to reform and the spread of nationalism are just two of the most important internal factors that led to the downfall of the Empire and should be understood within the context of the overall deterioration of the Ottoman Empire’s geostrategic position.


III. Economic Theories of Decline

Theories that stress economic factors should be viewed as complements to the military and internal theories of decline and not as full-fledged conceptual alternatives. According to this perspective, the Ottomans once dominated the Mediterranean trade routes as well as the key ports and waterways that linked the markets of the Near East, the Indian Ocean and S.E. Asia. The relationship between the Near East, the Indian Ocean and the Far East is important because until the 18th century, China and the Indian Ocean were the largest markets in the world and access to these markets was therefore one of the primary sources of economic power.

As early as the 15th century, the Europeans (Portuguese in particular) discovered a way to circumnavigate Africa; and were thus able to short-circuit the relationships that allowed the Ottomans to dominate these critical trade routes. The Portuguese and later the Dutch (18th century) and eventually the British (18th and 19th centuries) established ports in West Africa, East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, India, and S.E. Asia that permitted them to dominate the spice trade between these regions, and it is this European domination of these critical waterways that is thought to have denied the Ottomans access to the most lucrative markets in the world.

However, Roger Owen’s text: “The Middle East in the World Economy,” (I.B. Taurus, 1993) directly challenges the “economic decline” thesis and demonstrates quite clearly that the Ottomans did not suffer that much from the European incursion into the Indian Ocean and S.E. Asia and that economic decline of Egypt, Syria and Anatolia (the largest Ottoman markets) was a much later (19th century) phenomena.

Despite Owen’s excellent critique, there can be no question that the European expansion to North and South America, as well as their ability to link these markets with those of the Indian Ocean and S.E. Asia, permitted the Europeans to draw upon vast resources and burgeoning markets that eventually outstripped anything available to the Ottomans. The gold and massive silver inflows from the “New World” caused as many problems as they solved however, and the colonies in North America and India initially proved to be commercial failures, but these new imperial possessions did eventually permit the Europeans to create and dominate the global economy.

Of even greater importance was the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, which created a productive capacity, technological innovation, and wealth generation process that was unequaled anywhere else in the world. Once the new industrial processes spread to continental Europe from England, there was really no way that any of the non-European powers could compete materially with the new European global empires. Once the Industrial Revolution took hold in Europe, the Ottomans found themselves in a similar position as the Mughals, Safavids-Qajars, and the Qing rulers of China, who once viewed the Europeans as a nuisance rather than as rivals and their eventual masters.

Due to the Empire’s inability to compete with the European states economically, and due to the increasing financial demands of maintaining the Ottoman military, the Empire began taking out enormous loans (approximately 97 million pounds sterling) from the Britain and France. Once the Empire declared formal bankruptcy in 1881, the Europeans were able to impose their will upon the Ottomans through the special Public Debt Administration, which significantly influenced Ottoman economic policy thereafter.

If we want to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between economic processes and the rise of European global empires, I can think of no better place to start than the writings of Karl Marx (including the Communist Manifesto and Capital), the writings of the British economists J.A. Hobson, as well as those of Vladimir Illich Lenin (Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism).


IV. Knowledge-Based Theories of Decline

I don’t know of anyone who has made this argument (which doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been made), but I think knowledge based factors are critical for understanding why the Europeans were able to conquer the world and why Muslim empires were incapable of competing effectively with their European rivals.

The cultivation of knowledge (about everything) is not only the key to military innovation, but is also the fundamental source of economic growth, and is therefore crucial to any self-respecting empire. Conversely, ignorance and a refusal to learn about the world is one of the best ways to destroy an empire’s relative global position.

I believe that there is clear evidence that the Ottomans were initially very open to learning from the Arabs, Byzantines, and other peoples that they encountered and conquered. Yet by the 17th century, the Ottomans had developed a superiority complex that reduced their willingness to absorb new techniques and ideas from the rest of the world.

For instance, the movable type printing press was invented in 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg, and was later transferred to the Balkan domains of the Ottoman Empire by Jewish migrants from Spain as early as 1493, and found its way to Ottoman Greece in 1627. However, no printing press was permitted in Anatolia until 1727, and it was not until Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 that moveable type printing was available in the Arabic-speaking regions of the Empire.

The Ottomans feared that the printing press would have a similar effect within their empire as it did within Europe (the printing press was one of the key material sources of the Protestant Reformation, that devastated Europe with internal religious wars for over a century). And in fact, Ottoman fears proved to be well founded, as printing was instrumental in encouraging the spread of Greek, Serbian, and other forms of Balkan nationalism. Hence, in 1742, the Ottomans banned the printing press, and although it reappeared in 1784, printing in Arabic type was forbidden altogether.

The Jannisaries who opposed Selim III’s military reforms argued that the Ottomans did not need to adopt European ideas, but had only to return to usul (origins) of Ottoman success, which of course preserved the relative position of the Jannisaries and their allies within the Ottoman bureaucracy. Hence, it seems that the Ottomans suffered from an intellectual rigidity that set in sometime in the late 17th century, and that this willful ignorance was an important factor behind the Ottoman’s inability to adapt to the new global circumstances that faced the Empire.

However, I maybe unfair to the Ottomans, since after all, by 1839, Mahmut II had fundamentally transformed the Ottoman system of education and established a host of new schools, including a new naval engineering academy, a modern medical school, the Imperial School of Medicine, as well as a school of military sciences.
Furthermore, by the mid 19th century, the Ottomans had begun several newspapers and intellectual journals designed to keep them abreast of developments outside the Empire and new European innovations.

Most importantly however, the 19th century witnessed a series of legal and administrative reform efforts that culminated in the Tanzimat reforms, which were instituted between 1839 and 1876. The Tanzimat reforms were instituted primarily during the reigns of Sultan Abdulmecit I (1839-61) and Sultan Abdulaziz (1861-76) and were an attempt to extend the power of the Ottoman state and to reform its fiscal (taxation), legal, and administrative organs, in order to benefit from European models of governance without giving up the shari’a and without divesting the Ottoman state of its traditional sources of authority.

Perhaps for these reasons the Ottoman Empire was the longest lived of all the Muslim empires and successfully preserved much of its dominion until the late 19th/ early 20th century. It is sometimes easy to forget that by 1915, the Ottomans even had a modern navy of ironclad vessels, which may not have been equal to that of the British, French or Germans, but the very fact that the Empire persisted until 1924 is a remarkable fact that should not be neglected.

In the end, it maybe impossible to know for certain why some empires rise while others decline.

As Muslims, we know full well that we can control very little of our own destiny and that it is ultimately Allah who controls the Universe. In His infinite wisdom, Allah, the Mighty, the All-Knowing, and the Overwhelming blinds the powerful and leads them astray, so that they engage in behaviors and adopt policies that are meant to preserve their temporal power, and it is only later, after it is too late, that the powerful discover that the policies that were meant to preserve and expand their temporal authority have instead led to their downfall and to their ultimate self-destruction.

Had this been otherwise, it is likely that the Phar’aohs of Egypt and the Kings of Ancient Sumeria would still be governing the world, and there would be no way for the weak and oppressed to escape from the domination of the arrogant and the powerful.

Wa Allahu ‘alam,

Ashraf

Dhul Qurnayn

awesome post dr. ashraf I myself have contemplated this question...I can't wait to be in your class inshallah I will be there in Jan. Lawrence of Arabia played a huge part also in rallying the bedouin arabs of hijaz to fight against the ottoman empire

abdulhaqq

I've been reading: "The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire" by Alan Palmer (which is for sale at Barnes and Nobles for only $7.98) Alhumdillah, I just started the book, its pretty interesting.

"[Modern Academics] can point to at least six signs of chronic weakness: inflation, exacerbated by cheap silver from Peru circulated by traders from Genoa and Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and causing a threefold increase in the cost of basic food; failings in the pyramidical structure of timar tax collection; the growth of banditry, following a population explosion in Anatolia; ruinous fires in several overcrowded cities; an inflexible adherence to old ways of waging war and governing conquered lands; and (from 1536 onwards) the grant of 'Capitulatoins' - the treaties which, by giving special legal rights and tariff concessions to Europeans who resided within the Ottoman Empire, ensured that profitable trades should fall increasingly into foreign hands."
(p 6 of "The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire)

cherenancy

Wow, that is increadible, and we are seeing the same thing now in the USA. Check out the article Alshareef posted about Money which hinted at the same thing. Whew! This combined with

Quote:

Originally Posted by ashraf As Muslims, we know full well that we can control very little of our own destiny and that it is ultimately Allah who controls the Universe. In His infinite wisdom, Allah, the Mighty, the All-Knowing, and the Overwhelming blinds the powerful and leads them astray, so that they engage in behaviors and adopt policies that are meant to preserve their temporal power, and it is only later, after it is too late, that the powerful discover that the policies that were meant to preserve and expand their temporal authority have instead led to their downfall and to their ultimate self-destruction.

we are witnessing the decline of the American Empire who has adopted policies that are meant to preserve their temporal power but are turning out to backfire... I have goose bumps, subhan Allah!

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"Islam appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other; nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking; and the result is a structure of absolute balance and solid composure." Muhammad Asad (born Leopold Weiss 1900, converted to Islam from Judaisim in 1926)

ManOfFewWords

Brother Ashraf, i was wondering what your opinion is on yet another theory that i have been recently exploring. I feel that there may be an ideological chasm between Western and Eastern world views that would not permit Eastern oriented cultures to pursue an industrial revolution. The preconditons for the industrial revolution were, massive capital gain in England (mainly through horrific chattel slavery), urbanization (destruction of traditional agriculture and privatization of the commons), subjugation and humiliation of working peoples (bare breasted women and children slaving in coal mines), secularization (protestant reformation) and an interest based economy.

It seems to me that these are drastic departures from an Islamic and even Oriental world view. Even Japan and its successful modernization has been accomplished uniquely and within a framework conforming in many ways to Oriental ideas of loyalty and submission to authority, tribal allegiance, communal priority, nobless oblige and religious integrity (revered status of the emperor and survival of Zen Buddhism.) The above societal changes drastically contradict the basic morality of Islam and actually thrives on societal disintigration through concentration of economic power, impoverishment of the masses as a means to create cheap labor, deception as a method of thought control as well as a willingness to create and use weapons of indiscriminate killing power. Not to mention the West's total disregard for the environment, reflecting a short sighted, greedy and diseased mentality not fit for the establishment of civilization.

It also seems to be that modern societies that have become more successful, like China, have done so through adoption of Western methods that are at odds with their own indiginious cultural traditions. The result is widespread injustice, oppression and cultural, social, moral and environmental disintegration. It seem to me that for the Ottomans or muslims in general to be successful they would have to compete in destroying what makes them human.

If this is the recipe for success then Muslims should indeed wonder if their loss of status and power is a humiliation from ALLAH or if it is a blessing to be the oppressed rather than the oppressor.

Nationalism has been seen as a strength for Europe and a weakness for muslims. US and Soviet military might has been the result of a horrifying deterioration of the environment and an impossibly immense dedication of scientific and monetary resources towards warfare. Can and should muslims compete with the West through this sort of madness. There is no paradigm or solution to our problems against these monsters. However, If we are able to engage them and defeat wont we have then become the monsters? Western societies cannot even be called successes, they are miserable failures but they have military superiority and wealth and these are not true criterias for successful civilization.

ManOfFewWords

i wanted to mention that even though japan was successful in maintaining its culture it should be noted that its militarism has an especially Western character when one observes the way they comported themselves in their brief colonization of China and other colonies. Though this system may be successful widespread corruption and stagnancy has been an important issue in Japan's economic decline.

Its also remarkable that Japan, the only first rate Eastern economic power is also leading the environmentalist movement. (If i was cynical i would say that it is mainly their dependence on foreign oil that has really spurred them to develop new technologies for conservation and natural energy)

abdulhaqq

In all honesty, however, how good of a model are East Asian states for successfully imitating Western models of development? Most of those countries were developing anyway.

There are a plethora of sates where the Western model of development has utterly failed such as in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East.

The overwhelming majority of Muslim states aren't "islamic" by definition. Their political systems are governed by Western systems; their economic systems follow Western paradigms; their societies are transforming to imitate Western social behavior, etc. Very few of Muslim states have rejected Western models for development. The problem is that they've adopted extreme statist or on the other end of the extreme, supposed semi-socialist/nationalist forms of behavior. Thus, the presumption that Muslims haven't modernized because they haven't imitated Western paradigms sufficiently, I think would be erroneous to make given that the Muslim is Western or at least on its way to becoming fully Western, but the true bulwarks towards development are the very governments that have been imposed upon or at least allowed to rule over us through the neglect of Western states.

Secondly, we must raise the contention that mere material development does not necessarily result in spiritual or even psychological contentment. Most Western countries, the physical standard of living may be higher, but the spiritual and psychological standard of 'living' may be lower. Western countries have some of the highest rates of depression where prescription drug medication is sold on a frequent basis to greater classes of peple. Only in America, for example, could their be an 'epidemic' of obesity.

Thirdly, the goals of Islam and Islamic civilization are distinct from those of Western civilization. Our goal has not necessarily been the development of industrialized societies capable of providing key services in a global market. This is merely a means to an ends, being the preservation of the social interest.

In fact, the underlying problem with the legitimacy of the International System of Nation-States is that not only is it flawed from a spiritual perspective, but also from an intellectual perspective for two reasons: 1. The scientific evidence indicating the impossibility of genetically establishing a ‘nation’ and 2. The fact the way that the Nation-State system was implemented by the West was in stark contradiction to the very notion of nationalism that the West utilized in order to justify these imagined socio-political constructs. To put it simply: The International System of Nation-States as it stands today is in complete contradiction with the ideology of Nationalism. Most of the states in the Middle East and all over the Muslim World (in fact, all over the world irrespective of religion) are not in conformity with the concept of nationalism whether it is in the form of religious, linguistic, ethnic, or historical fraternity. If religious nationalism was the basis for the creation of Pakistan or Indonesia or Malaysia or Saudi Arabia, then we should have never seen the demise of the Ottoman Empire since the legitimacy of its state was largely based on religious nationalism that was valid for a long historical period as opposed to the states listed above that possess little or virtually no historical memory because they simply did not exist. If the legitimacy of the Nation-State System was not supposed to be based on religious nationalism, and instead was based on racial or ethnic nationalism, then we should have seen the formation of a unified Arab, Kurdish, Persian, Central Asian, African, and Southwestern Indian states. Of course, India itself possessed hundreds of ethnicities who had an equally valid claim to a nation-state as did the formation of an Indian state. Either way, Pakistan shouldn’t have been united into a secular nationalist government, but rather, completely independent states based on ethnicity. If nation-state status was granted to Bangladesh because it was ethnically/linguistically different, than all of the various ethnically/linguistic groups within India should have been granted that freedom. Furthermore, why not the Kurds, who have been fighting for their independence for quite some time now? If nationalism was defined through religion as it was defined in the case of Pakistan, than it should have been defined through religion throughout the Ummah and if the Ottoman Empire was corrupt, than the West inconformity with their own ideologies, should have simply streamlined it by making it more ‘democratic’ and ‘republican’ which would have just as easily done the job without partitioning the Empire. Even though nationalism was defined through ethnicity in Turkey where the Turks, Greeks, and Armenians were given their own state, then why wasn’t it given to the Kurds and if the Arabs were going to be given a state based on their ethnicity, then why were they divided up? Out of all the strains of nationalism that were justified to create Nation-States, the most ludicrous is the strain of nationalism that views that nations should be created based on language. If nationalism was defined through language as it was in Bangladesh, then it should have been defined through language for the Arabs who all share a common language or the Kurds. Furthermore, what does one do in areas where more than one tongue is spoken? Urdu does not have any dominancy in any area of the Indian subcontinent, it is actually used in a dual manner by the masses. Even though most of these nation-states were created at different historical periods and for different reasons, in the case of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and its replacement by nation-states, it is blaringly obvious that no one coherent use of nationalism was utilized. Hence, what we saw in the formation of these states was not a proactive use of nationalism, but rather, merely a justification to buttress Imperial interests. Hence, we see that the international system of nation states is not only problematic because Muslims should have one government as obliged by the Shariah, but because the implementation of the ideology of nationalism doesn’t make any sense according to its own ideology.

Ultimately, nationalism fails to be a viable ideology in the 21stcentury, since it is nearly impossible to implement even one of version of it anywhere in the world in a coherent and systematic manner. Religious nationalism, ethnic nationalism, or linguistic nationalism either individually or in congruity with each other can not be applied. Human nations are a myth, there is an abundance of scientific information through genetics that makes a powerful argument against nationalism. Furthermore, nationalism and loyalty to the Ummah are based on two fundamentally different purposes. Nationalism is utilized by elites to mobilize masses for greater social and political privileges and advantages. Loyalty to the Ummah was ordained by Allah (swt) and His Messenger (saw) irrespective of whose in power; in other words, it is more of a responsibility than a privilege.

The variant forms of nationalism aside from the religious variant, are in stark contradictions with what our deen instructs us. We are enjoined not to divide ourselves into groups and seperate from the jamaah. We are enjoined to elect one ruler. (Ibn Khaldun held the position that there could be more than one Khalifah based on geographical distance or necessity). A nation-state system, at least from a cursory glance, seems to go against very definitive textual sources of legislation in Islam

Allahu alim.

ManOfFewWords

abdulhaq ... i think your post is very informative, however, i feel that you totally misunderstood my posts (numbers 5 and 6). Also nationalism has less to do with what is real than with an imagined or manufactured identity. Like being American. Its usually a political identity most often based on language but not always.

ManOfFewWords

i dont know why nationalism is being refuted when i never promoted it. In fact i am virulently opposed to nationalism and i believe it to be a type of ignorance exploited and encouraged by oppressive state apparatus.