Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: October 6, 2025
Despite the Pan-Islamic sentiment evoked by the European aggressions of 1911-12, nationalist feeling was continually aroused by the Ottomanizing measures of the Young-Turk government, and the independence agitation was presently in full swing once more. In 1913 an Arabian nationalist congress convened in Paris and revolutionary propaganda was inaugurated on an increased scale.
I was very curious to ascertain if they had been worked up with pan-Islamic propaganda or carried any of it on them, for there was not even a Red Crescent Koran on any of the Arabic-speaking prisoners. A search of their effects revealed a remarkable phase of propaganda.
Secure in his autocratic power, Abdul Hamid now began to evolve his own peculiar policy, which, from the first, had a distinctly Pan-Islamic trend . Unlike his immediate predecessors, Abdul Hamid determined to use his position as caliph for far-reaching political ends.
It is in reality a perennial Pan-Islamic congress, where all the interests of the faith are discussed by delegates from every part of the Mohammedan world, and where plans are elaborated for Islam's defence and propagation. As for the caliphate, it has played a great historic rôle, especially in its early days, and we have already studied its varying fortunes.
This was obviously an adaptation of Western nationalism to the traditional Arab ideal of a theocratic democracy already realized in the Meccan caliphate and the Wahabi government of the Nejd. This second stirring of Arab nationalism was likewise of short duration. Turkey was now ruled by Sultan Abdul Hamid, and Abdul Hamid's Pan-Islamic policy looked toward good relations with his Arab subjects.
The details of this economic transformation will be discussed in the chapter devoted to economic change. What we are here concerned with is its Pan-Islamic aspect. And that aspect is very strong. Nowhere does Islam's innate solidarity come out better than in the economic field.
As for the professional Pan-Islamic propagandists, more particularly those of the religious fraternities, they swarm everywhere, rousing the fanaticism of the people: "Travelling under a thousand disguises as merchants, preachers, students, doctors, workmen, beggars, fakirs, mountebanks, pretended fools or rhapsodists, these emissaries are everywhere well received by the Faithful and are efficaciously protected against the suspicious investigations of the European colonial authorities."
Those words are a prophetic forecast of what has since occurred in the Moslem world. Because recent events are perhaps even more involved with the nationalistic aspirations of the Moslem peoples than they are with the strictly Pan-Islamic movement, I propose to defer their detailed discussion till the chapter on Nationalism.
Pan-Islamic nationalism may thus, in the future, become a major factor which will have to be seriously reckoned with. So ends our survey of nationalist movements in the Moslem world. Given such a tangled complex of aspirations, enormously stimulated by Armageddon, it was only natural that the close of the Great War should have left the Orient a veritable welter of unrest.
Speaking of Sultan Abd el Hamid's Pan-islamic schemes, which he asserts have not as yet found much favour in India, he continues, "I may, however, add that by far the most formidable means which can be adopted for propagating such ideas, or for rousing a desire for Islamic union, would be the distribution of pamphlets to the pilgrims at Mecca.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking