Chapter 16, section ii. ends with Sire Edward Grey supposing that the Muslims would have to be compensated for the loss of the Ottoman Empire by the creation of a new Muslim state "elsewhere", presumably in Arabia. Grey's thinking seems to have followed more or less Zionist lines -- that the religious community of Muslims would feel endangered, embittered or disenfranchised without some political body to serve as protection and support.
I'm not sure how well his reasoning stands up, though. The Muslim and Jewish situations were not, at the time analagous. The Jews had been more or less nationless since before the Roman Empire. Zionist was an attempt to build a homeland for a population that had been disenfranchised for the better part of their recent history. Muslims, on the other hand, were watching their political body -- in as much as it
was a Muslim trust -- be dismantled by foreign powers. The creation of an artificial state would like have seemed like cold comfort. More likely, I think they'd have felt hedged in by the European powers, interned in a part of the world that the Europeans thought practically useless, conceded just enough homeland to pacify their religious confederates abroad.
And I wonder to what degree, and in what shape, some inkling of that sentiment is at play throughout the last 90 years of Middle Eastern history. Any thoughts?
Tweet This Topic
