This modern Middle East, this Middle East changing under the impact of the West in the 19th century, went through very important periods of reform. Firstly, the reform of the Ottoman Empire. In the middle of the 19th century, a set of reforms that changed the Empire very significantly. A modernizing and centralizing reform that was known collectively as The Tanzimat, the reorganization of the Ottoman Empire. In this confrontation, in this meeting with the West, we have another movement in the latter part of the 19th century of Islamic reform. Islamic thinkers looking for ways and means to find a synthesis between western science and philosophy and religion. A way of adopting western style, a way of adopting western philosophy. A way of adopting western modernization, without losing the Islamic authentic identity of Middle Eastern society. We have the introduction as a result of these Movements of reform, of new ideas, nationalism being one of the most important, nationalism, that revolutionary idea which speaks about the sovereignty of man rather than the sovereignty of God. This was one of the most important, revolutionary, ideological changes that took place in the Middle East in the 19th century and moving on into the 20th. At the end of the first world war in 1918, the Ottoman Empire, that great Turkish Empire which had ruled the Arab lands for 400 years, came to an end. But one has to remember that this Ottoman Empire that ruled the Arab countries for four hundred years was not seen by the Arabs as an imperial conqueror, but as a legitimate Muslim authority. The fact that the Ottomans were Turks was not held against them. It was not seen as a Turkish occupation of Arab nations. It was a legitimate Muslim authority. Turkish Muslims ruling over Arab Muslims. And what was important was not the Turkishness or the Arabness of the peoples but their Islamic religious belief. And the legitimacy of the Ottoman Empire was therefore never called into question, until a very, very late phase of our story. The end of the 19th and the early 20th century, and then only partially, and not by all the Arabs as one. But it was called into question, this Turkish rule with the emergence of Arab nationalism. But with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of new states on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, these new states and the state structure of the region served Western imperial interests, those of France and Britain above all else. And therefore, even though these states were created when Arab nationalism was already a factor in the Middle East, the states were created without much respect for the ideas of Arab nationalism which spoke of the unification of the Arab speaking peoples. These states divided the Arabs into these imperial creations. Therefore, the Arab state order, as created after the first World War, was an Arab state order, which did not enjoy much legitimacy in the eyes of the Arab peoples themselves. Arab nationalism fought against this imperial state creation. But Arab nationalism, even though it was a very popular movement through much of the 20th century. And it was a very popular movement because Arab nationalism was this brilliant, traditional compromise between pure secularist national ideas and Islamic identity. Arabism always contained an important Islamic, religious component. And by containing this Islamic component, Arab Nationalism was this easier transition. From Islamic identity, to secular Arab nationalism. But as popular as Arab nationalism was, and it was very popular in the Arab world for much of the 20th century. Arab nationalism was a dismal failure in political practice. Most notably, Arab nationalism was a dismal failure in the conflict with Israel. The conflict with Israel, in which Israel, smaller, and less populous than the Arab countries, defeats the Arabs twice. In 1948, and then perhaps even more humiliatingly in 1967. These wars with Israel, and the defeat of the Arabs by Israel in these wars, serve as a kind of monument to Arab failure to effectively meet the Western challenge. And as this kind of monument to Arab failure, Israel finds it extremely difficult to be accepted by the Arab world around it. In the aftermath of the 1967 war, politics in the Middle East were governed by two dominant trends, even though these two trends were contradictory to each other. The one, was the final acquiescence of the Arab states, in the colonial state order. Finally the Arab states, realizing the failure of Arab nationalism, came to terms with the Arab state structure. It was now more legitimate to speak about the Egyptian state and the Egyptian state's [FOREIGN] as the French call it, state interest. As did other Arab states like Jordan, Syria, and the Palestinians, too. Less was said about Arab nationalism, and more was said about state interest. But challenging this acquiescence in the colonial state order and the political status quo was the radical Islamic revival, which filled the vacuum that had been left by Arab nationalism. And on the one hand we see the radical Islamic revival and on the other hand the territorial state and the existing regimes in conflict with each other, in many of the Arab states. From the far west, North Africa all the way to the Gulf. This radical Islamic revival essentially is looking at the modernization process over the last 150 or 200 years in an effort to promote an alternative route to modernity. It is mistaken to see the Islamic revival as opposed to modernity, it is not opposed to modernity. But it is an Islamic effort to find a pathway to modernity, within the framework of an Islamic cultural and legal framework.
