Imperialism and Colonialism

Most imperialism leads to colonialism, but there are different types of imperialism and colonialism. In any case, there is an economic element to colonialism - colonies usually produce something of value to the motherland. Some imperialism is economically driven, other imperialism is fueled simply by the desire to dominate.

Examples may make this clearer: around 750 B.C., Greece was engaged in large-scale colonization efforts, planting daughter states in Italy and Spain, on islands around the Mediterranean, on the western coast of Ionia, and on the shores of the Black Sea. Yet historian often fail to use the word 'imperialism' to describe this era, in part because Greece gave its daughter states great freedom, in part because the efforts were primarily economic and not motivated by a lust for hegemony, and in part because the daughter states were not seen as socially inferior. In fact, at certain times, they seemed culturally superior - consider the birth of philosophy in Miletus.

By contrast, the Islamic empire of the Ottomans colonized in a more dominating manner. Muslim armies expanded Ottoman borders into the Balkans, not for economic advantage, but for sheer exercise of power. William Duiker writes:

Beginning in the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks had expanded from their base in the Anatolian Peninsula into the Balkans, southern Russia, and along the northern coast of Africa. Soon they controlled the entire eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea.

While there were, in fact, economic gains to be had by ruling some of these territories, the effort as a whole included taking regions which were not particularly profitable - and often taking and holding them at a significant price. The non-Islamic residents of southeastern Europe were seen, and treated, as something inferior.

It is worth noting that various regions under the Muslim control of the Ottomans sought their freedom and independence - sometimes successfully, sometimes not, always at a bloody cost, like the Greece independence war of 1830 - while the Greek colonies around 750 B.C. did not work hard to sever their ties with the motherland: a very different type of imperialism indeed.

Hillary Clinton Criticizes Islamic Treatment of Women

In a series of remarks, Secretary of State Clinton has directed international attention to the treatment of women in several different Islamic countries. Despite the great hopes directed toward the 'Arab Spring' movement, it has become clear that the new regimes, which are replacing old dictators, may in some cases be no better, and even possibly worse, in their treatment of women. The organization known as 'The Muslim Brotherhood' - which has had direct influence on Egyptian policy, and indirect influence also, through its political arm known as 'The Freedom and Justice Party' - has stated that it "rejects the candidacy of women or Copts for Egypt's presidency" and other elected offices. But the Muslim Brotherhood is not content with merely removing women's opportunities for political involvement; it is intent on removing many civil rights. Secretary Clinton noted that

recent events in Egypt have been particularly shocking. Women are being beaten and humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago. And this is part of a deeply troubling pattern. Egyptian women have been largely shut out of decision-making in the transition by both the military authorities and the major political parties. At the same time, they have been specifically targeted both by security forces and by extremists.

Clinton mentioned specific examples of women being harassed, beaten, and assaulted. She called upon the nations of the world to put pressure on Egypt and other Islamic states to give women full involvement in the political process:

Marchers celebrating International Women’s Day were harassed and abused. Women protesters have been rounded up and subjected to horrific abuse. Journalists have been sexually assaulted. And now, women are being attacked, stripped, and beaten in the streets. This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform, and is not worthy of a great people. As some Egyptian politicians and commentators have themselves noted, a new democracy cannot be built on the persecution of women, nor can any stable society. Whether it’s ending conflict, managing a transition, or rebuilding a country, the world cannot afford to continue ignoring half the population.

Clinton notes that even inside Egypt, that groups like the Copts are voicing opposition to this poor treatment of women. There is perhaps a chance for building a coalition - the Copts in Egypt and the concerned nations of Western Civilization - to support women's rights in Egypt. If traction can be developed on this issue there, then it, like the Arab Spring, might spread to other Islamic nations. Specifically commenting on the enforcement of certain aspects of Islamic law, Clinton said that

Beating women is not cultural, it's criminal and it needs to be addressed and treated as such.

Clinton was speaking partly in regard to what international newspapers are now calling "the girl in the blue bra," an Egyptian woman who was brutally beaten and dragged through the streets by Muslim men. The U.S. government sends billions of dollars to Egypt every year; Clinton has proposed that Egypt must improve its treatment of women and Copts in order to receive further funding.

Rome: Good or Bad?

Although we would like to know if Romans are good guys or bad guys, the question is sadly too simplistic. The answer is 'yes' - they are both. The Romans who gleefully tortured, imprisoned, and murdered hundreds of thousands of Christians are the same Romans who developed participatory government well beyond anything the Greeks had instituted. The Romans who allowed insanely egotistical emperors to corrupt government beyond recognition were the same Romans who first clearly expressed the definitive notions of justice as Natural Law. They are the good guys, and they are the bad guys.

Beyond this, there are a number of distinctions to be made: there is the Roman Monarchy, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire. The empire is further divided into a western half and an eastern half. A different type of distinction can be made between the government and society of Rome proper, contrasted with the outlying territories, provinces, and colonies. A third set of distinctions would revolve around social, economic, and political classes. Generalization about Romans as 'good guys' or 'bad guys' are in danger of being oversimplified and hence wrong. Professor Anthony Esolen explains:

In some ways ancient Rome, especially during the centuries of the Republic, was as politically incorrect a place as you can imagine. Our feminists, who consistently uphold the demands of a minority of well-heeled women against the common good, the family, and every freedom recognized our Bill of Rights, would hate the patriarchy of ancient Rome, and not the least because that patriarchy worked. Nowadays, gripped in our great national passion of envy, we demand all sorts of equality: economic, social, and political. We'll destroy the family to attain this equality, and never mind the prisons that result. The Romans instead first sought the good of the family and the city. For the most part, they found that good not in leveling distinctions but in revering them.

To be sure, Professor Esolen's presentation is a bit fiery, but let's focus on Rome instead of his passing comments about modern American society. On the one hand, Esolen makes a good point, namely that the social and governmental structures of the Republic worked: they endured nearly five hundred years, and managed to do so with a reasonable facsimile of justice. Rather than naively chasing after the idealistic notion of pure justice and total freedom, the Romans pragmatically realized that a society which is 'mostly' just is capable of surviving much longer than a utopian attempt to attain perfect equality. Sometimes is it necessary to take a chunk out of the individual's liberty in order to keep society as a whole, or social structures like the family, intact. Keeping society intact, in turn, is what prevents government from having an excuse to overpower society and thus taking a much bigger chunk out of individual liberty.

On the other hand, Professor Esolen's view of the Republican Romans might be just a bit too rosy. Were they so altruistic that they thought first of family and city? Maybe some were. Others were simply calculating their own best interests, and realized that the survival of family and city were the necessary preconditions for a chance at a reasonable amount of personal freedom.

What Brings a Nation Down?

There are many causes for the declines of empires, both ancient and modern. Some of these causes can be grouped together under the heading of "social matters" - how interpersonal relationships effect the economic, political, and military well-being of a nation.

It is not immediately obvious how people's private lives affect the prosperity and diplomatic existence of a nation. Yet the subtle and indirect influence of such social factors can strengthen a country - or bring it down.

Four central factors have weakened various societies from Rome to China: adultery, low birth rates, divorce, and illegitimacy. These four can devastate an otherwise strong land.

Adultery is - simply put - cheating: when married people are not faithful to each other. Low birth rates damage economies, robbing them of future workers, taxpayers, consumers, and leaving the elderly without adequate support. Divorce creates poverty, complicates inheritance and property law, leaves children with less sustenance, and creates an atmosphere of instability in general. Illegitimacy also complicates inheritance and property laws, and leaves young people with less support during their growing-up years.

Collectively, these four factors destabilize society, and leave people less trustful: a recipe for disaster.

The Roots of Their Rage

Author Joel Rosenberg tells us that the Middle East is the scene of a struggle between moderate Muslims and radical Muslims - between peaceful people who called themselves Muslims and violent warmongers who want to follow every word of the Qur'an - and we see that those aggressive radicals have taken political control of many Islamic nations, and are trying to gain control of the others.

Looking at this situation, two questions arise: first, why are the moderates nearly invisible, to the extent that many foreigners doubt that they even exist in these nations? Second, why are the orthodox Muslims so filled with anger?

The answer, at its core, lies in the deep-seated feeling of shame, humiliation, failure, and impotence in the modern world that many Muslims feel today.

Historically, Islamic nations were once very powerful, and generated respect, awe, and fear in other cultures. It is painful for modern residents of these Middle Eastern countries to realize how far they have fallen - from the greatness of their past to the current condition. When one considers the progress made in recent decades - the writing of new software, the filing of patents, biochemical discoveries - little of it has happened in these nations. They are still aware of their glorious past, when Islamic armies

penetrated deep into Africa in the south and far into Russia in the north. It was Muslims who controlled the great trading routes of gold and silver and silk and slaves from Asia to Europe.

Ironically, Islam's greatness would be the cause of its humiliation: its ability to control these geopolitical variables would encourage other cultures to find ways to avoid trade in, around, or through regions under Muslim control. What do these nations say about themselves?

Today, Islamic journalists, academics, and politicians themselves say that the Muslim world is best known for tyranny, abject poverty of all but the elite, rampant corruption, violence, and terrorism. Despite the discovery of oil and fantastic wealth in Islamic territories, despite the rise of nationalism and the creation of nation-states after the departure of colonial Britain and France from the Middle East and North Africa, despite the widespread introduction of elementary and secondary schools and at least a basic education for hundreds of millions of children, the Islamic world at the dawn of the twenty-first century is mired in hopelessness and despair. The Muslim powers are not winning wars. The Muslim peoples are not making medical breakthroughs. They are not creating dramatic new technologies. Indeed, many Muslims note that their governments are barely able to feed their people or to provide them with enough meaningful jobs.

How did these formerly great societies fall so far? And can they be rejuvenated? The engineering and mathematical creativity which brought Arab, Persian, Egyptian, Ethiopian, and Nubian cultures to world prominence began to fade after those societies were oppressed by the invasions of Islamic armies. The intellectual curiosity which fueled philosophy and algebra could not keep its momentum after these cultures were forced to shed their native identities and conform to Islamic doctrine. The "brain drain" ensued, as the educated classes lost the freedom to explore new academic disciplines, and lost their willingness to do so. Can these societies re-invent themselves, and return to their former stations of greatness in science, technology, and academia? We do not now know the answer to this question. Can they shake off the rigid oppression of Islam? Can Persia - now called Iran - return to the glory it had before armies of Muslims invaded it and snuffed out its native culture? Can Egypt recapture the intellectual status it had prior to being invaded by Islamic armies who obliterated its tradition of ingenuity? We must watch and wait to learn the answers to these questions.

It was actually the early successes of the Muslims that planted the seeds of their own decline. When Islam was powerful and dominated the epicenter of the earth, travel through Muslim territories was treacherous and thus enormously costly for European traders. So the Europeans became determined to find a way to circumvent the Islamic world altogether. Hoping to find a way around the Horn of Africa and on to India and East Asia, they began exploring sea routes that could take them south from England, France, Spain, and Portugal along the African coastlines.

Such long and arduous naval voyages required more of the Europeans - more education, more technology, more risk-taking. They required building better ships, creating more accurate maps, and developing navigational skills. They required crafting more precise weather instruments and developing a deeper understanding of meteorology. To protect their men and ships from pirates, bandits, and competing colonialists, the Europeans had to develop better weapons and war-fighting techniques and technologies as well.

Islam's greatness and control inspired other cultures to become clever, in order to avoid falling under that control - by analogy, in the same way that Napoleon's greatness inspired the other nations to find ways to outwit him. Responding to the power of Islam, Europeans

developed an educational and technological infrastructure at home that enabled them to master the perilous seas and find their way east by sailing south. Eventually, Eastern wealth, spices, and other treasures returned to European nations via increasingly advanced shipping companies and navies.

As the Europeans kept finding safe routes to Eastern Asia, and finding ways to avoid the danger of traveling through Islamic lands,

the more knowledge and experience was gained. They learned about gunpowder and explosives from the Chinese. They discovered medicines and herbal remedies throughout the Orient. They came back with new ideas and a thirst for further insights.

Success bred success. Innovation led to more innovation, and this spirit of exploration blazed across Europe, leading men like Christopher Columbus to sail west to get to the East. In time, wooden ships gave way to steel. Wind power gave way to steam. Steam propulsion gave way to engines using fossil fuels. The Wright brothers discovered flight. Then came jumbo jets and fighter jets. Oil- and gas-powered engines gave way to nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers. Then came space travel. The Russians put a man in orbit. The American put a man on the moon.

By the dawn of the third millennium, global travel was possible in a way never before known in human history. Knowledge was increasing exponentially.

All of this dizzying progress began as a response to Islamic geo-political control. The fact that Islam had controlled trade created an incentive for the other nations to develop technologies to bypass and surpass Islam.

The Islamic world was being left behind. Yet, for the better of three hundred years, Muslims had no idea. They perceived themselves as the masters of the universe and Europeans as infidels and barbarians. They had little interest in noticing, examining, or caring about the tremendous advances in science and engineering that Western Christians were making. But eventually the invention and rapid spread of radio and television and global communications made it increasingly clear even to the uneducated masses within the Muslim world how enormous the gaps were between their world and the West.

This, then, is source of the rage and anger which Islam directs against the other nations. Is there a chance for moderate Muslims to direct this emotion into a constructive direction, and encourage their people to work to reawaken their scientific and intellectual powers, and again become a source of creativity in the world? Or will the radical Muslims cling to the notion of vengeance against other nations? Peaceful Muslims are trying to focus their nations on making progress; warlike Muslims simply cling to the directives requiring hostility toward the rest of the world. Which side will win? Whether the coming century is one of war or peace between the Middle East and the rest of world depends on this.

Defying Killers

When confronted by murderous regimes, a nation needs a gifted leader - a man or woman with wisdom and courage. America had exactly that when one of the world's most bloodthirsty governments initiated an unprovoked attack. Professor John Greene at Cazenovia College explains:

At 3:10 AM on Monday, May 12, 1975, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge government fired upon the American merchant ship Mayaguez, then sailing in the Gulf of Siam; Cambodian sailors boarded the ship and took its crew prisoner. When captured, the Mayaguez was headed from Hong Kong to U.S. bases in Sattahip, Thailand, and was carrying a load of commercial Department of Defense cargo, including spare parts and supplies but not arms. Nevertheless, Cambodia defended the action, claiming that the Mayaguez had strayed outside international waters and had, in fact, trespassed on Cambodian territory. At the time of her capture, the Mayaguez was about seven miles from Poulo Wai, an island claimed both by South Vietnam and Cambodia; however, as a matter of policy, the United States recognized an international limit of only three miles.

With the lives of American sailors hanging in the balance, President Gerald Ford knew that he must be tough with the Cambodian government, which had demonstrated its ruthlessness by murdering millions of its own citizens. They would not hesitate to kill a handful of foreigners. Ford ordered the Marines to land on a Cambodian island, a few miles off the coast, and ordered the Air Force to immediately start bombing operations over Cambodia. Within a few hours, the Cambodians surrendered the American boat and its crew. President Ford both rescued the lives of the sailors and prevented any further such attacks by demonstrating forcefully his commitment to a simple, old, and powerful principle: the first task of a government is to protect the lives of its citizens. With decisive and forceful action, President Ford showed that the United States would not tolerate the abuse and disrespect of the genocidal thugs who had illegitimately taken control of Cambodia's government.

Some Are, Some Are Not

In the study of history, ancient or modern, we must be careful to avoid oversimplifications. In the modern mind, there is a linkage between the words 'Arab' and 'Muslim' - but this glosses over complexities.

For example, in Michigan, more than half of the state's Arabs are not Muslims, and more than half of the state's Muslims are not Arabs. This statistic requires some digesting.

This principle applies outside of Michigan, around the world. Millions of Arabs in the Middle East are, in fact, not Muslims. This can be understood by reviewing a definition: the word 'Arab' refers not only to people in Saudi Arabia, but to large groups living in areas like Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and other countries. Note, however, that most people in Iran are not Arabs; they are Persians.

Prior to the year 640 A.D., most Arabs were Christians, some were Jews, a few belonged to other religions. It may seem shocking from a modern perspective, but if you had traveled through Iraq, Iran, Egypt, or Syria in the year 600 A.D., you would have seen dozens of churches and no mosques. Higher education had been introduced, and seminaries in these countries trained scholars.

All of that changed suddenly when Islamic armies roared through the region in the late 600's and early 700's A.D., destroying the physical structures of other religions - churches and synagogues - and outlawing expressions of any faith outside of Islam. Small communities of Jews and Christians clung to their faith, under harsh oppression, in hidden ways.

In the Middle East today, after a thousand years of underground existence, these communities still make their presence felt, even when public expression of their belief is illegal. But rather than merely continuing to exist, these communities are now attracting other Arabs. Joel Rosenberg, from Syracuse University, explains:

For many Muslims, despair and despondency at what they see as the utter failure of Islamic governments and societies to improve their lives and give them peace, security, and a sense of purpose and meaning in life are causing them to leave Islam.

Many of these Arabs, perhaps without realizing it, are returning to their roots, to the heritage from the time when Arabia, Persia, and Babylonia (Iraq) were home to millions of Christians - who were allowed to practice their faith freely, and who allowed others to practice their faiths. Could the Arab world be shaking off the oppression which has blanketed it for the last one thousand years, and returning to a time of individual liberty?

For other Muslims, it is not depression but rage that is driving them away from the Qur'an and the mosque. They are seeing far too many Muslim leaders and governments and preachers both advocating and acting out cruelty toward women and children and violence even against fellow Muslims.

We cannot think of the Middle East simply as 'the Muslim world': it is a complex region, home to several different religious groups; it has changed, and will continue changing, in ways we might not be able to predict.