Conspiracy Theories - Turkish Experiment with Westernisation

"Cultural slavery is far more harmful than mere political domination. Yet in practice, they are inseparable." The great Muslim historian, Ibne Khaldun, recognized this fact nearly six centuries ago in his monumental work, Muqaddimah.

More than a hundred years ago, the British government appointed Dr. William Hunter to propose specific measures that would enable Muslims in the Indian subcontinent to be ruled more efficiently. Hunter recommended that the Muslim youth be "western educated." Western education would make Muslims more tolerant of the British rule, like the Hindus who had already succumbed to such a British gambit. The recommendation for implanting the British educational policy was carried out so meticulously that there hardly exists today a single school where a balanced and adequate knowledge of religion is imparted in relation to demands of our modern time.

A similar experiment was undertaken in Egypt, with the help of Lord Cromer. He was the mastermind behind British imperialism in the Arab world. (It is worth pointing out here that Cromer was a Freemason and belonged to the same Masonic Lodge to which Sheikh Muhammad Abduh of Egypt belonged to.) Cromer ruled over Egypt for nearly two decades (1887-1907) as a Governor. As mentioned in his voluminous work, "Modern Egypt" (1908), Cromer's policy of cultural imperialism can be summed up as: "The new generation of Egyptians has to be persuaded or forced into imbibing the true spirit of western civilization. "

So, what is civilization? Bertrand Russell once said that civilization was born out of the pursuit of luxury. So, we have monuments like the Taj Mahal in India and the Versailles Palace in France as expressions of those civilizations. According to Adam Smith, civilization, and in particular western civilization, was born out of the pursuit of profit. Karl Marx saw civilization and the rally of history as born out of the pursuit of surplus goods. According to Professor Ali Mazrui, probably the best political thinker of our time on Africa, civilization was born out of a creative synthesis � between ethics and knowledge, between religion and science, between one culture and another.

Civilization is about application of a worldview, a particular vision of reality to a human collectivity. As has been argued by Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a closer look at the various civilizations of our world show that in every case a civilization was founded by religion. There lies the quandary about �imbibing the true spirit of western civilization.� We are thus not surprised to understand where the objections of ulama came from. They downright rejected and protested the colonial education system. But then there were others who adopted it.

We saw the result of colonial education policy. It created a western educated elite society amongst the natives - many essentially becoming puppets and Quislings for their colonial masters. So invasive was its influence in British India that many western educated Hindus abandoned Hinduism and became Christians. Similarly, many western educated Muslims were brainwashed to imitating the western values. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [1] They wanted to become a European from the head to the toes. In this context, it is worth mentioning what Jean Paul Satre, a French scholar, had to say on the effect of western education on the African youths, who were educated in Europe. He said that it was so gratifying to see that those Africans trained in Europe would mould the African society in a European way once when they had returned home. So the Europeans did not have to politically control them. They would, instead, be controlled by western values, which in turn would serve the same purpose (probably, more effectively).

Turkey provides us with a unique example for understanding the impact of the experimentation with westernization in Muslim countries. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [2] (As you will notice, the history of westernization in Turkey, lamentably, is also a history of Freemasonry in Turkey.)

The history of westernization in Turkey portrays the features characteristic of this movement everywhere else, only perhaps more clearly. In the last half of the 18th century, Ottoman Turks were the first Muslim nation to adopt European inventions, such as Military techniques and printing, a process followed, in the course of the 19th century by the reforms of the Ottoman administrative and legal system on western patterns. The Ulama and the Janissaries, guards of the old order, were against such a move.

During this period, we find that the Europeans were bemused with the ideals of the French Revolution of 1789, effectively guided by the Jacobins/Free Masons. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [3] Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798 brought the Master Mason to the heart of the Muslim world, seeding the plant of Freemasonry. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [4] Soon the Freemasonic/Jacobin ideals stealthily penetrated the Turkish elite society. Thanks to the so-called reforms of Mohammad Ali Pasha Western �experts" and "ideas" started infiltrating some of the Arab-speaking Muslim lands. The ensuing westernization and modernization of Muslim society gradually undermined and eroded its traditional institutions and civilization, causing serious social tensions and spiritual crises.

In the summer of 1807, the Janissaries assassinated Sultan Selim in Turkey. In 1826, Sultan Mahmud instituted a series of westernizing reforms. The first reforms were connected with the modernization of the armed forces. The Janissaries, a major symbol of the old order, were massacred; help was sought from the English, French and German advisors to reorganize the Turkish Army on purely European lines, a practice that has now been picked up by most Arab governments. In 1827, i.e., a year later, European type schools were opened. The young Turkish students were sent to France for advanced education so that those "French-fried intellectuals" would accelerate the rate of westernization in the coming decades. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [5] Finally, western dress was made compulsory for official purposes. All these reforms were made roughly a hundred years before Kemal Ataturk came into the scene.

Secular state laws were promulgated. Thus, within a generation, the complacent attitude of superiority of the Turkish Muslims over others was to transform into a blind, uncritical adoration of all things European. Westernization began to be worshipped as the supreme end in itself. In 1831, Sultan Mahmud founded the Imperial Music School to promote European music, and clothed Turkish soldiers for the first time in western-style uniforms. To advertise this dramatic event, Sultan Mahmud had his portrait painted by a European artist before and after the massacre of the Janissaries. The first painting shows the Sultan in traditional robe on a horseback with a turban and beard. The second painting shows him proudly clad in tight-fitting European dress.

Needless to say, such westernization brought no benefit whatsoever to the country. In 1839, Sultan Abdul-Mejid launched the Tanzimat (Turkish for �Reorganization�) movement -a plethora of reformist measures (to continue until 1876) � as a cure for the body politic of the semi-moribund empire. Ironically, the Tanzimat hastened the decay it was meant to arrest. Some historians opine that by introducing a foreign form of government, under foreign pressure, the Tanzimat threw the country wide open to foreign influence and interference. [Interestingly, the chief minister Mustafa Reshid Pasha, the architect of the Tanzimat, himself was a Freemason. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - ] Soon the Ottoman state came to be recognized as the �Sick Man of Europe.�

In the second half of the 19th century, when Sultan Abdul Hamid became the Caliph, the empire was already on the verge of collapse. He tried to follow an Islamic policy, http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [7] away from the tides of Turanism and Jacobin-influenced westernization that had became so assertive. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [8] But it was too late. Ottoman military was totally in the hands of the Jacobins linked to the Young Turk Movement. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [9] (The Sultan was very concerned about the growing power of the Freemasons. He failed to contain them. Some of the ministers http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [10] were Freemasons, so was Sultan Murad V. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [11] ) In December 1876, the Jacobinist leader Mithat Pasha forced the Sultan to accept constitutional monarchy. But the Sultan was quick to regain his absolute powers by dismissing the Constitution on 14 February, 1878 sending the Young Turks to exile and executing their leaders, including Mithat Pasha. The exiled Young Turks adopted the Jacobin principle of the French republic, and formed the Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti [Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)] as the indigenous wing of the movement in 1889. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - -

[All these happened at a time when most of the Ottoman territories in Europe either were seceding or were getting absorbed by competing powers. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [13] Turkey lost the Crimean War. The Empire's economy was increasingly being controlled by the great powers, especially France and England, under the terms of the capitulations. England had also gained de facto sovereignty over Egypt, though it was still technically part of the Ottoman Empire.]

Soon the CUP was able to win over the modernist intelligentsia within Turkey. However, not until 1900, when the Grand Orient virtually took over the CUP/Young Turk party (which was composed mainly of Jews, Greeks and Armenians) and its Masonic lodges in Salonica (Thessalonica - home of the Donme), did the movement assume a serious feature. There were even pressures on the Sultan to curb out the Zionist state; but he did not relinquish. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [14]

Through a successful coup in 1908/9, the Young Turks eventually took control over the empire by dethroning the Sultan. Thus began the second Constitutional (Mesrutiyet) period to last until 1922. The CUP became the ultimate power. They resembled the Jacobins from the French Revolution in their republican zeal, intolerance of opposition, and ruthlessness. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - Islam was shelved and Turkish nationalism, more and more (arrogantly) secular in nature, emerged as the dominant ideology. Zia Gokalp became the father of Turkish nationalism, later to be copied by Antoun Sa�de and Saleh Bitar for Arab nationalism. The Young Turks sought to expedite the political and social westernization of the Ottoman state by applying the Jacobin nation-state model, but on a much broader scale, and with all the force and coercive power it could muster. Their misadventure took the empire into World War I, a decision that completed its dismemberment. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - And at the end of this period, Mustafa Kemal emerged as the sole leader of Turkey.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, went much farther than anyone to westernize his nation. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - - [17] He believed that in order to modernize Turkey, the path was an uncompromising one, that being westernization, and it should be done without retaining traditional cultures. So, everything from the past had to go. His program was for Turks to become Europeans. He abolished the caliphate, and changed the country to a secular republic. He closed the Shari�a courts of law and religious colleges; replaced the remaining parts of Islamic law by western civil codes. He moved the capital city from Istanbul inland to Ankara. He instituted a unified secular education system; religious instructions were banned from schools and the Latin script superseded the Arabic script (this was done to permanently seal the separation between the Turks and their religion). He removed the Islamic ban on reproducing human images; statues and pictures were introduced. So was Western music. He ended the ban on alcohol and encouraged the growth of a wine industry. Sunday, instead of Friday, became the official day of rest. Women were given western "emancipation" and strong pressure was put upon them to discard their veils, scarves and other traditional dresses. In 1928, Islam lost its status as the established religion in the Turkish Republic and secularism was enshrined as the state policy. It was a total cultural revolution, imposed by one man�s iron will and by the force of a ruthless army. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - -

* Delivered originally as a speech at the University of California, Santa Barbara on Nov. 19, 1982.

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - In so doing, they first discarded the traditional dress (and put on western European dress). Since it was a practice among the Europeans to insult Muslims by distorting their names, the new �intellectuals� in the Muslim world quickly picked up this behavior, without probably realizing their actual nuances. [They started calling �Muslims� as "Moslems" and "Mohammedans," just as one would expect of a trained parrot that likes to imitate his master's voice.] To cite an example, let me refer to what Sir Abdur Rahim, an Indian Muslim leader during the British rule, had to say to a Hindu politician, "You the Hindus have only two enemies - the Brits and the Mohammedans. But we the Mohammedans have three enemies to confront - the Brits in our front, the Hindus on our left and the Mullas on our right."

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - In this regard, I have mainly, but not limited to, consulted two books - "Westernization of Muslims." written by Maryam Jameelah (a Jewish convert to Islam) and "Revival of Islam in Modern Turkey" (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1968) by Uriel Heyd of the Hebrew University at Jerusalem (a Jewish historian). [The latter book contained a lecture delivered on March 28, 1968 at the dedication ceremony of the Eliahu Elath chair of history of the Muslim peoples (Turkish and Persian studies).]

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/December/26o/The%20Turkish%20Experiment%20with%20Westernization%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" title="" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; - - By November 1st 1914, Britain had declared war on Turkey. On January 5, 1915 the Turkish army was defeated in the Caucasus. On August 29 Italy declared war on Turkey. On December 13 French and British troops occupied Salonica. The Arab Uprising in 1916, the Balfour declaration in 1917, and the Bolshevik revolutions in the same year, brought with them terror on a massive scale. Following the fall of Jerusalem on December 9th 1917, came the destruction of the Turkish army at Megido on September 19th 1918, culminating in the �Peace to end all peace�- conferences on January 18, 1919.