Pan-Islamism & The Interwar Period

Islam, international politics & mass mobilization: an analysis over the interwar period.
{Department of International Relations, London School of Economics & Political Science}

The interwar era, namely the period between 1919 and 1938, showed impressive and large-scale forms of Islamic mass mobilization, along with the strengthening and consolidation of Islamic movements and congresses. These unprecedented kinds of mass mobilization manifestations were prompted “by broader developments in world politics and in the world economy” and, as a result, today they still represent an “enduring infrastructure for Muslim politics”[1] for millions of Muslim scattered across the world.

In this essay, I would like to describe and to analyze rise and decline of the above-mentioned forms of collective action, explaining why some of them declined promptly after a few years, for example the transnational Khilafat movement in India, while other national movements continued to grow up and to play a central role in shaping political and institutional transformations which occurred in the countries where they flourished, as in the case of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Sarekat in Indonesia.

First of all, would be useful to underscore the significance of the first political ideas connected with the Pan-Islamism ideology, which has been identified as a relevant driver for Muslim unity calls during the late 19^th century. Coined in Europe in the 1870s in order to connote anti-modernism movements and Islamic fanaticism, according to Khalid the term of Pan-Islamism was deeply characterized by a “series of local, territorially defined, Muslim nationalisms with anti-colonial agendas” and, in opposition to the cultural definition provided by Landau, Pan-Islamism is “better located in the realm of nationalism than of religion”[2], by re-affirming the author a strong political connotation to such a phenomenon. Furthermore, Pan-Islamism was defined by an external threat, as for several nationalist movements, and it involved different national groups with their own political instances, as well as a diverse spectrum of participants, from religious leaders to travellers, most of them were modernists, deeply influenced by Western political and social values but seriously motivated in changing the status quo of their societies.[3] In this last category Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1838 – 1897) was the most prominent architect of the alliance between religious and radical thinkers. His great commitment in feeding and spreading and conveying the Pan-Islam ideology across the Ottoman Empire and in the Western colonies of the Middle East and Central Asia during the late 19^th century, was a powerful and ideal model in the subsequent period of political mass mobilization.[4]

As a matter of fact, as of 1919 the disciples of al-Afghani like Rashid Rida and Ibn Sa’ud recalled for a new Muslim unity having the same political objectives of the Pan-Islam ideology but set in a more complex social backdrop (primarily the First World War, followed by the “secularization” of Islamic authority by the Ottoman Empire, unprecedented forms of Islamic schooling, recent weakening of the most powerful imperial countries like Great Britain and France because of their impressive war efforts) that, according to Sidel, provided the ideal conditions for a revival of the Muslim mobilization in at least five ways[5]:

• As suggested by the German government in the years that preceded the Great War there was the promotion of an instrumental use of Islam for warfare purposes by the Ottoman leaders in order to mobilize Muslims against British and French colonial rulers;
• Social disorders and de-mobilization in the colonial territories during the war and in its aftermath created windows of opportunity in terms of political reforms;
• End of aristocratic hegemony not only in Europe but also in the Ottoman Empire, Persia and China and consequent replacement with republican regimes;
• Foundation of Muslim organizations in Russia after the Revolutions in 1917 and 1918: Muskom and Narkomnats, headed by Sultangaliev and Stalin respectively, with the former that elaborated a “Muslim national communism” vision;
• End of the Ottoman Empire, abolition of Sultanate in 1922 and Caliphate in 1924: thrust to reorganize the Islamic identity, community and ideology.

In the next paragraphs will be analyzed the historical and political patterns that led to the foundation of three significant Islamic mass movements, namely Khilafat in India, Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Sarekat in Indonesia, and how such organizations gained popularity and later lost their own political relevance.

Khilafat between transnational aims and political misunderstandings 

The end of the Ottoman Empire was ratified with the armistice of Mundros on 30 October 1918 in which the Ottoman Sultan gave his total and unconditional surrender and allowed the military occupation of Istanbul by the Allied forces. Later, the Treaty of Sevres that came out from the peace settlements in Paris in 1920 reduced the Empire to Turkey, even if its full implementation was avoided by the growing national resistance led by Mustafa Kemal, who started his campaign for Turkish independence on 19 May 1919 in the city of Samsun in the North of Anatolia.[6]

On the background of these events, Indian Pan-Islamic movements recorded an increase in popularity and interest in the years following the end of the Great War, due to a number of factors: a better off and more educated India’s Muslim middle class; an unprecedented public role of Ulemas who got involved in the Pan-Islamic politics and in recruiting support; a growing awareness among Muslims in India that an international and strong political and religious centre abroad could guarantee their own life as a minority group.[7] Such cultural and political considerations, along with the contemporary historical events in the former Ottoman Empire, were on the basis of the foundation of the Khilafat Movement by December 1918, whose political programme envisaged the salvation of the Ottoman integrity and sovereignty. In fact, as effectively summarized by Alavi, the demand of the Indian Khilafatists for a preserved and protected Caliphate was based on three main claims: comparison of the Ottoman Caliph with the “Universal Caliph” which deserved allegiance from all Muslims; ongoing religious war between Christianity and Islam; expulsion of Great Britain from the Middle East because it was deemed to threat the Caliphate and its colonies.[8]

The Khilafat movement fulfilled a twofold political activity. First of all, its Central Committee fostered a continuous propaganda by the publishing of two periodicals, in English and Urdu, and it was also busy in organizing mass meetings in order to collect funds as much as possible. Secondly, the Movement accomplished to an external activity, creating offices and dispatching delegations abroad to promote its political aims. Actually, this second operation was less successful than the internal one and revealed to Indian Muslims a shocking and meaningless lack of interest by European governments and their public opinions toward their claims.[9]  However, while the secular republicanism emerged as an alternative political way for the national renaissance of Turkey, the Khilafat movement was about to be stricken by a more destabilizing shock, resulted in the separation of the sultanate and caliphate in November 1922, given that this division meant the permanent separation between spiritual and temporal powers, embodied in the Sultan and the Caliph respectively. Suddenly, one of the most important claim of the movement was nullified by the supposed protector of spiritual Islam, Mustafa Kemal. The process of secularization in Turkey was completed with the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924, which provoked a sense of confusion and furore in the Khilafatists. According to Ozcan, Kemal, that was previously and publicly urged by the Indian Muslims to restore the Sultanate, approved this measure for five political reasons: refusal to share its authority with a Caliph; the Caliph could become the principal political antagonist of Kemal because of the resistance showed by pro-Caliph people to his secular policies; clear incompatibility between secular reforms and a powerful religious authority; avoiding to be identified as a Pan-Islamist supporter by the Christian Europe; diplomatic measure that hopefully would influence the British about the question of Mosul.[10]

In the wake of secularization, the Khilafat Movement lost its political force and failed in preserving the Caliphate. Reasons for explaining the unsuccessful attempt to revive a more organized and ambitious Pan-Islamism were not solely linked to external factors, such as the rise of Mustafa Kemal but they were also intertwined with internal misperceptions and more crucial misunderstandings that ratified its own death: “In accusing Britain of being hostile to the Caliph, the Khilafatists were fighting an imaginary enemy. The real threat came from the Turkish Republican Nationalism … The Khilafatists proved to be quite incapable of perceiving the nature and significance of that historic conflict between the monarchical rule of the Caliph and the democratic aspirations of the Republican Nationalists. Paradoxically they glorified the arc-adversary of the Caliphate, Mustafa Kemal, while at the same time they also glorified their venerated Caliph.”[11]

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Sarekat in Indonesia

The Indian Khilafat didn’t represent the only example of Islamic mass-movement during the interwar period, although it was certainly the most popular and modern transnational expression of the Pan-Islamic ideology in those years. As a matter of fact, even if it tried to merge a universalist cause with the Indian Muslims’ nationalist interest in preserving their minority identity in the country, the Khilafat was also deeply concerned with Islamic affairs in Iran, Iraq, Libya and Marocco.[12] This sensitiveness toward the whole Islamic world wasn’t shared in the same way by other Islamic organizations. Nonetheless, historically speaking two more Islamic mass-movements emerged soon after the defeat of the Central Powers: Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Sarekat in Indonesia.

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, has been one of the most influential Islamic movements in the history of modern Egypt, bringing about a radical transformation in that society. The relationship between nationalist instances, the need for a deep social change and Islam was originally re-elaborated by al-Banna. He initially rejected the Western model of political participation and liberal nationalism in order to provide political Islam with a new and independent narration, through the ambitious effort to make it an “all-encompassing religion”.[13] As Lia underlines, “writing [of Hasan al-Banna] marked a watershed in modern Islamic discourse by making the successful transition of Islam into an ideology, thus providing an ideological map of ‘what is’ in society and a ‘report’ of how it is working”.[14] For this reason, Islam was conceived more as an ideological framework than just a parochial religion, as an useful interpretative paradigm for changing Egypt society and a guide in the formulation of reform programmes.[15] However, even the Muslim Brotherhood movement was not an isolated outgrowth  of Islam politics, but another example of the process of gradual secularization of Islam that in this case meant its own politicization. In fact, its ideology was greatly affected by the need for social justice, political, social and economic reforms and, last but not least, it reflected the interests of the lower and well-educated classes. Accordingly, this secular and Western-rooted feature, along with the conceptual shift of Islam  “from the sentimental enthusiasm of purely inert admirers… into an operative force actively [and instrumentally] actively at work on modern problems”[16], assigned to the Muslim Brotherhood a pillar role in democratizing the Egyptian society in the late 1930s. The military coup of 1952 by Nassir confirms such a view: after having overthrown the monarchy and multiparty system, Nassir banned the Muslim Brotherhood that, as an autonomous movement, was identified as a danger for his regime.[17] This Islamic mass-movement, reached an estimated total membership of 500.000 after the Second World War but most importantly the al-Banna’s “political reinterpretation” of Islam remained the most influential in the 20^th century, capable to merge the idea of Islam as an all-inclusive societal system with its later politicization in 1938 which became the core of the Society’s ideology.[18]

The Sarekat Islam was founded in Indonesia on 11 November 1911 basically for facing domestic and commercial competition issues involving China.  In its peak period, namely between 1916 and 1921, Sarekat summoned a number of ‘national’ congresses in the attempt to spread the idea of nationalism and the struggle for independence against the Dutch rule. In the mind of its founding fathers, Islam as a religious belief played a pedagogical role as the “preacher of democratic ideas” and the “religion for the spiritual education of the people”. Sarekat had a liberal approach to religious and political matters: promotion of civil rights, separation between state and religious matters, rejection of racial domination, freedoms and equal rights of all citizens, need for social and educational reforms.[19] On the one hand, this political programme, largely influenced by  European socialist ideas, gained popular support even outside the Islam community and it was on the basis of several strikes and boycotts.[20]  On the other hand, penetration of Communist ideas represented a destabilizing element within a party which had adopted Islam as its main basis for unity. This change brought about a split of the Sarekat Islam in 1921 in two smaller groups, the pro-Communist and the anti-Communist.[21]

As a result, the Islamic branch adopted in the same year the so-called ‘Basic Principles of the Sarekat Islam’, which emphasized Islam as the unique source and inspiration for its policies and activities, without losing neither the major objective of national independence nor its original egalitarian vocation: “Complete national independence [was] a condition for the full realization of Islamic ideals, assuming that power is in the hands of the Muslims”. In addition, the party “aimed at the creation of a democratic government … in an Islamic state”, and it recognized and guaranteed “individual initiative in the economic field” and “the equality of (Muslim) men and women and the equality of husband and wife”[22] In comparison with other Islamic political parties working in those years, the above-mentioned principles and the role of the Quran as its main conceptual framework, make the Sarekat party one of the most astounding example of the large diversity of Islamic mass-movements existing in the interwar period, which were all deeply affected by the spread of new ideologies (such as Socialism and Communism) and by the resilience of older and unresolved colonial issues.

Conclusion

The Pan-Islamic mass-movements so far analyzed show a great deal of different features while threads which connect them together are the call to Islam as a universal religion and the need for national independences. Interwar years were undoubtedly characterized by social tensions, turmoil, revolutions and political unrests all over the world but, according to the religious and peculiar political issues, such revolts took different shapes. The recovery of the Pan-Islam ideology by mass-movements’ leaders was a political choice rather than a religious one, promoted in order to claim their instances against colonial rulers more effectively. In addition, calling for an Islamic unity helped these leaders to obtain a massive and unprecedented popular support. Finally, the declining trajectory of such movements could be explained looking at basic misunderstandings, as for the Khilafat movement, or just by political repressions, as in the cases of Muslim Brotherhood and Serakat: all the movements taken into account weren’t able to pursue their original political aims because they lacked real and effective political power to impose their willingness in the contest in which they operated.

Conversely, each of them was able to promote unprecedented political awareness and participation among their supporters and to recognize and using Islam as a powerful driver in international politics: all elements that would be extremely useful to the next generations of Islamic leaders.

Citations & Bibliography

Tagged Attaturk, Egypt, Hasan al-Banna, Ibn Saud, Indonesia, international politics, interwar period, Islam, Khilafat, mass mobilization, muslim, Muslim Brotherhood, Mustafa Kemal, Ottoman Empire, pan-Islamism, Rashid Rida, Sarekat