Russian colonialism?

The discussion of this topic of course brought up many interesting points in terms of the nature of colonialism colonial discourse on cultural heritage its effect on the people’s of the area. One idea that stuck in my head from the beginning of the chapter readings however was the fact that the great game was largely considered the basic response of the colonialist aggression of the Russian Empire. Leaving aside for the moment the main issue of whether or not this really is colonialism, I would like to say for a moment that there was another major player in these proceedings, of central Asia, that of Iran. It is a common usage to say that all the problems of imperial china can be traced back to the dynasty problem. A system where Chinese scholars believe that every dynasty eventually fell to weakness after its initial superhuman status. However it is common to forget the Iran itself was before the advent of so-called Russian imperialism the main imperial power in central Asia, owning at one point the entirety of the territory as far as kyrgzistan and that Afghanistan itself. Far from being a colonial invention Afghanistan was the name of a kingdom, which separated from the Safavid dynasty fully, against the dying Safavid king Nadir Shah. Are we now going to say that Iran colonised these areas, after all no one ever attempted to colonise Iran, and the west had excellent diplomatic relations with them, does this make it a colonial power? This is of course ridiculous but it does raise some serious questions. We are constantly told these days about the evils of colonialism but what exactly does colonialism mean? What separates it from mere conquest which was been going on since time began? Is it really a distinctly modern phenomenon? Firstly it seems obvious to me that given the roots of the phenomena if Russia can indeed be considered a coloniser it dome by complete co-incidence. It is popularly acknowledged that European colonisation arose from the Portuguese age of exploration in the 14th century. This is turn can be traced back to there own reconquista which is when they took back there state from the Muslim forces of Granada. After this Portugal’s economy was so heavily weighed toward constant conquest that it could not stop lest it face crash which it eventually did experience in the 18th century. Russia’s story was much the same, after being hopelessly divided by its own hopeless inheritance system it was devastated by the Mongol invasion and in the prince of Moscow’s zeal to kick out the foreign invaders after united his lands he conquered all the area around him, following the Mongols all the way back to Siberia, with help from the enterprising nature of the Strogonova family. However the question remains, what is colonialism? Was it colonialism for Ivan the terrible to conquer Kazan for example or Kiev. It may seem as though I am rambling a bit but the fact is that there is little or no difference between this action and the so-called colonisation of central Asia and the attempted colonisation of Afghanistan. As far as I can tell the only tried and true definition of colonialism which can stand up to all the examples is that the conquering power must be significantly more powerful than the colonised power as to make any resistance or real war pointless and futile, that the country does not share a direct border with that country and that the colonising power must be conquering it purely for the purposes of the extraction of resources. None of these stand up to Russia’s example. Russia and Afghanistan were of comparable power at this time, Afghanistan certainly proving that resistance was far from futile (and is still doing so) It did share a direct border with Russia and they wanted it as a buffer state and to control central Asia’s population and prevent war. Like for example Poland. In fact now that I think about it Poland has a better claim to being a colonised power than many of the people on the modern day list.

Discussing Islam Today

Throughout the article, entitled “Clash of Ignorance” that Edward Said wrote he goes on and on about his fellow academic Samuel Huntingdon’s theories that eventually, this was written before September 11th, there would be an attack on America from a Muslim fundamentalist terror group. In my experience academics so rarely get these things right, (Said’s other example Francis Fukyama) predicted world peace in a post soviet world) that in my humble opinion we ought to be throughing the man a ticker tape parade for being in the right time zone, let alone actively predicting a terrorist attack. Said’s excuse for being mad at his colleague and by the way he seems really genuinely mad at this person, using terms like confusing himself, inelegant and clumsy is that to get this information he generalised the Islamic culture into a monolithic block. Obviously this is a real concern, but for just a moment I want to take a step back and examine exactly what is going on here.
First of all I would like to say that I no more agree with Huntington than I do with Said, it is indeed wrong, if we as academics can use that word, to generalise a culture, if for no other reason than it is usually inaccurate. And it is, of course wrong to apply attitudes or behaviours to a specific culture, because, you know, a culture is defined merely as the predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization. But hey, what does Webster’s know. And if you were really going to give this article the complete lack of benefit of doubt we could say that Islam is a religion and therefore not a homogenous culture. Fine. I would certainly not say that Mozambique is part of the same culture as mine. However I would say that during the cold war, the two sides although remaining distinct and rife with internal dissent, also did in fact start acting like opposites. Each side had witch hunts trying to root out the other side, each had revving up of hostilities and long winded speeches about there mutual zero tolerance. Now does this mean that Americans or Russians are by there nature confrontational but it does mean that once an image of a culture has taken root it is very difficult to divorce yourself of it. Another classic example is the sort of self-fulfilling prophecy attitude of the post-colonial societies; they were told over and over again that they would fail, so in many ways they did. This is just the sort of way that culture works. Culture may not exist in and of itself but it does have a definition and it doesn’t always matter who gives it to it. Therefore this mans theories may well be right and very profitable to study over the next years because whether or not Mr. Said would like to admit it if people think that they are supposed to act a certain way, most of the time they will act that way.
There are 3 major points that saved the second article about Taliban women. The first is that it has none of the feel of one academic going up against another, this is actually targeted just at society in general’s opinion that the women of Afghanistan are being victimised. This is targeted at one person, namely Mavis Leno but it is clearly a message the author wants the world to know, which relieves it of that dry quality present in Said’s piece. The second is that it feels like it is being written for a reason, to expose a point of view that has been overlooked, rather than taunting the obviously extreme views of a colleague. The third saving grace of this piece is that it could have easily taken the line that the Leno’s were uneducated stupid uncaring Hollywood residents looking for a charity to clamp unto, instead it presented a more realistic picture of people that really wanted to help but just didn’t have all there facts straight. This is a refreshing change from Said’s name-calling.

The spread of islam

Let me say before anything else that the first article Ayoub, "Spread of Islam" assigned on the spread of Islam around the world was fascinating. Not only did it provide an illuminating historical analysis, it also posed some pretty loaded questions, like what does the term missionary or militant religion mean in its relation to its prophetic base, and how far any religion can go while maintaining any semblance of purity. These are question that I will get to later.
However it is my unfortunate duty to read and write about both articles and, although the second article Ernst, "Following Muhammad" did make some good points, I found that particularly the beginning was unnecessary in its extreme view of modern academia. First of all I went to my local bookstore after reading this article (now to be fair I live on the Danforth, which is the equivalent of a hippie commune to a resident of west Virginia), and of the many views on Islam in the world today, I found not a single one which gave the opinion that it was anything but a severely misunderstood religion with a rich cultural heritage, demonized by the west for what it cannot understand: in other words, carbon copies of this article. Now I can understand that Muslims in the United States have a tough time of it, and I am not for a moment saying that at least at least some of that has not trickled into the academic community. But acting as if this piece is alone standing against the tide when it is at the head of a wave of literature that dominates academic thought makes me mad.

Now on to a far more fun discussion. Islam is, like Christianity, a missionary religion. The first article does a very good job of explaining exactly what this means. It has also a very good comparison to make to Christianity. Both were as described, religions of the Book, both believed in the one God who left very specific instructions for us to follow. At first glance we have a tried and tested formula, more a missionary and militantly expansionist religion. However, were the other examples of missionary faiths so clear cut? The answer is no. One of the oddest faiths that I have ever encountered is Indian Buddhism. It can best be described as desperately seeking oblivion. It sees the gods of the world the same way it sees everything else: as an annoying if not actively harmful presence, to be annihilated through self discovery. It is hard to think of a religion further away from Islam. It is hard to think of a religion further away than anything. And yet it had the same result, the rapid and sometimes violent conversion of the Silk Road along almost the exact same route that Islam would follow. And then there is Zoroastrianism, a religion now so xenophobic that the biggest controversy today is whether or not they should allow people to convert. This from a religion whose original mandate was to convert all from the truth to the lie.

But I digress.

Another fun topic, which can also be applied to Christianity, is the purity of the faith. As in any faith-based religion, Islam's only real claim to fame was that it had the direct words of God as they kept repeating, just in case anyone is tempted to call the Quran an inspired text. And in this case Islam seems to really give it their all. They have a direct line of the prophet as heads of state of a powerful Muslim empire which spreads from central Asia to Spain; however it doesn’t last and it fragments. What really surprises me, though, is that all the evidence indicates that the religion seemed to wait for political fragmentation before religiously fragmenting. The only real schism in the Islamic tradition today is Shia and Sunni and, although these have more in modern times to do with cultural differences, Iran being ??difficult, it seemed to really have a lot to do with the political schism of the Abbasid caliphate in the beginning. It seems inevitable that religions will change with the times, but with religions of the books, it seems they have three choices: admit defeat and say that the particular book isn’t relevant anymore; change your philosophy and hope no one notices; or define the times yourself and drag the world back to a place where it is relevant. Religions throughout history have tried all three of these options; it will be interesting to see which one Islam chooses in the near future.