Today, Islam stands as an obstacle to the international exploitation system in the political and economic exploitation of the Islamic world by Western. Islam has been the target of Jews and Christians since the day it emerged. Throughout Islamic history, they have struggled against Islam with all kinds of trickery and fraud in order to degenerate and destroy it. There are many examples of this in history. These anti-Islamist efforts have continued to this day under various guises.

The Ottomans in Eastern Europe and the Arab administrations in Spain caused many wars on European soil. The experience of the Crusades in the Middle Ages left great scars of defeat in the souls of Westerners. Muslim countries in North Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia and Africa were colonized by Westerners. This caused many wars between Westerners and Islam. The idea of ​​the revival of Islam became a nightmare for Westerners. This strengthened the anti-Islam (Islamophobia) view in the West.

For example, the vice president of the National Committee of French Jews said in 1988: “There is no such thing as a racial problem in France. The problem is finding ways to avoid being destroyed by the rise of Islam.” A conservative British deputy also said in 1988: “England must be reconquered for the English. If Muslims are not going to live in a country where Salman Rushdie has the freedom to express his ideas, they must be sent back to their homes.”

 

Christianity

Christians could not accept the emergence of a new prophet with a new religion in the Middle East in 600 years after Jesus. However, the new religion, Islam, accepted Jesus as a prophet but ended his sharia. Accepting Islam meant losing its dominance for the church. For this reason, they opposed the spread of Islam with all their might. This caused them to become enemies of Islam. Christian priests such as John of Damascus (675-749), St. Peter (1094-1156) and Martin Luther (1483-1546) always denigrated Islam in their treatises. Their works can be considered as ammunition for all future anti-Islamic debates.

John claims that the Quran was not revealed, but that the Prophet Muhammad wrote what he learned from an Arab monk named Bahira. According to the Holy Father, the Messenger of Allah was an extremely cunning person who pursued power and strength; he achieved his goal through deceit, therefore he was not a prophet but a disciple of Satan.

Christians who spread these books and attacked Islam were frightened by the developments in the Middle East. Because the Mongols had invaded Anatolia. The fact that the Mongols later became Muslims and Sultan Ghazan Khan (1295-1304) accepted Islam frightened the Christians. Thus, they came to the conclusion that Islam could not be easily eliminated. The advancement of the Ottomans in Eastern Europe and the conquest of Istanbul by Fatih Sultan Mehmet in 1453 completely defeated the enemies of Islam. In this confusion, Luther prepared an order to “kill the Turks” and issued a fatwa stating that the Turks were enemies of God and Jesus and therefore it was permissible to kill them. For them, the Turks were the devil and the Quran was created by the devil. Luther’s thoughts and his hatred for Islam caused anti-Islamic thoughts to strengthen in Europe. Luther, the founder of Protestantism, never opened a door for the study of Islam.

Hostility towards Islam was used as a polemic subject. The Christian hostility towards Islam had blinded them so much that neither the scholars nor the people could be objective on this issue. They told lies and misrepresentations about Islam for the higher purposes of the church. This tendency towards lies and slander continued until the end of the 17th century. This led to the emergence of a social hostility and hatred towards Islam in Europe.

After the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire began to weaken. This situation encouraged the West to attack the Ottomans. They tried to take revenge for their past defeats. Even the recapture of Kosovo from the Ottomans in 1912 and its subsequent annexation to the communist regime did not reduce the hatred towards Islam and the Turks. The oppression of Muslims by the Serbs and Bulgarians in the late 20th century reached its peak. The massacres committed by the West against Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina are a result of the hatred created by anti-Islamism.

However, the West and the Christian world did not gain anything with all this, on the contrary, they lost. Their fear and hatred towards Islam made them lose their sleep. When they saw Muslims named Mehmet, Alpaslan, Cihat in front of them, their hearts would tremble with fear, remembering the past, but their hearts would never be safe and satisfied.

 

Crusades

The fear and hatred towards Islam in the West resulted in the Crusades, which were repeated for years. When Christianity became stronger in Eastern Europe, they wanted to spread in Asia and the Middle East. However, the Muslims who emerged in Anatolia prevented this goal. These Muslims were the Seljuk Turks. When Sultan Alp Arslan defeated Byzantium in Malazgirt in 1071, hostility towards Islam increased in Europe.

Alexis Comnenus, who became the Byzantine emperor in 1081, wrote to Pope Urban II and Count Robert of Flanders in 1093 asking for military aid. Thereupon, a crusader army was formed in Europe under the leadership of the Pope. For this purpose, the Pope was constantly traveling in European cities and inciting the people to join this war.

The crusader army set off towards the Middle East in 1096. They plundered Christian villages on the road to Istanbul. This army captured Antioch, Urfa and Jerusalem and established crusader kingdoms. A part of Syria and Palestine came under the control of the crusaders. This first crusade began with an army of 600,000. When they arrived in Jerusalem, there were 100,000. They suffered great losses in the clashes on the road. The Crusaders committed many massacres in these regions. It was said that the blood of the Muslims killed in Jerusalem was ankle-deep. There were not only nobles in this Crusader army. All the criminals and corrupt people of Europe were among them. Therefore, while they were plundering everywhere, they also showed many examples of cannibalism. They cooked people in cauldrons and ate them.

The Turkish leader Zengi took back Northern Syria in 1130 and Urfa in 1144. Thereupon, Pope Eugenius III called for a crusade against the Muslims again. Zengi's son Nurettin fought with this Crusader army. He took back Damascus in 1154. One of his Kurdish generals, Saladin Ayyubi, took Egypt in 1169. Ayyubi conquered Jerusalem in 1187. Thereupon, Pope Gregory VIII called for a crusade again. However, this army was also unsuccessful against the Ayyubi. However, the Ayyubi did not allow soldiers to commit massacres. However, when the Crusaders brutally massacred 2700 Muslim prisoners in Akka in 1197, Ayyubid executed all the Christian prisoners due to the hatred caused by this massacre. He did not spare the lives of those who treated Muslims cruelly at other times. When Humphrey, Prince of Karak, who tortured and massacred Muslims a lot, was defeated in the Battle of Hattin in 1187, he was killed by himself with a single sword stroke.

The Popes promised that those who fought would go to heaven. In 1118, donations and taxes were collected for war, and they called these the “Saladin tax”. During the 4th Crusade, Christians massacred Christians. This crusader army came to Istanbul in 1203 and massacred and looted the city and its Christian population in 1204. Pope Innocent III condemned this incident, but called for a new Crusade in 1215. During this 5th Crusade, Egypt was attacked in 1218. However, it ended in complete defeat. In 1245, Pope Innocent IV called for the Crusades again. However, this 6th Crusader army was defeated by the Muslims and the French King Louis IX was taken prisoner. Then the king was released for ransom.

Meanwhile, the Mongols threatened Baghdad and headed towards Damascus and attacked Egypt. However, the new Turkish Sultan Baybars in Egypt defeated the Mongols by taking Palestine. The Muslims captured Antioch in 1268 and other places in 1291. When they captured Akka, they did not forget the massacre of Muslims by “Ricard” and killed 2000 Christians as revenge.

After the collapse of the Seljuk State, the Ottoman State was established in 1299. The Ottomans Orhan and Murat I advanced in the Balkans. The Christians organized another Crusade against this advance. However, this crusader army was defeated in Kosovo in 1389. Beyazıt I isolated the Byzantine Empire within the walls of Istanbul and expanded the Ottoman borders even further. In response, another crusade was organized to remove the Turks. However, this army was also defeated in Nicopolis in 1396. Here, 3000 Christian prisoners were put to the sword by Muslims.

When the forces of Beyazıt I were defeated in Ankara by Timur, a Mongol, in 1402, the Ottoman state entered the Interregnum period. However, Mehmet I reunited the Ottoman state and regained control over the Balkans. He fought battles with Venice, Hungary, Serbia and Wallachia there. Christian Europe mobilized the crusaders once again. When this army defeated the Ottomans, they took back Serbia and Wallachia. Later, the crusaders attacked the Ottomans again, but this time the Ottomans defeated the crusaders in the Battle of Varna.

Mehmet II conquered Istanbul in 1453. He killed the Byzantine Emperor, converted the famous Christian Hagia Sophia cathedral into a mosque and made the city his capital. In 1459, Pope II. Puis called for a Crusade again to save the city, but this call was not very popular. Thus, the period of Crusades organized by the Popes against the Muslims was over.

These Crusades were a scourge for the Middle Ages. These wars strengthened the hatred and distrust between Muslims and Christians. These are a turning point in the history of these two religions that can never be erased. Because with the capture of Istanbul, Christians understood that it was impossible to throw Muslims out of Anatolia and the Middle East by force of arms. However, since the West was the losing side, they always portrayed Islam as something negative and frightening.

 

Espionage by Travelers

In the 18th and 19th centuries, many travelers from Europe traveled to the farthest corners of Islamic lands. These travelers took Muslim names, dressed like Muslims, and were thus able to move freely among Muslim communities. The aim of these travelers was not simply to get to know a country, but to have subversive aims. Some of them were there to prove that Christianity was superior to Islam, while others were there for commercial exploitation and to obtain political intelligence. Commercial pretexts were a cover for political domination. For example, the British East India Company and the Dutch East Indies Company were designed solely to colonize India and Indonesia.

Edmund Castell (1606-1685), the first professor of Arabic at Cambridge, was a missionary. Similarly, Edward Pocoche (1604-1691), a professor of Arabic at Oxford, was a missionary. With this growing interest in Arabic, Europeans began traveling to the Middle East. In the books they wrote, these people viewed Muslims as “infidels” and the eternal enemies of Jesus.

In the 19th century, the British established a influence in Islamic countries not only through commercial means but also through political means. The wealth lying in these lands was coveted.

One of these was John Lewis Burchhardt, who took the name Sheikh Ibrahim ibn Abdullah. In his book “Bedouins and Wahhabis”, he reflected extremely negative images of Muslim peoples and saw the Turks as more cruel than the Arabs. He described the Arabs as a bandit nation whose main occupation was plundering. Edward Williams (1801-1876), who took the name Mansur Efendi, described the men in Egypt as frivolous and the women as flirtatious in his book. He translated the Arabian nights under the title “A Thousand and One Nights Fables”.

Another traveler who carried the seeds of discord and corruption, Richard Burton (1821-1896), spied in Pakistan. Here he took the name of Mirza Abdullah and disguised himself as an Iranian. This person, who traveled to Mecca and Medina, reported that Arabs could be easily bought. He depicted women as sexual slaves in the erotic stories he wrote.

William Blunt (1840-1922) sowed the seeds of discord in the Ottoman Empire. He incited the Arabs against the Ottomans and claimed that the Islamic Caliphate was the Arabs' right. His ideas were implemented by Lawrence after World War I.

The Westerners did not neglect the Iranians either. Travelers such as Robert Porter, James Morier, Henry Layards, Curzon wrote various derogatory books about Iran. They incited the Islamophobic movements in these regions. They encouraged the Bahais in Iran. They encouraged the Qadiyanis in India. They helped spread the un-Islamic ideas of these groups.

All the travelers we have described, whether British or of other nationalities, were racist and imperialist. They all worked for the interests of their countries. They disguised themselves as Muslim Arabs and used people who showed them hospitality and trust. They portrayed the East as a place where excessive lust reigned. They also spread that the people of these regions were violent and incapable of governing themselves. They had acquired these ideas from the hostile ideas of the Middle Ages. The colonialists, who deceived their own people with such justifications, intervened in Islamic countries for political domination and economic exploitation. The travelers of this period had provided them with enough information and intelligence. However, such espionage activities were kept secret and were never openly admitted or confessed.

Today, instead of such travelers, the intelligence organizations of Western countries such as the CIA, Mossad, and MI6 are active. The members of these organizations infiltrate Muslim societies under various guises such as journalists or businessmen. The intelligence collected is used in detail thanks to advanced technology.

 

Activities of Orientalists

The thing that Western colonialists fear the most is Islam. For this purpose, how Islam should be neutralized has been investigated and various solutions have been proposed. Baron Carra De Vaux, a member of the French Catholic Institute, suggests the following solutions in his report to the French government: “Efforts should be made to fragment the Islamic world and break its spiritual unity by exploiting ethnic and political divisions. Therefore, on the one hand, to revive the sense of nationalism, on the other hand, to weaken the sense of religious community among the different Muslim races, these differences should be emphasized, in short, Islam should be fragmented. Let's weaken Islam so that it will never be able to sustain great awakenings.”

This is known as the “divide and rule” principle. This principle is used by all Western colonial powers. It is practiced in Islamic lands from the beginning. However, despite this, Islam continues to scare the West. Because even though serious research is being done on Islam, Muslims have begun to view these studies with suspicion. For this reason, Westerners are trying to carefully avoid revealing the true spirit and rule of Islam in their studies. Algerian Muhammed Ben Rahal summarizes this as follows: “Hostility is a dominant feature in Europe’s perception of Islam. If a Muslim defends his homeland, religion or nation, he is not seen as a patriot but as a savage. If he shows courage or heroism, he is called a fanatic. If he shows trust in God during defeat, he is called a fatalist. Islam is being isolated from society, systematically slandered and ridiculed.”

Orientalists supported these practices of the colonialists and tried to bring Islam to its knees. Research on the East was conducted in the West until the 17th and 18th centuries. Napoleon took many orientalists with him when he conquered Egypt. They set out to impose theories they had developed according to their own methods on the people in order to save this region from barbarism and make it a happy and livable country.

In the 19th century, orientalism became an independent branch of science. Orientalism was brought into line with the interests and political concerns of influential and imperialist rulers. Orientalists helped legitimize the invasions of the colonizers and guided the pacification of the colonized countries.

To this end, they created secularist doctrines that sought to separate religion from politics. These secularist ideas found many new supporters among Arab, Turkish and Iranian intellectuals. Political structures in the Middle East were reformed and radically changed with concepts such as the constitution, parliament and democracy.

In this way, orientalism became an important tool for the destruction of Islam. Orientalism brought a westernized interpretation to Islam. It distorted Islamic concepts such as Jihad, Ummah, Tawhid from their true meanings. Thus, political dominance in Islamic countries was brought to a state that was foreign to the essence of Islamic social and religious life.

In the second half of the 19th century, some orientalists wrote books on the life of the Prophet. In these books, the life and views of the Prophet were expressed in a distorted manner. In these books, it was stated that the Prophet had epileptic seizures, that his divine mission was doubted, that Muslims worshipped him like an idol, and that he shaped Islam by imitating Judaism and Christianity. In this way, a character assassination was carried out against the Prophet. In this way, they tried to raise doubts about the Prophet's truthfulness. However, only Westerners believed in them, while Muslims did not.

Orientalists also targeted the Quran and tried to spread the idea that it was fake and not a divine book. They tried to prove that the Prophet wrote it. However, they did not really believe in these ideas themselves. For this reason, the Quran, the fact that no creative thought could have composed such a work, still remains a mystery for many orientalists.

Hadith studies were also being distorted in the hands of orientalists. According to them, hadith literature was created arbitrarily. Orientalists such as Goldziher and Schacht raised many doubts on this subject. In their own works, these people wrote and drew the inferiority of Muslims and the superiority of the West. While Western civilization was dynamic, they considered the civilization of Muslims to be collapsed. For this reason, colonialism was a step taken to civilize Muslims. For this reason, they attached importance to replacing Islamic law with Western law.

After World War II, American imperialism emerged as a new power in the Middle East and the works of new orientalists covered the scene. The Middle East Studies Center was established at Harvard. Orientalists such as Hamilton Gibb conducted studies to meet the need for a multicultural approach. Many orientalists actually perceived Islam as an underdeveloped religion. For this reason, the Middle East was an underdeveloped region. These views of orientalists have not changed to this day.

The dogmas of the branch of science formed by orientalists are as follows:

1) There is an absolute difference between the national, developed, humane and superior West and the East, which has deviated from the right path, is underdeveloped and inferior.

2) The East is a place that never changes and is incapable of defining itself. Therefore, the West needs to make conceptual definitions for this issue.

3) In fact, the East is a place that should either be feared or controlled.

Many books were written under the light of these dogmas. Because of these, various ideas and images about the East emerged. Some fanned the flames of sectarianism. They tried to create an artificial Arab and Iranian division. They tried to make Sunni and Shiite Islam fight each other.

Orientalism is a designed colonial strategy. Colonialists and orientalists changed the structure of Muslim societies by replacing their political systems with secular models consisting of Western ideological concepts such as democracy, nationalism, political parties and elections. They also imported their own legal systems along with their own secular laws. Orientalists also undermined Islam from within by spreading doubts about Islam.

 

Missionary Activities

Western missionaries came to colonized Islamic countries and tried to change the religions of Muslims. The West never forgot that Anatolia was taken from them and turned into an Islamic country. The American Foreign Missions Board sent missionaries to Turkey since 1820. The first Protestant church was established in Turkey in 1847. The preaching of the Bible was done through educational institutions, hospitals, homes for the homeless, and radio broadcasts. However, these activities did not yield much result. Because the Christian population in Turkey is still below 1%. Therefore, Islam is the biggest obstacle to Christianity in Turkey.

Although Turkey became secularized to some extent during the Republic period, this did not prevent Muslims from fulfilling their religious duties. Because the Muslim people still went to mosques, made the hajj and established Islamic political parties. Although Christian missionaries were not successful in converting, they destroyed the sensitivity of some of the people to Islam. These activities still continue today.

Missionary activities in other Islamic countries date back to the 19th century. Christians have existed in these regions for 1000 years. Christians have churches, educational institutions and publications in these regions. The missionaries wanted to make Muslims enemies of the Ottoman Empire in these regions. They were also agents of colonialism. They spread nationalist ideals and tried to undermine the fundamental beliefs of Islam. Just like the orientalists, they continued to spread doubts about the Prophet, the Quran and the Sunnah with the books they wrote about Islam. Their activities continue in these countries today with French and Italian missionaries. These missionaries distribute books, run educational institutions and broadcast religious programs.

The most successful period of missionary activities was during the colonial period. They made every effort to tarnish Islam in the minds of Muslims so that they could be convinced to accept Christianity. The most famous of these were Samuel W. Zwemer and Duncan B. Mac Donald. Zwemer was American, while Mac Donald (1863-1943) was British.

Zwemer was a missionary for the American Protestant Church and wrote the following about Islam: “Islam is a danger to Christianity and its arch-enemy. Because there is no peace between them. We must either be victorious or defeated. Islam, in its origins, history and current approaches, is anti-Christian. They and we know that Christianity and Islam are rivals for world domination.”

Zwemer believed that Islam had stolen the divinity of Jesus Christ as the son of God and replaced him with the Prophet of Islam. He did not believe that Muhammad (pbuh) was a true prophet. He said that he was a clever fraud, that he had collected ideas and stories from the Jews in Medina and had them sold as new revelations from God. This strategy was the path followed by Christian polemicists and to spread negative ideas about the Prophet. Zwemer, who was very afraid of Islam, expected the colonial rulers to destroy Islam.

Mac Donald was a missionary of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. His books were read as textbooks in universities in Pakistan. Mac Donald wrote in his books that “when Islam collapses under the violent attack of European civilization, Muslim societies will suffer, and as soon as the legend of Muhammad is destroyed, the whole structure will disintegrate, and then Christianity will save these people.” Unfortunately, these ideas are taught as textbooks in some Islamic countries. This is a measure of the extent to which the colonialists have taken over the administration of these states.

Missionary activities have two-sided aims in Islamic countries. The first was to make the Muslim people Christian. However, they were not very successful in this. Their second aim was to secularize the Muslims. Thus, Muslims would not create danger to colonial expansion and exploitation. Western civilization was taught in the missionary schools that were opened. Being Western was identified with being progressive and enlightened. However, this created a backlash in Muslim societies. Secular Muslims were considered bad Muslims, while those who converted to Christianity were scorned. Missionaries were met with hostility in the Islamic world due to their connections with Westernization and secularization.

 

Racist Propaganda in the West

Racism is a template that the West uses to exploit other countries. For example, England occupied a large part of the African continent. While colonizing their countries, racism was used to legitimize the dominance of white people over black people. They attributed an intense meaning to the concept of blackness. Thus, white and black came to represent cleanliness and dirt, chastity and sin, virtue and baseness, beauty and ugliness, good and evil, God and the devil. With such approaches, those who invaded Africa were justified. The portrayal of Africans as barbarians was merely an excuse for the exploitation of their underground resources and the slave trade. In the face of the inferiority of non-Europeans, an image of the superiority of Europeans was created. With this image, it was claimed that Europeans brought a more advanced civilization to people, and the invasions of Europeans were tried to be shown as legitimate.

The Middle East subject is covered in the curriculum of high schools in America with these principles. Turks, Egyptians and Arabs were treated with negative characteristics in lessons, and it was accepted and expressed that these were the common characteristics of Muslims. In a content analysis conducted in the social studies textbooks taught in primary and secondary schools in America in the 1970s, it was determined that the following was explained: “The Middle East is a place where nomadic Arab societies live. Raiding, plundering and war are characteristics of nomadic life. Islam is Mohammedanism. The Prophet of Islam is a caravaner who traveled to and fro in the desert. Islam is not a revelation from God, on the contrary, Moses and Jesus are God’s prophets. Muslims spread their faith with the sword. Paradise is a place where women are slaves. The Quran is the words of Mohammed. Turks are barbaric people who rob, torture and kill Christians and sell them as slaves. It is obvious how this information creates a distorted image of Islam in the minds of young people in America. These templates continued to be taught in the 1980s. The same religious curriculum was also implemented in Canada.

These textbooks try to justify Israel’s superiority over Arabs and therefore its demands for Palestine. The main cause of the problems in the Middle East are Arabs. Arabs have got worried about Israeli-style democracies and Arab leaders were afraid that their people would demand the example of democracy in Israel. For this reason, they were hostile towards Israel.

When the books taught in church schools and published by the Protestant Church were examined, it was determined that they also gave a negative image of Islam. It was explained how Muslims put Christians to the sword during the Crusades. Muslims were blamed for these wars and it was explained that Christians responded to the oppression they suffered.

When German textbooks were examined, a pre-designed, distorted image was attached to Islam. It was stated that the Quran was not a book of revelation, but Muhammad's ideas about God. Derogatory terms were used when the life of the Prophet was described. Jihad was written as a holy war. Islam was described as a primitive religion that covered girls' heads and forbade pork. The main purpose of these books was to prevent Muslims from gaining strength by putting forward ideas against them.

There were also distortions in the textbooks taught in British schools about the Prophet Muhammad. Islam was not seen as a religion of revelation, but as a form borrowed from Jewish and Christian sources. The life of the Prophet Muhammad was tarnished with various slanders.

These studies show what kind of a false and inaccurate picture was taught to students about Islam and Muslim peoples. It is obvious that the generation raised with these books will be an enemy of Islam. Although colonialism has disappeared as a system today, colonialist thoughts and views have remained very strongly entrenched in Western educational institutions. In order to continue the views of colonialism, textbooks and children's storybooks are used to fill the minds of young people with thoughts against Islam. The generations equipped with these thoughts have been brought to a position where the seeds of constant hostility will grow between them and Muslim peoples. It is obvious that this will not contribute to world peace. However, conflict between the West and Muslims in the future may have very harmful consequences. The Islamophobia that has been ongoing for a long time and is spreading in the West will be responsible for this.

 

The Islamophobia of Social Sciences

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, new branches of social science emerged. These were anthropology and sociology. These sciences helped the colonialists to strengthen their dominance over Muslims.

Anthropology is the first social science and is considered a “child of imperialism”. Because they studied the cultures of non-Western peoples and the information they obtained was used by the colonialists. Anthropology produced concrete methods on how to transfer political, economic and social changes to the people of the invaded countries. They taught that in order to grow, its internal structures needed to be destroyed and renewed. The concepts of ethnicity, religion and culture were well used by the colonialists. Thus, ethnic groups fought each other. Hindus and Muslims fighting for religious reasons is an example of this. The political culture of the West was instilled in Muslim societies. Their education began to be given in English and French. The elite also fully adapted to this.

Many institutes, centers and organizations were established in the USA for the political, economic and strategic analysis of Islamic countries. The Middle East Research Association was established and a network of major sciences that expressed pro-American viewpoints through books and journals was created. This network of science was financed by Canneige, Rockefeller and Ford.

The departments of state and defense were also the main users of information about the Islamic world. The RAND Corporation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, and the Center for Naval Warfare Analysis are among them. The American University in Beirut, the American University in Cairo and the American Research Center in Cairo were established for the same purposes. They continued to serve the interests of American imperialism. In these countries, anti-American research is also not allowed to be published.

As a result of the technological and materialistic progress of Western civilization, social sciences invented the concept of “modernism”. This concept was introduced in the sense of reflecting the progress of human knowledge and accompanying scientific revolutions. While non-Western societies were expressed as traditional, Westerners were shown as modern. Being traditional and being modern were expressed as two opposite poles. Westerners thought that traditional societies would provide a change towards modernity through Westernized Muslims. This was also a principle in changing the Middle East. However, the theorists of modernism encountered an obstacle with the revival of Islam in Islamic countries. Because the political methods of these societies were corrupt and disappointed the governed. This caused a crisis of political legitimacy in these societies. The attempts of Muslim rulers to look Islamic and use Islam were not successful and thus caused the conflicts to grow among the masses.

Marxist and Neo-Marxist views claimed that the oil wealth in Arab countries had initiated an Islamic revival since the 1970s. This event had created a new bourgeois class. This had forced them to distance themselves from religion. Therefore, the conflict was actually between materialism and Islam.

In order to understand the Islamic revival, social scientists had to consider Islam as a historical religion. Taking refuge behind this view, they stated that Islamic civilization had entered a period of crisis and collapse in this century. However, Muslims did not believe this.

The social science initiative was a step taken to secularize Islam and separate religion from politics. However, was it possible to use these theories in the study of Muslim societies? The strategy followed here was to inject Western secular ideas into the minds of Muslims. One of these ideas that succeeded was the idea of ​​“nationalism.” The Islamic Ummah was divided into struggles centered on nationalism. However, when these countries gained their national independence, they built all their political and economic developments on the models taught to them by the former colonialists. No colonized Islamic country has been able to rid its minds of these colonial traces. Such minds, which have been influenced by colonialism, continue to follow Western ideas not only in terms of nationalism, but also in concepts such as democracy, socialism, political parties, and parliament.

 

The Anti-Islamism of the Western Media

The mass media in the world are under the control of Western news agencies. Western media is a powerful tool for influencing Western public opinion and serves the political, economic, and strategic interests of the West. If any country acts against the interests of the West, this is not reflected accurately by the Western media and is put forward as the ignorance of that country. The world media is largely the propaganda weapon of the West and Islam is its most targeted enemy.

Islam has been made the whipping boy of the Western media in every subject. Islam represents barbarism for the right wing, medieval theocracy for the left wing, and unpleasant exoticism for the moderate group. According to them, it is unimportant for Western people to know anything about Islam. Therefore, it should not be expected that Islam will be treated honestly in the Western media.

However, Islam is still seen as a threat to the Western world. Because the other great civilizations of the East, including India and China, have been defeated and are not a constant source of concern. However, Islam has not been completely subjugated by the West. Here is the basis of the anti-Islamism in Western history

The reason why Muslims are labeled as barbarians, fanatics or fundamentalists in the Western media is this: “The more secular Muslims are, the less they threaten Western interests in any country and are therefore seen as civilized. The more they become religious, the more they become anti-Western and therefore threaten Western political and economic interests.”

Active lobbies also contribute to the West becoming anti-Islamic. For example, a Jewish lobby has a large influence in the US. A prominent columnist for the New York Times says: “Israel has the strongest lobby in the US and, in my opinion, all columnists are extremely careful when expressing their opinions on the subject.” Accordingly, as we have stated before, the objectivity of the Western media is a myth. An article written by a Western writer about Islam should be evaluated with this view.

It should be viewed in the same light on the trying of West to carry out the moderate Islam and interfaith dialogue efforts in Islamic countries.  In these studies, the existence of elements that aim to destroy Islam should be investigated. It is not necessary to believe that all these approaches are sincere. If sincere efforts are to be made between the West and Islam, the West should first reconsider its own understanding of Islam and ask itself this serious question: “How possible will it be to have sincere relations or cooperate with Islamic countries while trying to tarnish and distort Islam at every opportunity?”

 

The British Hostility to Islam

One of the countries that is most prominent in the West’s opposition to Islam is England. Since the British saw Islam as a real obstacle in their exploitation of Islamic countries for centuries, they did everything they could to destroy Islam. They played the leading role in destroying the Gurganiye State in India, which was the representative of the Sunni, and the Ottoman Empire, which spread over three continents. The British, who quickly began to seize the Gurganiye State, suppressed the uprising that Bahadır Shah launched to save his country in 1857. Thus, they ended the state of Gurganiye in 1858.

They caused the Hindus they supported to clash with Muslims and caused millions of Muslims to be put to the sword. Unfortunately, the Ottoman state could not intervene in this oppression. Because the Ottomans had to deal with many troubles that were hanging over their heads.

The main cause of all the pain, division and misery in the Islamic geography in the last century is England. Other Western imperialist countries are its collaborators.

The British were at the head of the imperialists who attacked in Çanakkale to destroy the Ottomans. Here, the British forces and navy retreated after suffering a heavy defeat. The poisonous gas bombs used by the British in Çanakkale are against the law of war. However, Churchill gave the following answer to a member of parliament who asked this: “Yes, that is true. Using poisonous gas bombs against people in war is a crime and forbidden according to international law of war. However, we are not using poisonous gas bombs against people in Çanakkale, we are using them against the Turks.” These words were met with laughter and applause in the British parliament.

After World War I, the British sent the Greeks to invade Anatolia. However, the Greeks were defeated and devastated in the War of Independence.

After the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, it was not approved by the British government and the League of Nations for a long time. However, after the Republic of Turkey abolished the Caliphate and deported the Caliph on March 3, 1924, it was brought to the agenda and approved in the British House of Commons in April 1924. In addition, the Treaty of Lausanne was registered by the League of Nations in September 1924. Did the West wait for the abolition of the Caliphate to recognize the Treaty of Lausanne? In a speech he made in the House of Commons, King George V of England said: “As soon as this bill is accepted, the Treaty of Lausanne will have been approved and a new era will have begun.” What did the British king mean by this? It is clear that they waited for the abolition of the caliphate to approve Lausanne and that they thought that an Islamic world without a caliphate would mean the opening of a new era for them.

After the League of Nations registered the Lausanne Treaty in September 1924, the Republic of Turkey began to be officially recognized by other countries. Until then, despite the fact that 1 year had passed since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, it had not been recognized by any country. When the Islamic Ummah was left without a leader after the abolition of the caliphate, it was fragmented like the beads of a rosary whose imam has been torn off. Thus, Islamic countries were made to be easily exploited with divide-and-rule methods.

The official representative of England in Mosul, who was unaware of the process, was shocked as soon as he heard the news that the caliphate had been abolished and sent a telegram to London stating that with the abolition of the caliphate, the Turks had cut off the branch they were sitting on. He also stated that this was an unbelievably wonderful thing for England. England is now in a festive mood. Especially in the Mosul issue, they rubbed their hands together saying that it would be easier to make the Kurds stutter and that the “oil business” was complete. The French Le Journal carried this joy of the English in the headline: “The English, who were trying to destroy the religious dignity of Istanbul, could not even dream of this chance.” With the abolition of the caliphate, 9 colonial governors, such as Sharif Hussein, whom England had been guiding for years, declared their caliphates.

When the caliphate was abolished in the Turkish Parliament, when Indian Muslim leaders wrote a letter to Ankara and wanted to come to Turkey with a delegation to have the decision reversed, England did not give passports and visas to the members of the delegation, which is evidence of England’s influence in this incident.

It is known that the English played a leading role in the murder of Sultan Abdulaziz and the dethronement of Sultan Abdulhamid Khan. Because their main goal was to destroy the Ottoman state and eliminate the caliphate. Thus, the Islamic Ummah would be left without a leader and would easily disintegrate.

The British were the ones who tried to degenerate and destroy the religion of Islam by using masons such as Afghani, Abduh and Rashid Riza in Egypt.

The British were the ones who established the Wahhabi state, which was outside the Sunni, in 1932 and appointed the sons of Saud as kings. The Wahhabis committed great cruelties against Muslims in the Hejaz with the help of the British.

The British spy Hempher describes in his memoirs how British spies in Islamic countries tried to destroy Islam.

The establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine under British mandate emerged in the second half of the 19th century. At a congress held in Basel, Switzerland on August 29, 1897, the Jews decided to establish a homeland in Palestine. As a result of the British occupation of Palestine during World War I, in 1917, the Zionist Federation President officially announced that he accepted the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. After World War II, England took the issue to the United Nations. Here, it was decided that Palestine would be divided between Arabs and Jews. Following this decision, wars began between Arabs and Jews in December 1947. The newly established state of Israel was a major problem in the region and caused endless chaos in the region with its growth and expansion policies. The architect of this chaos was England.

The great Islamic scholar Seyyid Abdulhakim Arvasi Hazretleri (1865-1943) said the following about the English: “The greatest enemy of Islam is the English. If we compare Islam to a tree, when other infidels find the opportunity, they cut this tree down from the bottom and Muslims become enemies of them. However, this tree may sprout one day. The English are not like this, they serve and nourish this tree. Muslims love it. However, at night, without anyone noticing, they poison its roots. The tree dries up so much that it cannot grow again. They deceive Muslims by saying, “Oh, I am so sorry.” The British poisoning Islam in this way means that they are eliminating Islamic scholars, Islamic books and knowledge by the hands of local hypocrites and degenerates who they have bought in exchange for selfish desires such as money, position and women.”

 

The West is More Violent Than the Islamic World

While Westerners always try to portray Muslims as violent and barbaric, the fact that this is not the case and that the West is more violent and barbaric has been proven by the following events.

The French invaded Algeria and massacred Muslims. A French colonel, Lucien François de Montagnac, wrote the following in a letter from Algeria in 1842: “We are killing, we are strangling. The sound of the dead is mixed with the sound of the bellowing and bleating cattle. We are holding a few of the women hostage. We are selling the others like cattle. Sometimes we cut off their heads out of boredom.”

Napoleon III said the following about this: “France is the owner and master of Algeria.” During the war of independence from 1954 to 1962, 8,000 Algerian villages were burned and destroyed by the French with Napalm bombs. More than 2 million Algerians were killed in this war.

In 1920, Churchill accused the Iraqis who rebelled against British rule as “ungrateful”. Because, in their minds, the British had saved them from the Ottomans. It was Churchill who used chemical weapons on the people to break the resistance. A pilot proudly said after the airstrikes, “The Arabs and Kurds have now learned what real bombing is. We wiped the whole village off the map in 45 minutes.”

Italian colonialists used phosphorus and mustard gas against the civilians who rebelled in Libya. They loaded tribal leaders into a plane and threw them down. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were forcibly held in concentration camps in the desert. Half of them lost their lives. Libyan girls were made sex slaves for colonial soldiers. The Spanish used chemical weapons in the uprising in Morocco, the result was terrible.

No Islamic country has attacked a Western country in the last 200 years. The attackers are always Western states. Therefore, today's violence problem is something that Westerners have created.

German historian Alexander Demandt in his work "Small World History": "The white race took over the world with the pressure of duty, the spirit of discovery, the joy of adventure and winning. With its warrior Viking spirit, effective weapons and technical superiority, it did not allow another culture, especially the Muslim civilization, to develop." Therefore, it is rude for Western spiritual leaders to ask with a fake sad face, "When will the Islamic civilization, which was once economically and culturally advanced, return?"

Colonialism is forbidden in Islam. Therefore, Islamic states have never been colonialists. It is no gain for people who do not believe in Islam to be colonialists. The worldly wealth they have gained in this way will not save them in the hereafter. Because Muslims believe that on the day of judgment, Allah Almighty will judge people fairly and every person who has been wronged will be given his due. Therefore, those who have oppressed Muslims to date will be held accountable and punished for their actions in the afterlife. We have no doubt about this. However, throughout history and today, Muslims have resisted those who oppressed them. They have fought as hard as they could. Sometimes they were victorious and sometimes they were defeated. However, this behavior will cause them to gain the afterlife. Because they did not oppress anyone, they only stood against oppression. This is the Islamic faith.

 

Prof. Dr. Asaf Hüseyin wrote the followings in his book titled “Western Conflict With Islam”:

“The war waged by the West against Islam should not be underestimated. In the Middle Ages, Islam was only fighting against Christianity. Today, a series of new fronts have opened against Islam. Because secularism, Marxism, socialism, etc. all see Islam as an obstacle to their own expansion. The threat from the secular West is serious in the Islamic world.

The reason for this is that the economic and political interests of the Western world are quite firmly established in the Islamic world. Together with the packages of modernism, such interests have brought Westernization and a Western interpretation of Islam to the countries in question, thus creating serious problems. One of these is that this incident has given rise to an anti-Western attitude in the Islamic world. What is noteworthy here is that it is not possible to understand the anti-Western attitude in the Islamic world without understanding the anti-Islamic tradition in the West.

If sincere efforts need to be made between the West and Islam, then the West should re-evaluate its own understanding of Islam and ask itself this serious question: How possible will it be to have sincere relations or cooperate with Islamic countries when it tries to tarnish and distort Islam at every opportunity?”

 

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The West's Fight with Islam

Publishing Date: 08.07.2024