Ussama Makdisi
Aeon
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| Pescador em Saint Jean d’Acre, na então Síria Otomana, hoje Israel. Foto tirada em 1891 por André Salles. Cortesia da Biblioteca Nacional de França, Paris |
O Oriente Árabe foi uma das últimas regiões do mundo a ser colonizada por potências ocidentais. Foi também a primeira a ser colonizada em nome da autodeterminação. Uma fotografia icônica de setembro de 1920 do general colonial francês Henri Gouraud vestido com um esplêndido uniforme branco e ladeado por duas figuras religiosas "nativas" captura esse momento. Sentado de um lado está o Patriarca da Igreja Maronita, uma seita católica cristã oriental. Do outro lado está o Mufti muçulmano sunita de Beirute. A proclamação de Gouraud do estado do Grande Líbano, ou Grand Liban, que foi esculpido nas terras do derrotado império otomano, serviu como ocasião. Com a bênção da Grã-Bretanha, a França ocupou a Síria dois meses antes e derrubou o breve e constitucional Reino Árabe da Síria. O pretexto oferecido para esse colonialismo tardio foi aquele que continua a ser usado hoje. O suposto objetivo da França no Oriente não era se engrandecer, mas liderar seus habitantes, particularmente suas diversas e significativas populações minoritárias do Líbano, em direção à liberdade e à independência.
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| Proclamação do Grande Líbano em 1920. Foto de Photo12/Getty |
A França separou o estado do Líbano, dominado pelos cristãos, do resto da Síria geográfica, que por sua vez foi dividida entre as políticas sectárias alauitas, drusas e sunitas sob o domínio francês abrangente. Esse colonialismo tardio supostamente pretendia libertar os povos do mundo árabe da tirania do "turco" muçulmano otomano e das depredações de ódios sectários supostamente antigos. Assim, o general Gouraud apareceu na fotografia não como um conquistador de tribos nativas supostamente bárbaras; ele não era um Hernán Cortés moderno derrubando o Montezuma asteca nem uma reencarnação francesa de Andrew Jackson destruindo os seminoles da Flórida. O general colonial francês que serviu no Níger, Chade e Marrocos foi retratado como um pacificador indispensável e árbitro benevolente entre o que os europeus alegavam ser as comunidades antagônicas do Oriente.
A colonização do Oriente Árabe veio depois daquela das Américas, Sul e Sudeste da Ásia e África. Este último grande surto de conquista colonial repudiou ostensivamente o governo brutal e voraz do tipo que o Rei Leopoldo da Bélgica havia imposto ao Congo no final do século XIX. Em vez disso, após a Primeira Guerra Mundial, os europeus governaram por meio de eufemismo: um sistema chamado de "mandato" dominado por potências "avançadas" foi estabelecido pela nova Liga das Nações dominada por britânicos e franceses para ajudar nações menos capazes. Os novos estados libaneses e sírios abençoados pela Liga eram "provisoriamente" independentes, mas sujeitos à tutela europeia obrigatória. Com base na experiência britânica de governo "indireto" na África, as potências vitoriosas cultivaram uma fachada nativa para obscurecer a mão do colonizador. Talvez o mais importante, este colonialismo tardio alegou respeitar os novos ideais do presidente dos EUA Woodrow Wilson, o presumível pai da chamada "autodeterminação" dos povos ao redor do mundo.
Ao longo da história moderna, o peso do colonialismo ocidental em nome da liberdade e da liberdade religiosa distorceu a natureza do Oriente Médio. Transformou a geografia política da região ao criar uma série de pequenos e dependentes estados e emirados do Oriente Médio onde antes havia um grande sultanato otomano interconectado. Introduziu um novo — e ainda não resolvido — conflito entre "árabes" e "judeus" na Palestina, justamente quando uma nova identidade árabe que incluía árabes muçulmanos, cristãos e judeus parecia mais promissora. Este colonialismo ocidental tardio — último — obscureceu o fato de que a mudança do governo imperial otomano para o governo nacional árabe pós-otomano não era natural nem inevitável. O colonialismo europeu interrompeu abruptamente e remodelou um vital caminho cultural e político árabe antisectário que havia começado a tomar forma durante o último século de governo otomano. Apesar do colonialismo europeu, o ideal ecumênico e o sonho de criar sociedades soberanas maiores do que a soma de suas partes comunais ou sectárias sobreviveram até o mundo árabe do século XX.
O "homem doente da Europa" – o apelido europeu condescendente para o sultanato – não estava, de fato, em declínio terminal no início do século XX. Ao contrário das histórias antigas de rapacidade e declínio turcos, ou glorificações romantizadas do domínio otomano, a verdade é que o último século otomano viu uma nova era de coexistência ao mesmo tempo em que também inaugurou nacionalismos étnico-religiosos concorrentes, guerra e opressão à sombra da dominação ocidental. A parte violenta da história é bem conhecida; a muito mais rica ecumênica, quase nada.
Junto com quase todas as outras políticas não ocidentais no século XIX, o império otomano recuou diante da implacável agressão europeia. O império lutou para manter a soberania e se acomodar às ideias de cidadania igualitária do século XIX. Foi prejudicado pela ascensão de movimentos nacionalistas separatistas dos Bálcãs que contavam com o apoio de diferentes potências europeias. Os otomanos estavam em guerra em praticamente todas as décadas do século XIX.
Se os otomanos se preocupavam com a forma de preservar a integridade territorial de seu outrora grande império, eles também investiram em reformá-lo e remodelá-lo em quase todos os sentidos, desde seu exército e política até sua arquitetura e sociedade. O império há muito discriminava entre muçulmanos e não muçulmanos em nome da defesa da fé e da honra do islamismo. Também discriminava muçulmanos heterodoxos. Ao longo dos séculos, construiu um sistema imperial que consagrou a primazia muçulmana otomana sobre todos os outros grupos. No século XIX, os sultões otomanos remodelaram seu império como um sultanato muçulmano "civilizado" e ecumênico que professava a igualdade de todos os súditos, independentemente de sua filiação religiosa. Súditos muçulmanos, cristãos e judeus adotaram o fez vermelho como um sinal de seu otomanismo moderno compartilhado. Durante a era Tanzimat (1839-1876), o império otomano adotou oficialmente uma política de não discriminação entre muçulmanos e não muçulmanos. A ideia de igualdade entre muçulmanos e não muçulmanos no império adquiriu a força de sanção social e lei com a promulgação da constituição otomana de 1876, que declarou a igualdade de todos os cidadãos otomanos.
Não importa o quanto os otomanos secularizaram seu império, a Grã-Bretanha, a França, a Áustria e a Rússia exigiram mais concessões. Cada potência europeia alegava proteger uma ou outra comunidade cristã nativa ou outra comunidade minoritária, cada uma cobiçava uma parte dos domínios otomanos e cada uma buscava zelosamente negar a influência de seus rivais no Oriente. Essa disputa diplomática era chamada na época de "Questão Oriental". A quebra do privilégio ideológico e legal dos muçulmanos sobre os não muçulmanos no império não foi isenta de controvérsias, especialmente porque as potências europeias intervieram consistentemente no império ao longo de linhas sectárias. Os otomanos, por exemplo, aboliram o imposto medieval jizya sobre os não muçulmanos, mas prometeram à Europa em 1856 respeitar os "privilégios e imunidades espirituais" das igrejas cristãs; enquanto isentavam os não muçulmanos do serviço militar em troca de um imposto, eles recrutavam súditos muçulmanos para lutar em guerras aparentemente intermináveis; eles abriram os mercados otomanos para um influxo de produtos europeus e toleraram o proselitismo missionário ocidental dos não muçulmanos do império.
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| Uma seção do mapa de Martin e Tallis de 1851, "Turquia na Ásia", mostrando os eyalets do sul (divisões administrativas) da Síria otomana: Damasco, Trípoli, Acre e Gaza. Foto cortesia da Wikipedia |
Em julho de 1860, uma revolta anticristã irrompeu em Damasco. Apesar dos decretos promulgando a não discriminação, uma multidão muçulmana invadiu a cidade, saqueando igrejas e aterrorizando os habitantes cristãos da cidade. Jornais em Londres e Paris e sociedades missionárias condenaram o que viam como fanatismo "maometano". O imperador francês Napoleão III enviou um exército francês ao Oriente, supostamente para ajudar o sultão a restaurar a ordem em suas províncias árabes. As potências europeias criaram uma comissão de inquérito para investigar os massacres de 1860. Seus motivos humanitários, no entanto, eram condicionais e políticos. Afinal, nenhuma comissão correspondente foi formada para investigar a opressão e perseguição dos EUA a pessoas de ascendência africana ou seu extermínio de nativos americanos, as décadas de terror colonial francês na Argélia ou a supressão britânica da revolta anticolonial na Índia em 1857.
Apesar de serem apontados por observadores ocidentais como um problema peculiarmente não ocidental e até mesmo muçulmano, os massacres de 1860 refletiram uma luta global para reconciliar igualdade, diversidade e soberania que se manifestou em todo o mundo em contextos muito diferentes. Então, enquanto os otomanos enfrentavam uma crise genuína sobre como reformar e manter seu controle sobre uma população heterogênea multiétnica, multilíngue e multirreligiosa, do outro lado do mundo, os EUA estavam simultaneamente lutando a guerra mais mortal do mundo ocidental do século XIX sobre escravidão, racismo e cidadania. O motim de Damasco ocorreu logo após a última carga ilegal de africanos escravizados e brutalizados ter sido descarregada da escuna Clotilda na costa do Alabama.
Os tumultos anticristãos de 1860 em Damasco foram terríveis, mas refletiram apenas um aspecto do império otomano contemporâneo. Muito menos notado do que os episódios de violência sensacionalizados na Europa foi uma acomodação notável e generalizada, se não um abraço ativo, por muitos súditos otomanos da secularização e modernização. O império constituiu um laboratório vital para a coexistência moderna entre muçulmanos e não muçulmanos que não teve paralelo em nenhum outro lugar do mundo. Em nenhum lugar essa coexistência foi mais evidente do que nas cidades do Mashriq árabe. Do Cairo a Beirute e Bagdá, árabes de todas as religiões compartilhavam uma língua comum e mostravam pouca inclinação para se separar politicamente do império otomano.
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| Uma visão geral de Beirute c1890-1900. Foto cortesia da Biblioteca do Congresso |
After the events of 1860, the Protestant Christian convert Butrus al-Bustani opened a ‘national’ school in Beirut. At a time when American missionaries in the Levant still rejected the idea of genuinely secular education, al-Bustani’s school was both antisectarian and respectful of religious difference. During an era when Africans and Asians were enduring gross racial subordination in European empires, when Jews were being subjected to pogroms in Russia, and when white Americans were embracing racial segregation across the US South, excluding Asians from US citizenship, and herding the surviving Native Americans into pitiable reservations, the Ottoman empire encouraged – or did not stand in the way of – the opening of new inclusive ‘national’ schools, municipalities, journals, newspapers and theatres. A new army was built in the name of national unity and sovereignty. All these reforms were made more urgent by successive Ottoman military defeats against Russia and in the Balkans, and Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II’s resistance to constitutional change. In 1908, the Young Turk Revolution deposed the sultan and promised a new constitutional period of Ottoman liberty and fraternity among the various Turkish, Armenian, Albanian, Jewish and Arab elements of the Ottoman empire – not simply the absence of discrimination.
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Estudantes de música do Collège Saint Joseph de Antoura fotografados por André Salles em 1893. Foto cortesia da Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris |
Most of the secularising national reforms were far more enthusiastically pronounced than practised. They were implemented unevenly and piecemeal across the empire. Nevertheless, in the aftermath of the events of 1860, many Arab Muslims, Christians and Jews in the Mashriq believed they were participating in an ecumenical ‘renaissance’ or nahda that could be expressed in different Ottoman, Arab, religious, secular, political and cultural terms. They understood collectively that they were heading into a potentially brighter, and certainly more scientific, and more ‘civilised’ future. To be sure, from Egypt to Iraq, this nahda was dominated by urban and educated men who believed that they spoke for their respective ‘nations’. It was a renaissance in the making, not an accomplished goal or even a unitary social or political project. The nahda luminaries did not necessarily agree on the precise contours of their shared Ottoman nation any more than Americans then – or now – agree on what constitutes ideal or representative Americans.
The balance between the ecumenism of Ottoman reforms and the harsh imperative to maintain effective sovereignty was delicate. The ‘Eastern Question’ politicised the future of non-Muslim communities – eventually called ‘minorities’ – because they became simultaneously objects of European solicitude and pretexts for political and military aggression against the Ottomans. The emergence of ethnoreligious nationalisms in the Balkans exacerbated the problem when Christian Greek, Serbian, Macedonian and Bulgarian nationalists appealed to Russian, Austrian or British support seeking to break away from Ottoman control. Ottoman leaders, in turn, regarded the Turkish-speaking Muslim population as the essential core of their empire. In the last quarter of the 19th century, Armenian revolutionaries sought to emulate Balkan Christian nationalists. They appealed for European support to achieve autonomy; the Ottoman state responded with persecution.
Ottoman modernity in the shadow of Western colonialism could be both powerfully ecumenical and uncompromisingly violent. It promised both a multiethnic and multireligious sovereign future and a xenophobic world without minorities. In the Balkans and Anatolia, the imperative of sovereignty clearly trumped the commitment to ecumenism, while in the Arab Mashriq ecumenical Ottomanism flourished more easily. In the Balkans, Christians often became implacably opposed to Muslims (and other Christians) amid clashing ethnoreligious nationalisms, while in the Mashriq the Arab Christians and Muslims and Jews more easily made common cause.
One key difference was the absence of separatist nationalisms in the Mashriq. Although Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, in the rest of the Mashriq Ottoman rule remained viable. The shared Arabic language helped Arab Christians and Jews play important roles in the Arabic press, theatre, professional and women’s associations and municipalities. The leading Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, for example, was founded by a Syrian Christian émigré. Nor was it out of place that the Jewish journalist Esther Moyal would advocate for an ecumenical ‘Eastern Arab’ identity. The gradual alienation and decimation of the Armenian Christian community of Anatolia unfolded at the same time when Arab Christians and Jews coexisted with their Muslim brethren in cities such as Beirut, Haifa, Aleppo, Baghdad, as well as in British-occupied Cairo and Alexandria.
The Ottoman era ended with the calamity of the First World War. Wartime Ottoman Turkish rulers callously turned their back on the ecumenical spirit of Ottomanism at the same time as they embraced its darker statist side. In the name of national survival, these Ottomans commenced genocidal policies against Armenians. They also hanged those they considered Arab traitors in Beirut and Damascus. While a famine ravaged Mount Lebanon, Ottoman forces retreated before a British military invasion of Palestine. Jerusalem fell in December 1917. Almost a year later, the empire surrendered ignominiously.
When the victorious Allied statesmen of Britain, France and the US assembled in Paris in 1919 to decide the future of the defeated Ottoman empire, they intervened in an empire that had been substantially transformed over the preceding century. The victors of the First World War ignored the ecumenical heritage of the late Ottoman empire. Instead, they sensationalised the empire’s obvious defects and were determined to divide it up. In 1919, President Wilson blessed the partition of the Ottoman empire. The Greek invasion of Izmir set off a bloody war that led eventually to the victory of a new Turkey under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk. This new Turkey secularised itself dramatically but was also draconian in its rejection of its own ecumenical Ottoman heritage. In 1923, Turkey concluded an agreement with Greece to forcibly evict – ‘exchange’ was the euphemism used – more than a million Greeks from the new Turkey. In turn, Greece evicted hundreds of thousands of Greek-speaking Muslims. The new Turkish republic then suppressed dissenting Kurds.
The Allies, in the meantime, decided the future of the Arab Mashriq. As early as 1915, Britain had pledged to support expansive Arab Hashemite ambitions to rule an independent Arab kingdom across much of the Arab East in return for their revolt against Ottoman rule. A year later in 1916, Britain and France then secretly agreed to divide the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire between them in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. And in 1917, prompted by Zionist lobbying, the British government pledged to support the creation of a Jewish ‘national home’ in Palestine that was overwhelmingly Arab in its demographic, social and linguistic composition.
To add insult to injury, at the Paris peace conference in 1919, Britain and France blocked native Arab and Egyptian nationalists from presenting their cases for independence directly. They permitted, however, the Hashemite Emir Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein, to plead with the Allies to fulfil their wartime pledges to his father. They also allowed European Zionists to present their vision for colonising Palestine and transforming it into a Jewish state led by settlers from eastern and central Europe. And they heard from Howard Bliss, the son of an American missionary and the president of the Syrian Protestant College (today, the American University of Beirut). Bliss was allowed to speak on behalf of the inhabitants of Syria. While paternalistic to the Syrians, he was sensitive to the political mood in the former provinces of the Ottoman empire and recommended an impartial fact-finding inquiry be dispatched to the Middle East to document the political aspirations of its inhabitants by self-determination. The French were horrified by the idea of an impartial commission, and the British embarrassed, because neither had any intention of granting independence to the Arabs. Wilson himself, however, was the key interlocutor between the old and new forms of colonialism. He was deeply sympathetic to the American missionary enterprise. He also endorsed the idea of a commission.
The resulting American Section of the 1919 Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey was known simply as the King-Crane Commission after the two Americans who led it: Henry King, the president of Oberlin College in Ohio, and the philanthropist Charles Crane. Unlike the 1860 international commission that was established in the Ottoman empire, this one actually polled people in the region – and the commission collected numerous telegrams, petitions and letters from the inhabitants of the erstwhile Ottoman provinces and held hundreds of meetings with them. Neither King nor Crane were anticolonial in any revolutionary sense, but they also both genuinely believed that it was important to record accurately the wishes of the indigenous peoples of the region. They appeared to take Wilson’s commitment to self-determination as self-evident.
After a gruelling tour through Palestine, Lebanon and Syria in July 1919, King and Crane reached several bold conclusions regarding the Arab East. They recognised that most of the inhabitants of the region spoke a common language and shared a rich ecumenical culture. They admitted that the political desire of most of the native population was overwhelmingly for independence. They recommended strongly that a single Syrian state that included Palestine and Lebanon be created under an American mandate (and failing that, a British one), with robust protection for minorities. Most importantly, they said that if the Wilsonian principle of self-determination was to be taken seriously, and the voice of the native Arab majority was to be heard, the project of colonial Zionism in Palestine had to be curtailed. ‘Decisions, requiring armies to carry out, are sometimes necessary,’ they wrote, ‘but they are surely not gratuitously to be taken in the interests of a serious injustice. For the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a “right” to Palestine, based on an occupation of 2,000 years ago, can hardly be seriously considered.’
The commissioners submitted their final report to President Wilson in August 1919, but their recommendations were ignored. Their predictions about Palestine, however, proved prophetic. The US repudiated any emancipatory anticolonial interpretation of self-determination, for Wilson himself never believed in the idea that all peoples were equal or immediately deserving sovereignty. Britain and France proceeded to partition the region as if the King-Crane commission had never been sent. The British foreign minister Arthur Balfour was, at least, candid on this point. The inhabitants of Syria, he said, ‘may freely choose, but it is Hobson’s choice after all’. France was going to rule Syria and Lebanon. And Britain was going to open Palestine to colonial Zionism. ‘For in Palestine,’ Balfour wrote in August 1919, ‘we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American [King-Crane] Commission has been going through the form of asking what they are.’
No matter how intently the last colonialism of the world sold itself as a purveyor of self-determination, its Western proponents knew better. The real tragedy, however, lay not in deceit but in the divisions that this deceit exacerbated and engendered. Colonial Europe claimed to arbitrate age-old religious difference in the Middle East. In reality, it encouraged sectarian politics. The consequences of this last colonialism reverberate until today.
When the victorious Allied statesmen of Britain, France and the US assembled in Paris in 1919 to decide the future of the defeated Ottoman empire, they intervened in an empire that had been substantially transformed over the preceding century. The victors of the First World War ignored the ecumenical heritage of the late Ottoman empire. Instead, they sensationalised the empire’s obvious defects and were determined to divide it up. In 1919, President Wilson blessed the partition of the Ottoman empire. The Greek invasion of Izmir set off a bloody war that led eventually to the victory of a new Turkey under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk. This new Turkey secularised itself dramatically but was also draconian in its rejection of its own ecumenical Ottoman heritage. In 1923, Turkey concluded an agreement with Greece to forcibly evict – ‘exchange’ was the euphemism used – more than a million Greeks from the new Turkey. In turn, Greece evicted hundreds of thousands of Greek-speaking Muslims. The new Turkish republic then suppressed dissenting Kurds.
The Allies, in the meantime, decided the future of the Arab Mashriq. As early as 1915, Britain had pledged to support expansive Arab Hashemite ambitions to rule an independent Arab kingdom across much of the Arab East in return for their revolt against Ottoman rule. A year later in 1916, Britain and France then secretly agreed to divide the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire between them in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. And in 1917, prompted by Zionist lobbying, the British government pledged to support the creation of a Jewish ‘national home’ in Palestine that was overwhelmingly Arab in its demographic, social and linguistic composition.
To add insult to injury, at the Paris peace conference in 1919, Britain and France blocked native Arab and Egyptian nationalists from presenting their cases for independence directly. They permitted, however, the Hashemite Emir Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein, to plead with the Allies to fulfil their wartime pledges to his father. They also allowed European Zionists to present their vision for colonising Palestine and transforming it into a Jewish state led by settlers from eastern and central Europe. And they heard from Howard Bliss, the son of an American missionary and the president of the Syrian Protestant College (today, the American University of Beirut). Bliss was allowed to speak on behalf of the inhabitants of Syria. While paternalistic to the Syrians, he was sensitive to the political mood in the former provinces of the Ottoman empire and recommended an impartial fact-finding inquiry be dispatched to the Middle East to document the political aspirations of its inhabitants by self-determination. The French were horrified by the idea of an impartial commission, and the British embarrassed, because neither had any intention of granting independence to the Arabs. Wilson himself, however, was the key interlocutor between the old and new forms of colonialism. He was deeply sympathetic to the American missionary enterprise. He also endorsed the idea of a commission.
The resulting American Section of the 1919 Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey was known simply as the King-Crane Commission after the two Americans who led it: Henry King, the president of Oberlin College in Ohio, and the philanthropist Charles Crane. Unlike the 1860 international commission that was established in the Ottoman empire, this one actually polled people in the region – and the commission collected numerous telegrams, petitions and letters from the inhabitants of the erstwhile Ottoman provinces and held hundreds of meetings with them. Neither King nor Crane were anticolonial in any revolutionary sense, but they also both genuinely believed that it was important to record accurately the wishes of the indigenous peoples of the region. They appeared to take Wilson’s commitment to self-determination as self-evident.
After a gruelling tour through Palestine, Lebanon and Syria in July 1919, King and Crane reached several bold conclusions regarding the Arab East. They recognised that most of the inhabitants of the region spoke a common language and shared a rich ecumenical culture. They admitted that the political desire of most of the native population was overwhelmingly for independence. They recommended strongly that a single Syrian state that included Palestine and Lebanon be created under an American mandate (and failing that, a British one), with robust protection for minorities. Most importantly, they said that if the Wilsonian principle of self-determination was to be taken seriously, and the voice of the native Arab majority was to be heard, the project of colonial Zionism in Palestine had to be curtailed. ‘Decisions, requiring armies to carry out, are sometimes necessary,’ they wrote, ‘but they are surely not gratuitously to be taken in the interests of a serious injustice. For the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a “right” to Palestine, based on an occupation of 2,000 years ago, can hardly be seriously considered.’
The commissioners submitted their final report to President Wilson in August 1919, but their recommendations were ignored. Their predictions about Palestine, however, proved prophetic. The US repudiated any emancipatory anticolonial interpretation of self-determination, for Wilson himself never believed in the idea that all peoples were equal or immediately deserving sovereignty. Britain and France proceeded to partition the region as if the King-Crane commission had never been sent. The British foreign minister Arthur Balfour was, at least, candid on this point. The inhabitants of Syria, he said, ‘may freely choose, but it is Hobson’s choice after all’. France was going to rule Syria and Lebanon. And Britain was going to open Palestine to colonial Zionism. ‘For in Palestine,’ Balfour wrote in August 1919, ‘we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American [King-Crane] Commission has been going through the form of asking what they are.’
No matter how intently the last colonialism of the world sold itself as a purveyor of self-determination, its Western proponents knew better. The real tragedy, however, lay not in deceit but in the divisions that this deceit exacerbated and engendered. Colonial Europe claimed to arbitrate age-old religious difference in the Middle East. In reality, it encouraged sectarian politics. The consequences of this last colonialism reverberate until today.
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