I recently watched “The Road to 9/11,” a one-hour PBS documentary that succinctly presents the history of the modern Middle East from 1918 to the present day in terms of social politics and global history. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the complex region without needing a politics degree or politics courses.
With apologies to the producers of the film, I’ll summarize the film here.
September 11 Essay: The Causes of 9/11
The Ottoman Empire, an Islamic power for roughly 1,300 years, controlled most of the Middle East until 1918. In World War I, it joined the Central Powers — the eventual losers. Following their victory, the Allies dismembered the empire, deposed the sultan, occupied the capital, created new provinces, and chose pro-Western leaders to rule them. Many of these new provinces were comprised of competing Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, as well as competing tribes and ethnic groups, because the European colonial strategy at the time was to divide — and then conquer – peoples. (These divisions would become increasingly important.)
Soon, people began rioting for independence. The first country to become independent was Turkey. In 1919, Mustafa Ataturk, who led the insurrection, wanted to modernize Turkey and bring it into the twentieth century by abolishing the Caliphate, making the country officially secular and ensuring that women were equal. Ataturk was successful. It is hard to overstate the significance of these reforms to many religious Muslims. They believed that Islam was not “whole” without a Caliphate, and they were angry that Turkey’s growth was a result of heretical notions and “foreign ideas” imported from the West. These Muslims despise Ataturk and everything he represented.
In the 1920s, the House of Saud was consolidating its control over what would become Saudi Arabia. To secure its control, the royal family formed an alliance with radical Islamic clerics who were opposed to modernization and liberal Muslim thought. These clerics were allowed to do whatever they wished as long as they supported the government. In Egypt, a new group named the Muslim Brotherhood was formed in response to the view that Muslims would lose their faith and heritage if they embraced “Westernization” and feminism. The Muslim Brotherhood wanted to restore the Caliphate and generally had two wings who supported different strategies: one was dedicated to performing charity and good works, and the other focused on drastic, violent means. The Brotherhood would be the inspiration for similar groups — like al-Qaeda — in other countries.
In the 1930s, Arab leaders allied themselves with the Nazis in Germany because, as the Arab saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy of my friend.” After all, the Nazis were fighting the Allied countries who had colonized the Middle East and, in their view, brought foreign and heretical ideas. Anti-Semitism had actually been rare in the Middle East until the Nazis began spreading their propaganda in Arab countries.
Following the devastation of World War II, Great Britain was unable to keep its colonies in the Middle East. So independent states were formed — including Israel in 1948. To Arab countries, the existence was Israel was yet another extension of colonial Europe — even though the Arabs rejected a plan that would have created another independent state for the Arab people known as Palestinians alongside Israel. Immediately after Israel declared its independence, the Arab countries declared war — and lost. This defeat was viewed as an utter humiliation because five whole countries could not defeat 500,000 Jews. Soon after the war, most of the leaders of Arab countries were deposed or killed.
In the 1950s, a new generation of leaders arose in much of the Arab world who built authoritarian, repressive governments that were founded on animosity towards Israel. In Egypt, President Nasser wanted to unify the Arab world under an anti-Western, socialist platform. Nasser allied himself with the Soviet Union, which wanted to increase its influence among Arab countries as a way to gain additional support against the United States. The United States began to support Israel as a counterweight. (The Cold War was a global chess game.) Nasser marginalized the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, and he jailed or executed the group’s leaders. However, the group grew on the street — not in the least due to support from the United States.
Nasser’s socialist policies failed miserably, plunging the country into economic chaos. To raise his support and deflect criticism, Nasser was about to lead several Arab countries into the Six-Day War against Israel in 1967. The Jewish State, however, pre-emptively attacked and won. This was yet another humiliation for the Arab and Muslim world. (Fundamentalists blamed it on the fact that Muslims had turned away from Islam.) Following this defeat, some of the most repressive dictatorships arose in the Middle East.
In the 1970s, oil began to affect the geo-political situation. Countries that became rich from oil revenue, like Saudi Arabia, had little motivation to create a functioning, free-market economy. These authoritarian governments used the profits to stifle dissent and cement relationships with radical clerics, who were allowed to preach whatever they wanted. Soon, the new, radical philosophy of Wahhabism — which advocated for a “jihad” against everything modern — arose, and it would eventually inspire people like Osama bin Laden and the future leaders of Hamas and Hizbollah. The Saudi Arabian government funded Islamic mosques and schools around the world only if they would preach the views of these clerics, who reinterpreted Islamic law to permit suicide even though traditional teachings had deemed it a “mortal sin.”
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