246 DESTINY DISRUPTED
5 million Arabs happened to be living there as well and no one could
fathom where they had come from or what they were doing there. They
didn't seem to have any function, and whatever they subsisted on, it was an
almost completely separate economy from the one the French Algerians
were involved in.
By 1850, Europeans controlled every part of the world that had once
called itself Dar al-Islam. They lived in these countries as an upper class,
they ruled them directly or decided who would rule, they controlled there-
sources, they dictated the policies, and they circumscribed the daily lives of
their people. In places such as Egypt, Iran, and India, there were dubs that
the native people could not enter because they were Egyptian or Iranian or
Indian. Europeans had achieved this dominance without any grand war or
broadscale assault. The Europeans were scarcely even aware that there had
been a struggle and that they had won. But Muslims noticed, because it's al-
ways harder to ignore a rock you're under than a rock you're on.