16
~The Crisis of
Modernity
1357-1385 AH
1939-1966 CET
HE BLOODIEST OUTBURST in the history of violence started in 1939
and raged for six long years. Once again, Germany was battling France
and Britain. Once again the United States came in late but decided the out-
come. Parts of the configuration had changed this time, to be sure: Russia
was now the Soviet Union, the Ottomans were missing, Japan had grown
mighty-but in the end, this bloodbath only finished what World War I
had begun. The old colonial empires suffered death blows, and the old
alignments of power became obsolete. Britain came out of the war starving,
France in ruins, Germany destroyed and divided. With the gunfire fading,
two new superpowers stood astride the globe, and both were soon armed
with thermonuclear bombs capable of destroying the human race. The next
chapter of world history would be dominated by their competition.
Other narratives continued to play out, however, beneath the surface of
the bipolar Cold War struggle, including the submerged narrative of Islam
as a world-historical event. The hunger for independence, which had built
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