Chapter 10
MULLAHS AND MACHINE GUNS:
COLONIAL WARS IN THE
MIDDLE EAST
By the middle of the nineteenth century the European drive to colonialism
began to accelerate. During previous eras the Europeans had used their
long-range sailing ships and gunpowder weapons to establish defended
trading posts in much of what we now know as the Third World. Many
of these early imperial experiments had flourished, India being the prime
example. Some, like the United States, had not, or at least not under the
imperial flag. With the Napoleonic Wars behind them, the old European
nations as well as the new United States continued the process that would
colonize virtually the entire world land surface.
This new colonial drive fell heavily on the Muslim peoples. Although
Turkey shielded much of the Middle East behind the eroding ramparts of
her empire, most other Muslim peoples were forced to accept European
colonial authorities. Around the world, Muslims awoke to the forces of
the outside world, and thus began a modernizing process that they actively
detested. This unfortunate experience with colonial rule may be one thread
in the reluctance of many Islamic religious teachers to accept the realities
of the modern world.
The thin edge of colonial expansion was, of course, military force. New
advances in steam power, metallurgy, chemistry, and physics, allowed the
Western world to easily impose its will on the backward African and Asian
Muslim nations. The decades between 1850 and 1900 saw the advent of
breech-loading weapons, efficient rifling, and the machine gun. Fast
steamers quickly carried these weapons and their ammunition to the the-