Comment by pron
1 month ago
> If you mean the Rashidun, Umayyad, or Abbasid Caliphates, then those were not simply "Arabian" empires - they were Islamic. Non-Arab peoples were deeply involved at every stage. The unifying goal wasn't to spread Arab nationalism but the spread of Islam.
Well, nationalism is a very modern concept, and things gets murky once we go further back. The very same could be said about applying the moniker "European" to the Roman Empire or even to the crusades. They were no more European than the Arab conquests were Arab.
> But the term "colonization" (especially with the European background involved) is very loaded, if not misleading.
That's true, but that would also apply to Israel and Zionism. There is no kind of European colonialism - of the settler or non-settler variety - that would cleanly apply. Even the Jews living in Europe who were the ancestors of a minority of Israeli Jews, created the Zionist movement because Jews were not considered European or Western by their environment.
The point is that in history, there are often important similarities and important differences, and we need to be careful when it comes to the extent of comparisons.
> both are rooted in ethno-supremacist, ethnic-cleansing ideologies, and both commit mass killings against civilian populations
Yes, and the same, of course, applies to Arab nationalism, which, at least in part, expressly allied itself with Nazi Germany.
There are many prisms of historical analysis. You can look at similarities or at differences; you can look in a specific era or across era. But if you apply different prisms to different groups and then compare them, it starts looking as less of an attempt of historical understanding and more as an attempt to use history carelessly to judge the politics of the present.
> Yes, and the same, of course, applies to Arab nationalism, which, at least in part, expressly allied itself with Nazi Germany.
I'm not so sure about that. Are you referring to specific, minority individuals pushing what you are claiming, as opposed to a more systematic approach? And how much of what happened was a reaction to the zionist immigration from Europe?
The fact that by the time of WWII, most Arabs were Muslims - and such an ideology explicitly contradicts Islam. We also know that the movement was heavily in response to (the also misguided) Turkish national movement - Young Turks during the last days of the Ottoman Caliphate.
The Arab nationalist movements in Egypt and Syria were primarily anti-colonial and not really aligned with the Nazis. After WWII, Arab nationalism (e.g. Ba'thism) was shaped by opposition to western imperialism and zionism as opposed to any nazi connection.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relations_between_Nazi_Germany...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_fascism
As to it being a reaction, be careful not to look at things from a perspective that sets out to pass a moral judgment on history. Virtually everything in history is a reaction to something else. Zionism was a reaction to antisemitism and part of a larger trend of national movements; even Nazism was, in a way, a reaction to Germany's defeat in WW1 and what ensued (and a minority ideology until they took control and then that didn't matter anymore) and so on and so on.
It's perfectly okay to say that certain actions in history were morally right, wrong, or complicated, but everyone involved in any of them felt their actions were justified by something they believed or had experienced. There are no good or bad nations. Virtually every society has done both good and terrible things at different points in time.