What is the nature of the state in Islamic civilization?
Why does this question arise at this time?
What is the truth and who benefits from it?
The state is the instrument of Islamic civilization by which it establishes the system of life brought by Islam and protects the society emanating from it.
The history of Islamic civilization witnessed the fall of the state more than once, but it witnessed the steadfastness of society each time, which represented the state in its responsibilities and brought it back.
What is new that is happening today is the collapse of the state and society together, the displacement of people and the replacement of strange peoples (Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon), which means the disappearance of society in its cultural and demographic connotations and further complicates the process of restoring the state.
This unprecedented transformation takes place amid the regional conflict between two systems: the “state and rule of law” system, in which Turkey represents the center of gravity, and the “non-state and militia rule” system represented by Iran, and the latter’s seizure of many countries and cities.
The slogan raised by the societies that have lost everything: expelling the militias, restoring the state, reviving society, in the midst of this context a discussion opens in the media about the character of 5 centuries of state rule for these societies.
The regular schools that introduced Islamic civilization into one of its most fertile cultural eras are the product of the Seljuk rule known as the “social revival” era, because the society gathered its social and cultural forces during it and was before that under the rule of the militias (Bouhia) and under conditions of corruption and loss of security like the one in Baghdad today .
The state and society after the Ottoman Empire
In 1923 the Ottoman Empire fell, but its civil system remained in force in its previous states, known as the Personal Status Law, and the nascent Arab state came as a miniature model of the Ottoman Empire bearing its genetic social characteristics. The nascent Arabic is the subject of the state and civil order from the Ottoman Empire, and this involuntary (social) bond continued until after the fall of the Arab state.
The Iraqi, Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese Arabs who are reviewing the Ottoman archives today in Istanbul in search of documents that prove their lost rights or the rights of their cities after the fall of their countries, are in fact reviewing the backup copy of their countries, which is the clearest picture of the Ottoman Empire’s protection of the state system and society in the countries it ruled 5 Centuries, the Ottoman archive covers all aspects of life in the Ottoman states (currently the Arab countries), which is contrary to the image that humanity has built of the relationship of the invading countries with the peoples they occupy.
This archive (or lifeline) is a product of the rule of the Ottoman Empire over the Arab countries, which were before it under the rule of the (Safavid) militias. “Because the society gathered its social and cultural forces during it, and before that it was under the rule of the militias (Buwayhiya) and under conditions of corruption and lack of security like the one that Baghdad is experiencing today.
The common denominator between the Ottoman and Seljuk eras is the restoration of the state and the recovery of Arab society from the quagmire of militias. Political and social over its geographical patch wherever this patch is.
Building the modern Arab state
The most valuable thing that the Ottoman Empire left behind (in its previous states) was the social contract (the basis on which societies rest), and it was unique among its peers. The personal status of their religions, which contemporary democracies do not guarantee to their citizens. Minorities were assured of their privacy, sensed belonging to the large community, and developed rare forms of creativity and professional sincerity, a social image that Europe later adopted and called it “multiculturism.”
The Arab countries that were established after the First World War and recorded a rapid revival were based on the (Ottoman) social contract, which I found ready, and were able to resume civil life under a new political system, and its establishment was a procedural process, and one of the most distinguished is the Iraqi Republic, which fell under the American occupation The Iranian regime in 2003 and the Syrian Arab Republic, which effectively fell in the early seventies of the last century, after the Nusayri sectarian militias seized power in it.
The irony is that the social contract held out in the First World War and restored the state, but it collapsed under militia rule in the 21st century and the state failed to return.
The state and society were the common denominator in those alliances, and in their absence (alliances), societies become soft targets for population uprooting, and this is a constant rule, and Damascus today, like Baghdad, is subjected to population uprooting by organized foreign migrations that change its Arab face at a high rate.
Is it a coincidence that the question appears?
The resurgence of a historical question (in the media and not in academic seminars) is not without an occasion.
Among the major landmarks that reoriented the compass of history in Islamic civilization are the political alliances between their peoples that freed them from the mafias of populism and brought them back to the rule of the state, foremost of which is the Abbasid-Seljuk alliance in the fourth century AH that liberated Baghdad from the Buyid militias and restored prestige to the Abbasid state, then liberated The Ottomans moved to Baghdad in the year 1534 AD-940 AH from the Safavid militias and assassination squads that targeted the elites of society (Iran repeated the operation after the occupation of Iraq in 2003).
Baghdad is a city in its Arabness to the Ottoman Empire, as it was a non-Arab city under the influence of the organized settlement of the mystical tribes coming to it from Central Asia (such as the human waves of Iranians, Afghans and Pakistanis who cross the borders of Iraq without documents and settle on its land today). Baghdad and corrected the population map.
The state and society were the common denominator in those alliances, and in their absence (alliances), societies become soft targets for population uprooting, and this is a constant rule, and Damascus today, like Baghdad, is subjected to population uprooting by organized foreign migrations that change its Arab face at a high rate.
Here is a question: How is information such as the “re-Arabization of Baghdad” absent from educational curricula and from Arab nationalist pamphlets, and for whose benefit?
Why not pour this truth (in the Arab and Turkish sides) over the embers of national differences and extinguish it once and for all?
What is the philosophy of a non-Arab country behind the re-Arabization of an Arab city?
Why did the Ottoman Empire not bring in people from the Turks and settle them in Baghdad, as Iran does today?
What really is the difference between the two philosophies?
These multiple questions attract one answer: the concept of the state and society, which is sufficient to lay the foundations for a regional culture that is more inclusive than the Ottoman social concept that was before the demise of the Ottoman state, because everyone (not only Muslims) clings to it to save lives and money from the populist mill.
People's Anxiety
Contemporary populism is uncomfortable with the widespread and steady intellectual polarization in Arab societies that rejects the “non-state and militia rule” sponsored by Iran and is biased towards the “state and rule of law” system represented by Turkey. For change today after a century has passed, and the memory of populism does not forget that its raids on Arab societies were throughout history related to the state of the Arab-Turkish alliance, existence and non-existence.
It reinforces the concern of populism that the alignment of the Arabs of Syria with the Turkish protection in the north of their country was not siding with the Turkish rule over the Arab rule, but rather with the state in Ankara over the militias in Damascus. Turkey to join the British Mandate government in Baghdad, as evidenced by the documents of the League of Nations committee supervising the Mosul referendum in 1926 and confirmed by the narrations of the fathers and grandfathers.
Mosul did not choose between the Arabism of Iraq and the Turkishness of Anatolia, but rather clinged to the state and the open (Ottoman) society that made it a regional social and industrial capital for a wide area of nationalities, in return for a geographically closed national system that would cut its social and economic ties with its natural vital space and turn it into a local community, which is what happened.
But the fresh Syrian example is the most important, as it constitutes an intellectual (voluntary) revolution after a century of forced national education and represents an indication that is difficult to infer from another path, which is that the person of Islamic civilization tends, by the nature of his formation, towards the state wherever it is on the territory of his civilization (by migrating to it or summoning it). , a concept that represents an earthquake for the populist entities, and accordingly, the populist media is the real beneficiary of questioning the character of the Ottoman Empire’s rule of the Arab countries, which (questioning) empties the conflict around our region from its cultural content and turns it into a purely security conflict in which those who possess weapons and hold the land, namely the militias, prevail.
unintended tributaries
The question (the posed) is nourished by tributaries that come from outside the sources of populism, specifically from the culture of the battle (nationalism) that erupted between the Arabs and the Turks in the two decades ending in the Ottoman Empire, and intensified after the 1909 revolution that brought the germ of nationalism to the state and formed its actual end and provoked a similar reaction I have a few Arabs.
This culture was distinguished by several things: it was written by the pens of (Christian) minorities with the aim of getting rid of the Ottoman Empire (as its book stated), and it focuses on two decades without 5 centuries of the age of the Ottoman Empire, and it uses emotions on documents, which makes it many mistakes and short-sighted.
There are other tributaries that stem from reading history in an academic way that is not sensitive to its vital terrain and takes from it as guiding points in drawing the road map for the future.
Slipping into feeding the populist discourse is easy, but this does not excuse these two important spectrums in society (national and academic) from caution, as they are an important (mass and scientific) gap in the fateful battle with populism and its project to demolish the state and uproot society.
clear the arena
The responsibility for the aforementioned question does not fall entirely on the skeptics or the slippers, as the Arabs and the Turks left the door ajar in order to hunt down an easy populist with murky waters.
Excessive sensitivity in Turkey towards the “Ottoman” with its regional social connotation (out of the keenness not to weaken national sentiments, which is a lofty goal calculated for the major regional state compared to the Iranian national and sectarian riots) made the Ottoman concept oriented towards reviving Ottoman historical events outside its intellectual templates at times, or as a synonym. Turkish” in its local national sense at other times.
Therefore, the “Ottoman” did not make its way in academic institutions and think tanks as a topic under applied sociology, which is one of the most important tributaries of the “psychology” of the masses and in contact with the living conditions. (The unity of civil society and social conditions between the Arab countries and Turkey) is incapable of explaining itself (for populism to interpret it as an invasion) and incapable of breathing soul into the unity of destiny between the Arab and Turkish societies.
The (independent) think tanks in the countries usually undertake the task of extricating the state from the predicament of conflicting culture with politics, so that culture does not fall victim to politics and the latter does not falter over the first, and the Ottoman archive (this unique institution) is still largely the “repository of documents” and the need is urgent Until he comes out to a broader role and has centers of thought that weave from his documents a culture that occupies the empty space of what is needed by the stability of our societies.
On the Arab side, the sensitivity of the concept of “internationalism” to nationalists who respect Turkey stands as a barrier between the transformation of feelings into concepts, while Islamists (in general) confuse Arab nationalism with Arabism, which is the substance of Islam. The Arabs and the Turks free vast areas of their societies from the social intellectual presence, and their edifices become porous and easy for populist penetration or any future danger. On the contrary, the unity of social destiny gives birth to the unity of the security destiny, which in turn gives birth to the unity of economic destiny, and the person becomes a voluntary guardian of security and an automatic customer of the regional economy.
Among the repercussions of the absence of the social contract is the disintegration of society into its primary components (religious, national, and sectarian) and the emergence of slums that replace cities, followed by the intensification of separatist referendums that will be easier than the ones that followed World War I and with worse results.
On the cusp of World War III
The countries of the world are searching for the past today in search of common denominators as they prepare for the next unknown;
Russia is collecting the fragments of the former Soviet Union through sectarian (orthodox) charges and wars, and Europe is mobilizing culturally, and its radio stations address the peoples of the continent one by one through specially prepared cultural programs under the title “The Bear is Coming Soon” (the Russian Bear) introducing them to their true friends and enemies and the common imminent danger, Populism is taking over half of the Middle East, and the Anglo-Saxon peoples (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) say to the English: Stop criticizing the mistakes of the British Empire and instead be proud of the Queen and democracy and focus on the danger of China.
In the midst of this global cultural mobilization and peoples’ focus on the big state, we ask: Was the Ottoman Empire a conqueror or an invader?
Intellectual confusion resurfaces in our ranks after an important stage in which people distinguished between those who build the state and society in our region and those who destroy them.
The course of events must be modified
We, the Arabs and the Turks, are approaching the third world war with a weaker social cohesion and unity of destiny than it was on the eve of the first world war (despite all the national dispute they ignited between us). We build new, stable societies on it (Iraq after the occupation, for example).
Among the repercussions of the absence of the social contract is the disintegration of society into its primary elements (religious, national, and sectarian) and the emergence of slums that replace cities, followed by the intensification of separatist referendums that will be easier than those that followed the First World War and with worse results. To the new state (Iraq), but the amputated body soon became the metropolis and lung of Iraq, due to the strength of the social contract at that time, and Aleppo on the other side.
Returning the displaced to Mosul and Aleppo and to the rest of the addicted destroyed by the way of relief programs (providing shelter, food, and the mosque and the school) will not return them to metropolitan areas, but to population centers, and they will not enable them to perform their functions as happened to them after the First World War.
The Third World War is different from the two previous ones and takes the form of a challenge in every region. It is economic in East Asia and military in Europe and Central Asia (the former Soviet Union), while in the Arab-Turkish region, it is a ghostly social against an invisible enemy that the region (especially Turkey and Iraq) has known and exhausted. In lives and money, the moment will come when a cessation of hostilities (military and economic) will be announced on the fronts of the world and our fronts will remain raging, as happened after the First World War.
And our region (after 100 years) looks like Swiss cheese in which holes dominate (the areas where there are no countries such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen).
reverse engineering
Islamic civilization is an international civilization, and what is considered red lines for others are green lines, then this is indicated by its (Hijri) calendar, which is an algebraic summation of the achievements of the peoples (Arab, Turkish, Circassian and Kurdish) that successively ruled, and without the concept of "green lines" the calendar has no meaning The Arabs won in Persia, the Turks won in Iraq, the Circassians won in Jerusalem and the Berbers won in Andalusia (Islamic Arabic), all under the concept of “interference from outside the political map and from within the civilized map.” Obscene and miserable goal.
The question is: Was the Ottoman Empire a conqueror or a conqueror?
It is not a question about the past, but rather a question about the present and the future and about the greatest common denominator (after Islam) between Arabs and Turks, which is the state and society. (In the Khaldunian sense), which the Arabs and Turks met each time and met again, and it calls for intellectual templates that gather the fragments of their region at the beginning of the 21st century, just as the intellectual templates dispersed it at the beginning of the 20th century.