The Relationship Among Islamic Militancy

D.) and established in the Arabian towns of Mecca and Medina in the 620s. It is one of the three great monotheistic religions which originated in the Near East in ancient times, the others being Judaism and Christianity. Islamic religion and culture were spread throughout a greathearted come apart of the world by the Arab conquests carried out by Muhammad's successors, in particular during the Caliphates of the Umayyads (660-749) and the Abbasids (750-1258). Hitti says that "within 100 years after the death of Muhammad his chase were the masters of an empire greater than that of Rome" (1). During the latter part of the Abbasid period, the unity of the Arab world disintegrated. Islam, however, continued to spread, and its influence deepened in the bosom East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, South and Southeast Asia as well up as other areas under the Ottoman Empire, the power of which ailing in the 16th century and finally collapsed in 1918.

During the interwar period, about but not all Moslem nations remained under the authority of Western colonial powers. The rest achieved independence after earth War II and commanded the allegiance of a very self-aggrandizing number of Muslims in North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and elsewhere.

During the colonial period, the original force behind independence movements was secular nationalism. Lewis says that, during the 19th century, "the more or less important new ideas came fr

om Europe, curiously patriotism and liberalism" (39). To respond to the challenge of Western dominance, Arab and other Muslim cultures sought in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries to borrow ideas, institutions and technology from the West.

Nationalist movements were often dominated by Western-educated elites, which, in some countries such as Syria and Lebanon in the speedy post-war period, included Christians. These new elites were in most Muslim countries allied with and at times repressed by more tralatitious ruling elites, such as monarchies in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Jordan, the officeholder class in countries such as Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Pakistan, and with various patriot political parties, such as the Baathists in Syria and Iraq. The resulting post-independence regimes were often sniffy but nevertheless adopted outward political structures and institutions, including constitutions, legislatures and, in a few countries, democratic elections.

"Only doth God hinder you to make friends of those who, on

Maalouf, Amin. The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. New York: Schocken, 1985.

Lapidus says a underlying theme has been differences between purists who regard Islam

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