What the West ignores: Islamic Terror is French Colonialism’s byproduct

What the West ignores: Islamic Terror is French Colonialism’s byproduct.

By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Many interests in conflict; many projects in dispute; many groups in fight; many countries in war, and almost all the regional peoples in oppression! This is the gloomy environment that reigns from the North Atlantic Coast of Africa up to faraway India. With the honorable (but somewhat questionable and certainly improvable) exception of Turkey and Israel, a Dark Age of Cruelty, Ignorance, Barbarism, and Anti-Human Bestializing covers no less than 17 million km2!

Atop of all that the Islamic Terrorism that shamelessly vindicates to the Entire Mankind that the Word of God is at the pocket of Ossama Bin Laden, and hundreds of thousands of illiterate and idiotic sheikhs, who propagate Hatred and Vengeance, Ignorance and Idiocy, like the late sheikh Shaarawi, a pathetic minister of the (erroneously appreciated in the West) assassinated President Anwar el Sadat. What can an Innocent, Gullible, and Naïve US foreign policy do?

Anti-Colonial America was deceived for two centuries by the European Colonial powers, namely France and England.

Certainly, it took a great theoretical background to elaborate the Enlightened Principles of the Declaration of Independence. Indisputably, it took more of a simple political vision to abolish slavery. Undoubtedly, it took more than ordinary diplomatic achievements to deliver Latin American peoples from the Early Colonial, Spanish and Portuguese, subjugation. And undeniably, it took a colossal effort to help Europe diffuse and implement Democracy, Human Rights and Freedom during WW I, WW II, and last but not least the 1945 – 1991 Cold War. But what should come next?

Colonialism in Africa and Asia is in its greatest part what the traditional European colonialists called ‘the Oriental Problem’. The term was rather a euphemism, because in its real essence it meant ‘the Islamic Problem’. To perceive it, as it pleased their preconceived schemes of destruction of the four Islamic states that expanded over the entire aforementioned area, the European powers went on establishing academic disciplines, namely the Orientalism (encompassing Egyptology, Assyriology, Hittitology, Iranology, Indology, Islamology, Arabology, Sinology, and various other sectors).

For no less than two centuries, American administrations failed to understand that the US, as a genuinely anti-Colonial force, could not and should not accept the academic – historical Model of Orientalism, because it is essentially Colonial, and consequently deeply Anti-American of nature, target and end. For two centuries, Orientalism expanded from Europe to America under various forms and ways. Either American natives studied branches of the Orientalism (that were previously developed by the Colonial pioneers) or Europeans moved to the States, expanding – innocently but disastrously – their Colonial Model. That happened at the prejudice of the real American, Anti-Colonial, interests.

Even worse, whereas Academia and Quai d’ Orsay constitute effectively one group of power in Paris, the Government in Washington was never aligned with American universities, being disastrously ‘detached’ from research centers, erudite scholars and intellectuals. There was never an American Andre Malraux!

Assuming that the problematic case of a totalitarian regime in the Middle East is possibly similar to that of a Latin American military regime, America entered into the most troublesome part of the world in a very gullible way.

Yet, there have been several American scholars, who rejected critical aspects of the Colonial Historical Model. Prof. Martin Bernal’s ‘Black Athena’ is a work of colossal dimensions that rejects totally and damages irreversibly the falsehood taught in Sorbonne and Cambridge, Heidelberg and Vienna, Turin and Munich.

Prof. Edouard Said’s Orientalism is a thunderous refutation of the academic – historical French falsehood that has been propagated over two centuries allover the world.

Any American administration would be very naïve to think that, without instrumentalizing such conclusions and approaches, it could achieve anything in the Middle East, let alone win over the Islamic Terrorism.

The Colonial Scheme is of French invention: a tool to lead France to World Domination.

Speaking of the Colonial Historical Model, one must have a very clear understanding of its origin. In the beginning of the 19th century, Russia was already a vast empire, but was mostly ruling uninhabited parts of Northern Asia. When Russia expanded in the Caucasus Mountains and in Central Asia (at the prejudice of the Ottoman Empire and the Qadjar Empire of Iran), the Russian colonialism took just the form of Christian Orthodox clash with Islam. Russian Orientalists imitated the work of mostly French and German scholars during the 19th and the 20th centuries, before introducing the method / system / viewpoint of Historical Materialism that is of French – German philosophical background (Lumieres – Hegel – Comte – Karl Marx/ Friederich Engels).

Austria – Hungary, larger and more important than the US at the global level until the beginning of the 20th century, was a great European power without colonial aspirations. Austrian scholars competed with their French and British colleagues, but there was no real use of the Austrian scholars’ Orientalist conclusions made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Wien. Austrians simply followed the French Historical Orientalist Model. On the other hand, the clashes between Austria – Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (until the Austrian – Hungarian annexation of Bosnia – Herzegovina) were a later form of Medieval Christian – Islamic conflict.

Italy and Germany came very late to the realm of the European National states (1860 and 1870 respectively). Their colonial aspirations were just a superficial politico-military imitation of, and opposition to, France and England (mostly Cameroon and Tanganyika for Germany, Libya and the Dodecanese islands, Abyssinia and Eastern Somalia for Italy). Unquestionably there were Italian and German pioneering Orientalists before the national unification of both countries. However, the kingdoms of Piedmont and Prussia were certainly significant European powers, but had no colonial aspirations.

And after the Italian and the German unification, one cannot find any indication that Orientalism was or would be instrumentalized for the needs of the respective foreign policies. The Italian Imperial ideal of a Mediterranean ‘Mare Nostrum’ was an embryonic nationalistic dream that did not imply any conceptualization of how the dream would come real. On the other hand, the German Ideal ‘Berlin – Baghdad’ was a threat to the Colonial schemes of France and Britain, but it was mainly political – economic of nature, and certainly superficial. We have no indication that a single German scholar understood what the French worked out, what the French colonial target was and/or would be, and to what extent Humanities had already been instrumentalized by the French for the purposes of their colonial scheme. German Orientalists did not understand for a single moment that they were rather serving a Historical Model that would bring the destruction of their country and of its foremost ally, the Ottoman Empire.

Many other European countries developed various academic branches of Orientalism, notably Holland, Belgium (both significant colonial powers but with involvement outside the focal area, the latter in Congo and the former in Indonesia and Guyana), Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden. But again, the local Orientalism was an imitation of the French Historical Model, and in addition, there was no use of it at the level of foreign policy. Spain and Portugal came late to the realm of the significant Orientalist academia, and they were the collapsing colonial powers of an earlier phase of Colonialism in which the clash was religious of character (Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador) whenever and wherever it occurred.

England was the only country that followed the same path with France, using academic knowledge for the needs of its colonial policy. But contrarily to France, England did not generate ideologies, like Pan-Arabism, and did not lead the effort. Quite similarly to what happened in the very first colonial event in the Middle East, namely Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, England followed from close distance, exploited the mistakes of the rival power, while deploying more limited but certainly more effective per case effort. During and after WW I, and following the Mandate for Iraq and Palestine, the UK ‘used’ Pan-Arabism widely; but what was the British contribution to the formation of earlier stages of Pan-Arabism during the 19th century? Very poor if compared to France’s, as we will see later on.

Why Orientalism? The Nature and the Target of the French Colonial Scheme

America failed to realize that, although emanating from the environment of the French Revolution, Napoleon went to a diametrically opposed direction than that of the then newly born US. Under academic and political demagoguery, presumably fighting for the rights of people, Napoleon and Napoleonic France attempted and succeeded something that contravened all the Principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Under the good coverage of Enlightenment, Knowledge, Discovery, Academic Research, supposed Love for the Antiquity and its Mysteries, what was attempted and successfully carried out was
1. the dismemberment of other states
2. the political bondage of most of the local populations
3. the establishment of uncultured, falsely and perversely educated (in France – center of distribution of bogus-degrees ‘bon pour l’ Orient’) local elites that would be easily manipulated at all levels, ensuring therefore political division and wars, unprecedented political oppression, tyranny of the most hideous form, religious repression, violation of all rights of all the local minorities, absolute social misery, administrative dysfunction, educational perversion, barbarism, and ultimate darkness
4. the engulfment of the entire area into permanent economic underdevelopment, political insignificance, and the most inhuman barbarism.

Orientalism: search for and knowledge of Oriental Antiquity that is kept out of the modern education and culture of the local, Oriental peoples

It may look horrible, but it is as simple as that. And what is not said openly in the previous paragraph must be stressed here: the Colonial Scheme was conceived as a way to colonize and subdue the four vast Islamic countries (Morocco, Ottoman Empire, Empire of Iran, and Mogul India, four countries ruling all the area between the Atlantic and the Pacific), not to diffuse Humanism, Enlightenment, Democracy and Civil Society.

It was not just a plan of military victory and political imposition. It was a plan of spreading Darkness in order to obtain Supremacy. It was a second version of Crusades, but at this time there was no religious clash (and how could it be, after France had already rejected Christianity by imposing the Day of the Supreme Being as national day in a revolutionary freemasonic context?) there was no explicit or implicit confrontation between Christianity and Islam, and there was no sympathy and/or particular interest for the Christian and/or the non-Islamic minorities in the entire area. The entire area was viewed as an object to hate.

Certainly, the entire area was viewed first as an object to study – and in a typically French pompous way! But this was not a study to be diffused! The French Savants, who accompanied Napoleon in his Expedition to Egypt (1798), deployed a great interest to collect and depict, write down, study and publish monuments, natural life, antiquities and social life in Egypt, but the famous and voluminous ‘Description de l’ Egypte’ was for French use only. The decipherment of the Hieroglyphics in Egypt and the subsequent decipherment of Old Persian Cuneiform, Assyrian – Babylonian Cuneiform, and so many other Middle Eastern scriptures during the 19th century, the re-establishment of the quasi-totally lost Pre-Classical Antiquity were not to be of any benefit for any local population!

Even worse, we have reason to believe that the ‘Orientalist study’ was preconceived, and by this we mean that a great care had been deployed so that new discoveries be interpreted in a way not to change anything of the basic frame and the main character of the French Colonial Model of Humanities and History: the Greco-Romano-centrism. Some Oriental scriptures had however always been studied in Medieval Europe: Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac Aramaic, and Coptic.

The abominable colonial trickery id this: the contents of the original textual sources (either deciphered in the 19th and the 20th centuries or continuously studied in Medieval and Modern Europe) and the unearthed archeological evidence were
a) not made widely known at the level of Primary and Secondary Education in Europe, and
b) were almost kept secret from the local populations throughout the vast area from Morocco to Indonesia.

It is quite indicative and quite striking at the same time that for more than 100 years after Champollion deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphics there was not a single Egyptian able to read the Ancient scripture of his/her own country! The first Syrian to study Assyrian – Babylonian Cuneiform was a colleague of mine in Sorbonne who took courses of Assyriology (with Paul Garelli and Dominique Charpin) in the late 1970s and early 1980s!

Comparative Approach to French Colonialism and its prescriptions
1. French biased Greco-centrism diffused in Greece by the French

To show an example of how differently the French administration (the block of diplomats and academia) functioned, we will make a comparison between two French colonial practices that addressed different colonial cases, namely a) the detached Southern Balkan province of the Ottoman Empire that became the nucleus of Modern Greece, and b) the detached Ottoman province of Africa that became later British colony and later on an independent state named Egypt.

At this point we have however to stress that, without deep colonial commitment and without a British – French – Russian competition in influencing developments in the area, the small South Balkan area (less than 50000 k2 encompassing Sterea Ellada, Peloponnesus and the Cycladic islands) would never have obtained independence. In addition, without Napoleon’s colonial involvement in Egypt, and without the selection of Muhammad Ali, an Albanian soldier of the Ottoman army serving in Cairo, for initiation into the mysteries of the freemasonic French colonial administration, there would never be a semi-independent bogus-state named ‘Egypt’. Furthermore, one should add that the local populations did not aspire to independence at all, and were very hostile to the French.

Similarly, in their outright majority the Greek – speaking populations of the Ottoman Empire did not aspire to secede, although Christian Orthodox. Organized in a separate milliyet (nation accepted as such within the Ottoman Empire), Greek – speaking Ottoman populations were the most influential group within the Empire after the Turks.

The ‘Greek Revolution’ was the result of colonial (British – French – Russian) infiltration, and many Western ‘intellectuals’, ‘researchers’, ‘travelers’ tried hard to convince Albanian – speaking, Turkish – speaking, Slavic – speaking and Vlachian – speaking populations of the South Balkans that they were not Albanians, Turks, Slavs or Vlachians (Romanians who had advanced as south as Thessaly), but ‘Greeks’, descendents of the Ancient Greeks, in immediate relationship with the supposedly ‘sacred’ monuments of the pre-Christian era around which these populations lived.

Greek speaking communities in Venice, Vienna, Paris, Marseille and elsewhere in Europe were promised an entire state to rule (not differently from the recent case of Iraqi residents at the USA before Saddam’s collapse), and were stimulated to shape a new Greek language that they would impose on the local populations. Adamantios Corais is an excellent example in this regard. Born in Izmir (Smyrna), he studied in France where he got initiated into the French freemasonic, colonial and anti-Ottoman, conspiracy.

With the formation of the modern state of Greece (1828 – just 30 years after Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt), the local populations, after being erroneously taught that they were Greek, had to accept the brusque imposition of an educational system fabricated by Corais in France that denied both, their non – Greek identity and the heavy Eastern Roman – Orthodox cultural – religious heritage.

With this educational system of ‘Archaic Greek’ pushing things to extremes and with 19th century ‘Greek’ schoolboys making fun of the language of their parents (that was not as ‘Greek’ as it should!), a reaction had to be expected in 1870s – 1880s. It came again from the part of the ‘Greeks’ who had been formed in France. This reaction favoured the popular tongue, but this came after an unprecedented purification process in which dozens of thousands of names of villages, mountains, rivers, hamlets, islands, as well as thousands of family names had changed and ‘hellenised’ (from Turkish, Albanian, Vlachian, Slavic to Greek). A large part of daily vocabulary had this way been forced out, and under French control a cultural – educational fabrication had been produced: ‘Greece’.

With the establishment of a ‘dialectical’ opposition between Archaists (like Mistriotis) and populist supporters of the ‘Demotic’ version of Neo-Greek (like Psyharis), Greece entered into a debate that ended before 30 years, after it had pulled all these South Balkan populations far from the mainland of the Ottoman Empire and its successor, Modern Turkey! These masses were therefore dissociated from the populations left in Turkey for the sake of the colonial plans of France, although for millennia they constituted one people. All controlled and promoted step by step by the academia and the diplomats of Paris!

2. French biased Orientalism prohibited for local, Oriental consumption

The French found opposition in both cases, Egypt and Greece. Either Muslim sheikhs or Christian Orthodox priests, the religious leaders of both countries’ provinces rejected the quasi-sacrosanct concept of Archeology, denied the reason to destroy a mosque or a church in order to excavate pre-Islamic and pre-Christian antiquities that were to be found in lower strata. The European colonial academia and diplomats could influence and did influence the political power in both, Egypt (the Khedive – the viceroy who was nominally under the Sultan’s tutelage and effectively under total control of the French and the British consuls) and Greece (the three ‘Protecting’ powers had imposed Otto, Prince of Bavaria, as King of Greece, after they had the Pro-Russian Governor Capodistria killed, thanks to the easily manipulated Mani province warlords who were well versed into murderous deeds).

Excavations were carried out, but in Greece the Western Powers showed an interest to shape the common opinion, to educate the youth and to diffuse the Western values, according to which the need of better knowledge of the Antiquity justifies the demolition of an ordinary and recently built mosque or church. Quite contrarily, in Egypt the 19th century archeologists did not bother to educate the local opinion, to diffuse the aforementioned Western concept among masses, let alone to corroborate it by referring to earlier times’ genuine Muslim interest and study for Pre- Islamic and Pre- Christian Antiquities!

We may use Egypt as a Colonial example, but similar situation reigned in other detached provinces of the Ottoman Empire, from Algeria to Lebanon, and from Iraq to Yemen. Local interest for pre-Islamic periods of the Middle East can be attested only after the slow, gradual rise of the Arab Nationalism.

This is part of the Colonial Scheme: when the local peoples had already been engulfed into the falsehood of Pan-Arabism, it would be colonially proper (‘politically correct’) to diffuse among them a slight ‘dose’ of Oreintalist research and study that would serve nothing but the colonial pretension of innocence. However, the late appearance of local Orientalists would not damage the colonial scheme of dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and of preserving the former Ottoman provinces isolated one from another. There may be Egyptian Egyptologists and Iraqi Assyriologists nowadays, but there is no Iraqi Egyptologist or Egyptian Assyriologist!

(to be continued)