‘The Internationalism of Islam’: The British Perception of a Muslim Menace, 1840–1951
Abstract This article assesses British perceptions of a Muslim menace to imperial security between 1840–1951. These ideas had a long life. They rarely stood in the first rank of imperial concerns, but sometimes in the second. Over this period, British ideas of an Islamic menace focused first on the political self-consciousness of all Muslims than on subterranean bodies which tried to bind masses and elites for political ends, and moved to nationalist movements with a narrow popular base, and finally to those with a mass base. Between 1915 and 1924, fear of a pan-Islamic menace significantly affected British strategic and imperial policy. These ideas involved the interaction of observation, intelligence, perception, learning, fear, ignorance and uncertainty. Their study illuminates the evolution both of British intelligence and of its ideas about the political self-consciousness of its subjects, and the threat that posed to its rule, particularly about the nature and power of colonial nationalism.
Les Frères musulmans au prisme des renseignements britanniques pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale
Cet article se propose d’etudier comment les autorites britanniques, leurs services de renseignements et leurs diplomates abordent la montee en puissance des Freres musulmans sur la scene politique egyptienne pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Objets d’une etroite surveillance, les Freres sont percus comme des elements subversifs, dont il s’agit d’evaluer la menace posee aux interets britanniques et de prevenir l’expansion. Renforce par le contexte de guerre, ce prisme securitaire conduit certains agents de l’ambassade et des services secrets au Caire a tenter d’encadrer le succes des Freres. Oscillant entre interets pragmatiques et antagonismes culturels, les repertoires d’actions et d’analyses mis en œuvre eclairent les reticences des diplomaties occidentales vis-a-vis des acteurs islamistes.
The British Occupation of Egypt: Another View
Historians, among others, expose the lies and deceptions of politicians, dead and alive. But historians themselves often are deceived by the limitations of their own approaches to history. While they themselves may act emotionally or sometimes irrationally in their personal lives, they are too often committed to seek rational explanations for the behavior of statesmen. Grossly understimates in many instancees is the power of retionalization as a factor in the ‘decisionmaking process.’ Often great decisions have been made on the basis of inadequate or false information, with consequences that the decision-makers could not foresee. Sometimes decisions are the result of muddleheadedness. Sometimes a governmental decision seems to be the product of a succession of miscalculations. But it is the natural impulse of those in positions of authority to justify their decisions by some explanations that relate to their zeal for the ‘national interest.’ In so doing they do not necessarily deliberately lie; often they deceive themselves as well as others. Reasons developed after the fact provide a cerebral gloss for unintellingent decisions leading to unintended actions. The background for the occupation of Egypt in 1882 provides an illustration.