Considering the entire history of Islam, from Muhammed to the present, can you identify any significant period of time during which Islam was not engaged in military action, wars great or small, against non-muslims? Or when Islam was not a major slave-holding power, including white slaves from Europe and even America, at least through the nineteenth century?
For that matter, in which the Muslim factions were not warring against each other?
Islam and the West have been in each other’s faces and business since the time of Muhammed. There are historical reasons for that, reasons that change with the advance of history and politics, reasons that have to be understood and judged according to the time and context in which they existed.
Yes, arrogant imperial interference in the Middle East after World War One had disastrous consequences affecting us even today. But that acknowledgement does not thereby justify condemnation of the West all the way back to Muhammed, nor entitle Islam to be the aggrieved party for it’s entire history.
I detect in your article the idea, unstated but clear, that the situation now is the result of centuries of Western interference in Islam, and would have been much better if only the West had ignored Islam all these centuries. Well, yes, it would be, because the entire region, Africa, Europe, Middle East, even Asia, would be an Islamic Caliphate. One can’t ignore a powerful force dedicated to dominion. To paraphrase Trotsky’s comment about war, “you may not be interested in Islam, but Islam is interested in you”.
Islam cannot be ignored, nor can the Middle East, for many reasons. Pacifism does not lead to fewer or smaller wars, quite the opposite; and so too would disregard of an active and dangerous region like the Middle East. Isolating the Middle East to pursue its own affairs is simply impossible, even if we were to attempt it. Blaming everything on Western interference is simplistic and unhelpful.
