Islamic Fundamentalism
Islamic Fundamentalism
~ 33 ~
world was politically dominated by Muslims. The
Ottoman Empire at the western extremity and the
Mughal Empire on the eastern border had become
symbols of glory for the Muslim
ummah
. These
Muslim empires came into direct conflict with the
western empires and, in the long run, the Muslim
empires were vanquished. This brought to an end
1000 years of their political supremacy. People in
general tend to accept what they see on the surface,
so that Muslims all over the world came to hold
that, in the break-up of their empires, the upholders
of western civilization were the oppressors, while
the Muslims were the oppressed.
However, in actual fact, the internal degeneration of
these Muslim empires had reduced them to the
state of wood infested with white ants. It would
only have been a matter of time before they
collapsed on their own. It was only by a fortuitous
concatenation of events that the military might of
western civilization was ostensibly the cause of
their fall.
Be that as it may, the upshot of this was that the
entire Muslim world became averse to western