Pan-Islam

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Macmillan, 1919 - Islam - 212 pages
George Wyman Bury (1874-1920) was a British naturalist and explorer who spent 25 years in different parts of the Arab world, including Morocco, Aden, Somalia, and Egypt. He wrote several books, including The Land of Uz about the Arabian Peninsula, which he published in 1911 under the pseudonym Abdullah Mansur, and Arabia infelix, or, The Turks in Yamen, published in 1915. During World War I he served with British intelligence in Egypt, where he was charged with countering Turkish and German pan-Islamist propaganda (and infiltrators) aimed at stirring up popular sentiment against the British and inducing Muslim troops under British command to desert. Pan-Islam, written while Bury was dying of a lung disease, is based in part on his experiences during the war. He writes that Pan-Islam "is a movement to weld together Moslems throughout the world regardless of nationality" and that it is "the practical protest of Moslems against the exploitation of their spiritual and material resources by outsiders." While acknowledging these indigenous causes, Bury argues that the growth of Pan-Islam as a political movement in the period before and during World War I was very much the product of German political, financial, and logistical support, supported by Ottoman Turkey after it entered the war on the side of Germany. Bury argues that the German attempt to use Pan-Islam as a political weapon was largely unsuccessful, owing to the animosity between the Turks and Arabs and the lack of "psychic insight" on the part of the Germans. Bury concludes with a "Plea for Tolerance," in which he calls for better understanding in Europe and the United States of the Islamic world. The book includes a fold-out map showing the lands of Islam.
 

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Page 194 - The marked cleavage of hermit-like asceticism and gross sensuality which rock-bound deserts and the lush Nile valley wrought in Egyptian Christendom has been described by every writer dealing with that subject, and Arabian Christianity drooped, and finally died, in the arid pastoral uplands of Jauf and Nejran long before it succumbed in fertile, hard-working Yamen.
Page 196 - ... hypnotic suggestion. Individuals may be so swayed for the time being, and, in a few favourable cases, the initial impetus will be carried on, but most human souls are like locusts and nutter earthward when the wind drops.
Page 104 - The time is near when the long drama that has been played between Arabs and Turks will end in the establishment of a vast Arabic empire, extending from the Tigris and the Euphrates valley to the Mediterranean and from the Indian Ocean to Jerusalem, with Cairo as its Capital, the Khedive as its Caliph, and England as its lord and protector.
Page 37 - It was a magnificently simple scheme ; its sole flaw was in failing to realise that some of us had played the Great Game before. We used to time our emissaries to their return and crosscheck them where their wanderings intersected those of others — all were supposed to be trackers and one or two knew something about it.
Page 37 - It did not take us long to find out that these sophisticated Sinaites had established an Intelligence bureau of their own. They used to meet their
Page 81 - Those who forged the blade of this counterfeit jihad could not temper it in the flame of religious fervour, and it shattered against the shield of religious tolerance and good faith : we make mistakes, but can honestly claim those two virtues.
Page 164 - Christian evangelist, but the fanatical opposition of the debased priests of the Abyssinian Church and the drastic punishments inflicted by Abyssinian authorities on...
Page 36 - ferrets," or Intelligence agents, who came into close contact with the " suspects " and could be trusted up to a certain point if you looked sharply after them. This is as much as can be said for any of these men, though some are better, and some worse, than others.
Page 38 - Generally they would incur suspicion by their too speedy return and the nonchalant way in which they imparted tidings which would have driven them into ecstasies of self-appreciation had they obtained such by legitimate methods.

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