Cycles of Islamic Resurgence
Around 600 AD Christianity was virtually unchallenged as the dominant faith of the Mediterranean lands. Within a generation Islam had emerged as a powerful rival. Throughout its 1400 years of history, Islam has been characterized by cycles of resurgence and decline, which have had a profound impact on Christianity. These cycles can be divided into phases.
The first phase is represented by the great initial surge and consolidation of the Islamic faith (7th – 11th centuries). Muhammad (570-632), prophet of Islam, provided the early model for expanding Islamic territory, personally led the early Muslim armies in battle on over two dozen occasions, and was wounded in the process. The later generations of Muslim leaders surged through military conquest beyond the early Muslim borders in Arabia to spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Spain and beyond, Persia, and India. Islamic military expansion meant Christian retreat on a vast scale, and for over 450 years Christian domains experienced continual erosion at the hands of the Muslim conquerors.
The initial phase of great Muslim imperial dominance was followed by a period of relative decline, triggered by dynastic rivalry, established dynasties’ losing their edge, and resurgence among Christian forces in Europe. The most significant cause of decline was the Christian Crusades, which lasted for over 200 years. They were first and foremost a European counter-attack on a grand scale in response to centuries of military defeat and retreat in the face of earlier Islamic expansion.
Islam is an all-encompassing ideology covering individual and society, providing guidance on faith, politics, law, and every aspect of life. So in periods of decline in one aspect, Islam has a capacity to resurrect itself in another facet of its multiple identity, drawing on the model of its soldier-prophet, its self-perception as covering all aspects of life, its doctrine of jihad, and its firm belief in the superiority of its message over that of other faiths. So from the depths of its decline emerged a second phase of Islamic resurgence, with dynamic new Islamic empires driven on by new Muslim people groups (14th – 18th centuries): the Ottoman Turks, the Safavids in Persia, the Mughals in India, and the Acehnese in the Malay world.
The expansion of the Ottoman Turks into Eastern Europe was facilitated by arguably the greatest watershed event in Christian-Muslim history: the fall of Constantinople, the great and ancient capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 1453. This phase of Islamic resurgence was accompanied by extensive Islamization of conquered lands. An insight into this process comes from the records of Paul Ricaut, British Consul in Smyrna, who reported in 1678 that he had seen evidence of Christians expelled from churches (which were then converted to mosques), that Christian priests officiated in private out of fear, and that many Christians converted to Islam because of the difficulties they faced.1
By the 19th century Ottoman Turkey was an empire in advanced decline. Its borders were rapidly shrinking. Minorities living under the Ottomans suffered during this period, with widespread massacres carried out against the resident Christian Armenian population in 1915-1917.2 The coup de grâce to Ottoman power was delivered by European nations in the First World War.
As noted above, a decline in Islamic power leads inevitably to the faith’s adaptation to new circumstances and to eventual resurgence by going back to its Qur’anic roots and to the example of its activist prophet. This has been in evidence, especially since the 1970s. But in this third phase of resurgence, Islamic armies are not on the march, conquering vast new territorial domains. The features of this phase are varied and flexible, reflecting the fact that Islam is more than just creed; it is also political ideology, legal system, social organization, and so forth.
This new phase of Islamic resurgence is funded by wealthy, oil-rich Muslim nations and is facilitated by the movement of Islamic populations into post-Christian Western societies. These new Muslim immigrant communities jostle for power with declining European societies that have lost much of their confidence and sense of pride in their own heritage. Western government policies on multiculturalism facilitate the empowerment of well-organized Muslim minorities. In turn, these increasingly dynamic Muslim immigrant communities throughout the West are undergoing a process of creeping militancy, increasingly influenced by Islamic activists seeking to gain strategic advantage.
In sum, today Islam is in resurgence, while Europe and its diasporas are once again in retreat.3
Footnotes:
1His extensive account of his time in the Ottoman domains was published as Sir Paul Ricaut, The History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire, 6th ed. (London: Printed for Charles Brome, at the Gun, at the West-End of St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1686).
2“The Armenian population of the Ottoman state was reported at about two million in 1915. An estimated one million had perished by 1918, while hundreds of thousands had become homeless and stateless refugees. By 1923 virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared.” See Rouben Paul Adalian, “Armenian Genocide,” in Encyclopedia of Genocide, ed. Israel W. Charny (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999). Available online at Armenian National Institute Website, http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocide.html (accessed April 5, 2008).
3This article is taken from a longer paper that was presented at the 2008 Vienna Forum titled, “Islam and Europe: Cycles of Resurgence.”
For further reading on the present day situation in Europe see Kairos Journal Insights, “Britain and Islam—Troubled Times Ahead” and “Western Europe at the Barricades.”
