History's shifting sands
Aljazeera / Mak Levin
06-Mar-2011





For decades, even centuries, the peoples of the Arab world have been
told by Europeans and, later, Americans that their societies were
stagnant and backward. According to Lord Cromer, author of the 1908
pseudo-history Modern Egypt, their progress was "arrested" by
the very fact of their being Muslim, by virtue of which their minds were
as "strange" to that of a modern Western man "as would be the mind of
an inhabitant of Saturn".

The only hope of reshaping their minds towards a more earthly
disposition was to accept Western tutelage, supervision, and even rule
"until such time as they [we]re able to stand alone," in the words of
the League of Nations' Mandate. Whether it was Napoleon claiming
fraternité with Egyptians in fin-de-18e-siècle Cairo or George W. Bush
claiming similar amity with Iraqis two centuries later, the message, and
the means of delivering it, have been consistent.

Ever since Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, the great Egyptian chronicler of
the French invasion of Egypt, brilliantly dissected Napoleon's epistle
to Egyptians, the peoples of the Middle East have seen th... >>>

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