Dr Wahid points out that Germany posed no existential threat to Britain by violating Belgian neutrality. It was an imperial war about colonial interests. The Eastern Question was finally resolved when Britain bounced the Ottoman Empire to choose a side.
Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall fought on the British side on the basis of false promises made to them by the British.
The legacy of WW1 is that of treachery. The British promised the same piece of land - Palestine - to three different parties ie the American Zionists, the French and the Ottoman Empire.
The wording of the Treaties of Sevres and Lausanne can be found in the British Foreign Office website.
The British booby-trapped the Middle East and left a poison pill when they left.
Arab Nationalism making the Turk hate the Arab is denounced.
WW1 was bloodier than the Crusades.
Compared to the peace and stability in the Middle East before WW1, the collapse was swift and sudden.
1 comment:
He fails to make enough of the context - which begins in the early 1800s with the Church of England and Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper) inventing "Christian Zionism", and coming up with the fatuous fantasy that if they were to return the Jews to Palestine in their overwhelming gratitude they would protect the approach to India. This fed into the evolving Liberal Party, and infected some of the Conservatives too. Disraeli and Lord Salisbury had a different and more practical stance: support the Ottoman Empire - this was the real Conservative policy towards the Middle East and India. There was also the stupid Entente Cordiale that King Edward VII (a French-loving fanatic) got us involved in. By the time of the Dönmeh/Young Turk coup against the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908, the Salisbury Conservatives were out of government, and parliament was dominated by Christian Zionists - that was the real driving force behind the policies that gave us Sykes-Picot, Balfour, and the rest. That and the stupid Entente Cordiale.
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