Page 36 - The Winter of Islam and the Spring to Come

THE WINTER OF ISLAM AND THE SPRING TO COME
34

Colonialist na-
tions such as
Britain, France
and Italy inflicted
the most terrible
tortures on the
Muslims living in
the Islamic lands
they conquered,
and carried out
mass killings.

maps. The Mogul Empire grew weak, shrank and finally collapsed. The
Indian sub-continent then fell into the hands of British colonialism. The
area known as Indochina was colonized by the French. The Safavid
State in Central Asia came under British and Russian rule. The Ottoman

Empire, the third and greatest Muslim empire, was progressively re-
duced in size beginning in the nineteenth century. Ottoman lands in the
West fell into the hands of Russia and the Balkan states encouraged by
it. The Middle East, Arabian Peninsula and North Africa were occupied
by the British, French and Italians. By the end of the First World War, a
large portion of the world's Muslims were ruled by non-Muslim gov-
ernments.
All of these governments had a colonialist mentality. In the 1920s,
Soviet Russia and fascist Italy joined the ranks of such traditional colo-
nialists as Great Britain and France. Each of these countries occupied
and colonized a part of the Islamic world. They did not hesitate to inflict
the most ruthless slaughter and torture upon the Muslim populations
under their rule. Britain and France "administered" the Muslims in the
Middle East, North Africa and the Far East. In other words, they reaped
and used the Muslim countries' natural resources for their own inter-
ests. Soviet Russia took over all of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and
the Muslims in those regions were enslaved under the pressure of the
communist regime. Italy occupied Libya in 1911, and then set about a
bloody invasion of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) in the 1930s.