Page 440 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The 'Sting" 437

World and the New, some members of which have been driven by the auri sacra
fames to curry favour with the oil potentates of the Middle East by paying
exaggerated deference to Islamic history and culture (not to mention ‘Islamic’
social sciences and ‘Islamic’ economics); but the exercise would be as depress­
ing as it would be futile. The only point to be made is that the rulers of the Arab
oil states are neither simple philanthropists nor disinterested patrons of the
humanities. They expect a return upon their donations to institutions of
learning and their subsidies to publishing houses; whether it be in the form of
subtle propaganda on behalf of Arab or Islamic causes, or the preferential
admission of their nationals, however unqualified, to Western universities and
colleges, or the publication of the kind of sycophantic flim-flam about them­
selves and their countries which now clutters sections of the Western press and
even respectable periodical literature.
If the peoples of the West do not take heed of what is happening and act to
halt it, they will inevitably suffer a debasement of their national lives, stan­
dards and institutions from the penetration of their societies by Arab and
Persian oil money. It is worth recalling in this connexion that Muslim jurispru­
dence views the world in uncompromising terms, dividing it arbitrarily into
the dar al-Islam (Muslim territory) and the dar al-harb (hostile territory), of
which Western Christendom is the principal constituent. Between these two
territorial entities there can exist only a state of active warfare or a condition of
latent hostility. If the West continues in its present abject and infirm posture
towards the Arabs and the Persians, it may well contribute a third category to
the Islamic order - the dar al-abid, or land of slaves.

Oil is, and has been since the beginning of its use industrially in the West, a
strategic commodity, and secure control over adequate sources of supply was
until recent years deemed essential by the Western industrial nations. The
origins of the quest by the major powers of Europe for strategic control over
reserves of oil go back to the eve of the First World War, when Britain and
Germany competed for oil concessionary rights in the Ottoman empire, and
the British government acquired a majority shareholding in the Anglo-Persian
Oil Company (afterwards British Petroleum) so as to have a direct supply of oil
for the Royal Navy. Britain’s dependence upon non-British sources of oil was
sharply revealed in the course of the war, reinforcing the British government’s
determination to bring substantial reserves of foreign oil under British control.
Thus, after the war, Britain obtained through Anglo-Persian an equal share in
the Iraq Petroleum Company with Royal Dutch Shell, Compagnie Fran^aise
des Petroles and the Near East Development Corporation (five American
companies led by Standard Oil of New Jersey and Mobil). The British
government also arranged that the management of the company should lie in
British hands. This principle of latent British official involvement in Middle-
Eastern oil exploration and exploitation was extended into the Gulf between