The Pan-Islamic Movement

By 1914, North Africa and the Muslim lands of the Horn of Africa were all in European hands. Only Ethiopia clung to a precarious independence. The variety of political and social conditions in this region was staggering. The contrast between Somali pastoralists on one hand and the wealthy citizens of Cairo on the other was extreme. Yet, they possessed a common faith and a single cultural tradition which set them apart from most of the people of tropical Africa. The European powers had to adapt their policies and their methods of administration to the institutions of Muslim society. These were too deeply rooted to be set aside. Warfare and political conflict loomed larger over these countries throughout the colonial period than in any other part of Africa. Resistance to the loss of independence was inflamed by the intense religious hostility long felt by Muslims for the Christian peoples of Europe. As a result, revolts led by shaikhs and holy men continued until the 1930s, by which time nationalist opposition organised on modern political lines had developed. Nationalism, here as elsewhere, was influenced by European political ideas absorbed in colonial schools and metropolitan universities. Throughout this region, it was influenced also by the pan-Islamic reform movement.

The pan-Islamic movement was a reaction against the relentless encroachment of Christian Europe upon the lands of Islam. It began among groups of educated Turks in the Ottoman empire in the 1860s and the 1870s. The movement owed something to the example of the unification of Italy and Germany, which was taking place about that time.