Sultan AbdulHamid II, Pan-Islamism and Muslim League.

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Pan-Islamism,emerged as a modern political ideology in the 1860s and 1870s at the height of European colonialism, when Turkish intellectuals began discussing and writing about it as a way to save the Ottoman Empire from fragmentation. Became the favored state policy during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (r. 1876 – 1909 ).

Sultan Abdulhamid, the last meaningful Ottoman emperor and probably the only known world muslim leader of his time who countered the Great game of Britain and Russia by arming muslim rebels against them. For that he used his foreign policy of Pan-Islamism to gather support from Muslims and used it against the enemy in their own colonies.

However, little people know is of the role Abdul Hamid played in 1880s giving British-Indian clergy and politicians the suggestion of forming a `Muslims League' his continued projection of pan-islamism. It seems a coincidence that a party with a similar name just arose some years later to uphold the rights of muslims of the subcontinent.
The following excerpt is from an important document of history that was perhaps never taught in academia.

Source: Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain, 1877-1924 (page 95)
By Azmi Özcan

He coined the name during his two month stay in Bombay in 1883 when he was able to secure huge funds from wealthy local muslims.There then he also adopted the green Mughal Muslim flag for a variant of his Ottoman Coat of Arms, in which it was called the banner of caliphate.The flag was later used by the newly formed Muslims league in 1906.

In early 1900s a Jehad was already declared by the Sultan against British and there was a compliance to it in the Afghanistan as well as present-day Pakistan and India . One of the key men of of Sultan Abdul Hamid in the region were 'Jamal-ud-din Afghani', his point-man in Peshawar and 'Obaidullah Sindhi' who was proactive in raising jihad in Afghanistan against the British.Intriguingly Obaidullah, a sikh convert called himself Sindhi and not Hindhi.

Jamal-ud-din-Afghani

Obaidullah Sindhi with Ottoman ministers of his time.



Therefore, how could a Sultan that helped the resistance in subcontinent against British Imperialism, coin name of a political organization 'Muslim League' that worked within the British framework later for independence or was the name just a coincidence?? Was it Muslim league's way to do politics?

If anyone of you who can correct or contribute to my findings above please do so as this is part of history we were never taught in our classrooms.

@Pan-Islamic-Pakistan @Hakikat ve Hikmet @Safriz @dexter @RiazHaq

 

[Pakistani Fighter]

Obaidullah, a sikh convert

Interesting....

 

[FOOLS_NIGHTMARE]

it has got nothing to do with the topic dear..
i

My bad got rid of it.

 

[bsruzm]

It seems a coincidence that a party with a similar name just arose some years later to uphold the rights of muslims of the subcontinent.

I would like to translate some lines from a Turkish source called "Teskilat-i Mahsusa'nin Hindistan Misyonu"

 

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

“Ninety percent of the geo strategic intelligence belong to the Sultan Abdul Hamid, the rest 10% is shared by the remaining of the European statesmen” - Von Bismarck, the German Chancellor

The Sultan kept the “sick man of Europe” alive for 33 years, and put her in a rehabilitation regime by applying his sheer acumen of reading the Hakikat and applying solutions using Hikmet!! After he got dethroned by a Zionist coup, the six centuries of the Jihan Devlet got lost in six years of rule by the brainless coup monger junta....

 

[RiazHaq]

#Europe's century old mistake: Shifting #Islam's theological-political power from Ottoman #Turkey to #SaudiArabia

https://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2016/07/ottoman-caliphs

EVERY time a European city is shaken by an act of mass violence, the continent's heavy-weight newspapers host agonised debates over what has gone wrong. In particular, debaters often ask, should European states have responded differently to the emergence of large, discontented Muslim minorities, either by accommodating cultural difference more generously or (as some advocate) by suppressing it? Even when it becomes clear that Islam was not really a factor at all (as seems to be the case with last week's killing spree by a maladjusted young man in Munich) the discussions go on.

One of America's leading authorities on European Islam has made a rather nuanced and unusual contribution to this conversation. Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in response to a column asserting that "terrorism has a lot to do with Islam", Jonathan Laurence argues (link to English translation) that the present-day pathologies of European Islam are a kind of aftershock from a century-old mistake. Or rather, of a short-sighted policy that went into higher gear almost exactly 100 years ago. In the summer of 1916, the British government and its war allies began fomenting an Arab revolt against the political and above all, spiritual authority of the Ottomans. This brought about the British-led capture of Jerusalem and the collapse of Ottoman dominion over Islam's holiest places, whether in the Levant or Arabia. As an alternative to Ottoman rule over the Arabs, the British initially backed the Hashemite dynasty which still reigns over Jordan; but the ultimate beneficiary was the royal house of Saud which took over Mecca and Medina in 1924.

In the view of Mr Laurence, a professor at Boston College, this brought to an end a period of several decades in which the caliphate (a spiritual role which the Ottomans combined, until 1922, with the worldly rank of sultan) had a generally benign effect on global Islam. Not only within the Ottoman realm but far beyond it, the caliphate formed the apex of a international network of teachers, preachers and judges. As was shown by Halil Inalcιk, an Ottoman historian who died this week aged 100, the sultan-caliphs' real power varied a lot over time; some managed to control the ulema or religious scholars, others didn't. But the institution's global spiritual role was especially important in the late 19th century and early 20th century, ultimately embracing more than 100m Muslims living under British rule (in South Asia) and under Dutch rule (in modern Indonesia). As Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish writer on religion, points out, the caliph's sway over Muslims in the Asia-Pacific region had benign consequences for the United States; Abdulhamid II (pictured), the last long-reigning sultan, helped persuade Filipino Muslims to accept American power over their archipelago. (Others have darker memories of that sovereign; Armenians hold him responsible for killing tens of thousands of their kin in 1895.)
Yet precisely because the Ottoman caliphate was so attractive to some of their subjects, European powers worked hard to undermine it. From at least 1870, British diplomacy tried to shift the centre of gravity in global Islam from the Turks to the Arabs. The Dutch tried to stop their Muslim subjects deferring to the caliph in their public prayers. With somewhat more success, the French promoted alternative centres of spiritual authority among the Muslims they ruled in Algeria and Morocco. As long as the Ottomans retained control of Libya (ie, until 1912), the caliphate kept some sway in North Africa. But when Turkey's new secular nationalist rulers finally abolished the office of caliph in 1924, their job was made easier by the fact that European powers had been sabotaging the sacred office for decades.