Filed under: Religion
For my final blog post, I decided to create a short animation in response to the week 10 reading titled “European Colonialism and the Emergence of Modern Muslim States.” Nasr writes that there are over 50 Muslim states in the world today. As such, Islam has not only been a source of faith, he says, but also a source of identity with social and political relevance (549). For centuries, Islam had spread throughout the Eastern Hemisphere, primarily through the expansion of regional Islamic Empires, such as the Caliphate. After the rise of global European empires, the Muslim world, typically described as the collection of regions with majority Muslim populations, was divided into colonial territories. Muslim states began to emerge after World War II around existing territorial boundaries in Africa and Asia that would generally serve as the basis for state boundaries between Muslim states. In many places, Islamist movements played a significant role in the fight for independence from the colonial powers, which would have consequences for the future political regime.
The animation depicts some of the history of Islamic expansion from the Caliphate to independence. We can visualize and infer how the relevance of Islam has changed by looking at the difference between imperial rule and the nation state. It is also a quick way to visually access the information.