Jihad "made in Germany": the First World War and the controversy about Islam

The article discusses views of European orientalists on Islam and Islamic policy of the Great Powers in the First World War. The object of analysis is, in particular, the problem of the relation of knowledge and power, the nature of the relationship of European orientalism and colonialism, in other words, the complex of the questions formulated by Edward Said in his Orientalism. During the First World War, the German Empire in alliance with the Ottoman Empire made an attempt, that Dutch Islamic researcher Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje called Jihad "made in Germany", to use Islam as a tool in the fight against its opponents. The efforts of the German Empire for "revolutionizing" the Muslim world and German orientalists' participation in it could not but cause reactions in the European academic community. A symbolic character had a discussion that occurred in 1915 between the two masters of European orientalism, Dutch Islamic researcher Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and founding member of the German Islamic Studies Carl Hein-rich Becker. This discussion is of interest not only because it highlights a certain set of attitudes and stereotypes of Islam that grew in the soil of Eurocentrism, but also because it makes it possible to track the change of these stereotypes and to what extent and when they became the subject of orientalists' reflection. The interest in the topic is large enough, as evidenced by the ongoing debate in the scientific literature on orientalism. This article is a response to this debate, yet another attempt to answer the questions formulated by Said. On the one hand, the discussions and the formulation of a practical policy towards the countries of the Muslim East required the knowledge of European orientalists. On the other, they did not have and could not have a monopoly on the representation of Islam. Many of them had to make difficult choices between political involvement and scientific impartiality. With the outbreak of World War I, European orientalists were in an even more precarious position. In the conditions of war the space of dispute narrowed, and its intensity grew. Discussion round Islam finally became an important part of propaganda confrontation. At the same time, the unfolding debate attempted comprehension and critical assessment of Islam reflected in the mirror of European public opinion, as is illustrated by the discussion of Becker and Hurgronje. The attempt of the German military and diplomats and of a considerable part of orientalists made in the years of World War I to use Islam as a tool in the opposition to opponents of the German empire at first sight is within the paradigm of the relations between the East and the West described by E. Said and place of European orientalism in them. However, to confer the main responsibility for this policy on German orientalists, or, broader, on the German party would mean to seriously simplify the situation. Cooperation of Germans with the Turkish and Arab nationalists in the years of World War I can hardly be more exhaustively described in categories of domination and submission or initiation and execution.

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