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The British intolerant attitude to Islam, its rule and values is a great example.

Lord Cromer was the British Proconsul-General in occupied Egypt between 1877 and 1907. He wrote about his tenure in his book "Modern Egypt" (1916).

Here are some observations from his book:

1. The West will not tolerate an Islamic government as it would be "absurd" to assume Europe would tolerate a:

"government based on purely Mohammedan principles and obsolete Oriental ideas." (p. 565)

2. Muslims must be forced to adopt the principles of Western civilization. He said Egypt had to be:

"forced into imbibing the true spirit of Western civilization." (p. 538)

3. Westernization must be introduced under the guise of women's rights. He argued:

"the position of women" in Muslim countries was a "fatal obstacle" in the introduction of colonial values. (p. 539)

4. The West must educate a class of young secular Muslims to be the rulers so that a Europeanized education system would cause an Egyptian to "lose his Islamism", causing him to:

"no longer believe that he is always in the presence of his Creator", and only hang onto "the least worthy portions of his nominal religion" for the sake of convenience. (p. 230)

5. The West must reform Islam, the goal being to create "de-moslemized Moslems", where people are Muslims-by-name, but in actuality, are "agnostic".

"But inasmuch as Egyptian society is in a state of flux, the natural result has been to produce a class of individuals many of whom are, at the same time, de-moslemised Moslems and invertebrate Europeans...

Islam cannot be reformed ... reformed Islam is Islam no longer." (p. 228-229)

6. The Muslim reformer would hate Muslim scholarship more than Europeans do. The Westernized Muslim would consider the alim to be a "social derelict", use him in matters of convenience, but otherwise disrespect him. On the other hand, a European Christian intellectual would at least look at the alim with sympathy and respect, as a "representative of an ancient faith". (pp. 299-30)

"The truth is that, in passing through the European educational mill, the young Egyptian Moslem loses his Islamism, or, at all events, he loses the best part of it. He cuts himself adrift from the sheet-anchor of his creed. He no longer believers that he is always in the presence of his Creator, to whom he will some day have to render an account of his actions.

He may still, however, take advantage of the least worthy portions of his nominal religion, those portions, namely, which, in so far as they tolerate a lax moral code, adapt themselves to his tastes and to his convenience in the affairs of this world.

Moreover, in losing his Islamism, the educated Egyptian very rarely makes any approach towards Christianity. There are practically no cases of Christian converts amongst the educated classes.

More than this, although the Europeanised Egyptian is no true Moslem, he is often as intolerant, and sometimes even more intolerant of Christianity than the old orthodox Moslem, who has received no European education." (p. 230)

7. Modernized Muslims would become deists:

"It is conceivable that, as time goes on, the Moslems will develop a religion, possibly a pure Deism, which will not be altogether the Islamism of the past and of the present, and which will cast aside much of the teaching of Mohammed, but which will establish a moral code sufficient to hold society together by bonds other than those of unalloyed self-interest." (p. 234)

Reform of Islam and related phenomenon started as a colonial project, designed by European intellectuals to undermine the clerics, introduce secular humanist institutions, and gradually, leading Muslims away from their tradition.

This process is being reproduced today across the Muslim world.


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