Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgedments
- The Contributors
- Introduction: Issues and Ideologies in the Study of Regional Muslim Cultures
- 1 Connected Histories? Regional Historiography and Theories of Cultural Contact Between Early South and Southeast Asia
- 2 Like Banners on the Sea: Muslim Trade Networks and Islamization in Malabar and Maritime Southeast Asia
- 3 Circulating Islam: Understanding Convergence and Divergence in the Islamic Traditions of Ma‘bar and Nusantara
- 4 From Jewish Disciple to Muslim Guru: On Literary and Religious Transformations in Late Nineteenth Century Java
- 5 Wayang Parsi, Bangsawan and Printing: Commercial Cultural Exchange between South Asia and the Malay World
- 6 Religion and the Undermining of British Rule in South and Southeast Asia during the Great War
- 7 The Ahmadiyya Print Jihad in South and Southeast Asia
- 8 Making Medinas in the East: Islamist Connections and Progressive Islam
- 9 Shari‘a-mindedness in the Malay World and the Indian Connection: The Contributions of Nur al-Din al-Raniri and Nik Abdul Aziz bin Haji Nik Mat
- 10 The Tablighi Jama‘at as Vehicle of (Re)Discovery: Conversion Narratives and the Appropriation of India in the Southeast Asian Tablighi Movement
- 11 From Karachi to Kuala Lumpur: Charting Sufi Identity across the Indian Ocean
- Index
6 - Religion and the Undermining of British Rule in South and Southeast Asia during the Great War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgedments
- The Contributors
- Introduction: Issues and Ideologies in the Study of Regional Muslim Cultures
- 1 Connected Histories? Regional Historiography and Theories of Cultural Contact Between Early South and Southeast Asia
- 2 Like Banners on the Sea: Muslim Trade Networks and Islamization in Malabar and Maritime Southeast Asia
- 3 Circulating Islam: Understanding Convergence and Divergence in the Islamic Traditions of Ma‘bar and Nusantara
- 4 From Jewish Disciple to Muslim Guru: On Literary and Religious Transformations in Late Nineteenth Century Java
- 5 Wayang Parsi, Bangsawan and Printing: Commercial Cultural Exchange between South Asia and the Malay World
- 6 Religion and the Undermining of British Rule in South and Southeast Asia during the Great War
- 7 The Ahmadiyya Print Jihad in South and Southeast Asia
- 8 Making Medinas in the East: Islamist Connections and Progressive Islam
- 9 Shari‘a-mindedness in the Malay World and the Indian Connection: The Contributions of Nur al-Din al-Raniri and Nik Abdul Aziz bin Haji Nik Mat
- 10 The Tablighi Jama‘at as Vehicle of (Re)Discovery: Conversion Narratives and the Appropriation of India in the Southeast Asian Tablighi Movement
- 11 From Karachi to Kuala Lumpur: Charting Sufi Identity across the Indian Ocean
- Index
Summary
On 29 October 1914, a few months after the outbreak of World War I, Turkey joined in on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On 11 November, Sultan Mehmed V proclaimed a holy war. His action left no shadow of doubt that religion obliged all Muslims in the world to side with Turkey and its two allies. To renege was a sin. Islam had become a factor in the war. The jihad proclamation, Pan-Islamic sentiments presenting the Ottoman Sultan as Caliph, and feelings of Muslim solidarity combined to form a potentially powerful mix. It was no novelty for the Ottoman Empire to be viewed as a possible ally by Muslims threatened by Western colonial expansion; in Southeast Asia especially, the Dutch colonial authorities considered this a likely source of unrest. Now the bare fact that Turkey had entered the war had added a new dimension. It meant that Muslims worldwide could develop an aversion to the Allied Powers and become pro-German. Their pro-Turkish sentiments had already been strengthened by the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12 in Libya, and by the wars Turkey had fought in the Balkans in 1912–13. In British India, for instance, Muslims, vowing of their loyalty to the British Crown, had protested the position taken by London in the Balkan Wars, which they construed as amounting to a war against the Balkan Muslims. In Singapore, soldiers of the 5th Light Infantry Battalion, composed of Indian soldiers and stationed in the city, had raised money for Turkish charities during the Italo-Turkish War.
Elsewhere in Southeast Asia similar actions were taken by other local Muslim communities. In the Netherlands Indies, the domestic display of portraits of the Kaiser and his wife, and of the Sultan of Turkey, raised doubts about the loyalty of local Muslims as Dutch subjects. At the end of 1915, colonial officials inspecting village houses in Central Java discovered to their dismay that this was a very popular taste, and it was viewed by the government as indicative of anti-Allied attitudes. Muslims in the Archipelago also reportedly rejoiced in Gallipoli and other Allied setbacks.
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- Information
- Islamic ConnectionsMuslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia, pp. 109 - 133Publisher: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak InstitutePrint publication year: 2009