Jihad of Imperial Geopolitics, 1911–45

One of the most overlooked aspects of the modern conceptual history of the idea of Jihad is the long-lasting legacy of its utilization during the era of imperial rivalries and conflicts. Scholars often note the irony of the Ottoman declaration of Jihad at the beginning of World War I against European empires (excluding Germany and Austria-Hungary). Yet, we have not examined the impact of the merger of imperial geopolitics with religious textual interpretations about the idea of holy war throughout World War I. While Ottoman propaganda had to argue why almost hundred million Muslims living under the rule of British Empire needed to revolt against their “Christian” rulers, they formulated the idea of “the humiliation of the Muslim world under British yoke.”  This notion of “Muslim humiliation” under the racialized rule of European empires was countered by propaganda efforts of British, French, Dutch and Russian Empires, but it reappeared as a major theme in Bolshevik propaganda aimed at Muslim societies in early 1920s and then revived by German and Japanese imperial propaganda during World War II.  What were the intellectual, religious and political assumptions of the idea of jihad utilized during the era of imperial geopolitical rivalries? What legacies did these imperial notions of Jihad leave for the anti-colonial nationalist concepts of Jihad to overcome Muslim humiliation and gain Muslim dignity? This paper will examine and discuss the conceptual history of the term Jihad during the age of imperial geopolitics from Italian invasion of Libya in 1911 to the end of World War II in 1945.