Religion and Politics

The Last Crusade: The First World War and the Birth of Modern Islam

“What we think of today as modern Islam—assertive, self-confident and aggressively sectarian—is the product of the worldwide tumult associated with the Great War,” writes Baylor historian Peter Jenkins at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Religion and Ethics section. Jenkins argues that today’s Middle Eastern conflicts grew out of World War I, specifically the postwar struggles between Islamic resistance movements and colonial powers after the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the Caliphate. He writes, “For many Muslims, resurgent religious loyalties trumped national or imperial allegiances.”

Read at ABC

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