The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Friday April 14th, 2023
Book Review: Muslim World in the New Global World by Dr. Habib Siddiqui
Year 1453 is nominally cited as the end of the Middle Ages by historians who define the medieval period as the time between the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror put a decisive final end to the Roman Empire, nearly one and a half thousand years after its foundation by Augustus, by capturing the capital, Constantinople on May 29, 1953. The city was renamed Istanbul and became the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
The consequent closure of the traditional overland route from Western Europe to the Near and Far East via Istanbul, once used by the Christian Crusaders, and the need to identify new maritime routes, led to the Age of Discovery and European imperialism. Although the Industrial Revolution and nationalism shaped European society in the nineteenth century, imperialism—the domination by one country or people over another group of people—dramatically changed the world during the latter half of that century. Consequently, by 1900, a dozen of European empires controlled 146 colonies, writes Abdus Sattar Ghazali in his latest book ‘Muslim World in the New Global World.’By the year 1914, almost 90 percent of the globe was dominated by western powers (including the newly emerging power of the USA, which was a former British colony).
The era of colonialism had actually started centuries prior to the Age of Imperialism (1870-1914). The fall of Grenada, the last Emirate of what was once Moorish Andalusia (or Muslim-ruled Spain), in 1492 had energized the Spanish Conquistadors to conquest new territories. Beginning with Columbus in 1492 and continuing for nearly 350 years, Spain conquered and settled most of South America, the Caribbean, and the American Southwest plus the Philippines. They also spread what they thought was the best religion ever, Catholicism. In that process of colonization, they brought diseases that killed millions of Native Americans and enslaved others who survived and also stole their natural resources.
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Jewels on deep blue seas #poem by Bohdan Yuri
“Strings of pearls on deep blue seas
that do appear in daylight dreams,
reveal wild islands basking in the sun,
moving mysteries into forevermore.”
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Arnold Toynbee: A World Citizens view of challenge and response by Rene Wadlow
Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) was a historian, a philosopher of history and an advisor on the wider Middle East to the British Government. Already a specialist on Greece and the Middle East from his university studies and in the intelligence services during the First World War, he was an expert delegate on the English delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of new states in the Middle East followed. Also there was the start of Zionist activities in Palestine and frontier and population transfers between Greece and Turkey – all issues on which Toynbee gave advice. He became director of studies of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) an early “think tank” created to advise the British Government. (1)
At the same time that he was an advisor on the Middle East (Chatham House producing a respected Yearbook on world affairs) Toynbee continued writing on the classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, much influenced by the spirit of Thucydides. Toynbee was struck by the alternative between union and division as the defining characteristic of classical Greece. These were the centuries of the flowering and then final decadence of a civilization which bears remarkable parallels with the history and perspectives of modern Europe.
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Ma-Siri & Alexa #57 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas
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For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!
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