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.
Continue reading HERE!
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.”
Continue reading HERE!
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.
Continue reading HERE!
Ma-Siri & Alexa #57 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas
For more Ma-Siri & Alexa, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!
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