East Asians like me don't know much about the relationship between European Christian civilization and Islamic civilization. It only knows the long war between Europe and Islam since the Middle Ages.
Mohammed claimed that if Muslims conquered pagans and turned them into Muslims, Muslims would go to heaven.
So, the Muslims proclaimed a sacred war jihad against the world.
After the death of Muhammad, Arabs invaded Europe, Asia, India, Southeast Asia and China to build the Islamic Empire.
The Islamic Empire surpassed the Roman Empire of Europe.
Islamic civilization grew into the largest civilization of the Middle Ages.
Europe has long suffered Islamic invasion.
After the Turks in Central Asia built the Ottoman Turkish Empire, Europe feared the Ottoman invasion.
However, the industrial revolution in Europe caused the fall of Islam. Britain, France, and Russia began to conquer the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Persia, North Africa, and Central Asia.
The Ottoman Empire, which once frightened Europe in the past, also fell, but it was still the strongest in the Islamic world.
The Turks used all kinds of persecution and exploitation of the Arabs. So, the Arabs revolted to gain independence from the Turkish Empire.
However, the Turkish Empire ruthlessly suppressed the Arab independence movement. When World War I broke out, the Turkish Empire became a Axis power. Then, the princes of Saudi Arabia joined the British and asked to help Arab independence.
Then the British Empire sent Lawrence to the Arabs to support the Arab independence movement.
He was Lawrence of Arabia, who became famous for movies.
Lawrence in 1918
Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935), was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer. He was renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.
While watching a movie called Lawrence in Arabia, I learned about the birth of the Islamic world in the modern Near East.
The modern Islamic world of Turkey, Syria, Levant, Saudi Arabia and Iraq was created by European empires.
Since the death of Timur, feared by Europeans, Ottoman Turkey has dominated the Arabs. I misunderstood the Turkish and Arabs as the same Muslim people, but the two races were completely different. The Turks and Arabs were like enemies. So, the princes of Saudi Arabia chose to ally with Europe over Turkey.
The British Empire dispatches Lawrence who is fluent in Arabic and knows Arabs to help the Arabs independence movement.
However, the really interesting fact is that Arabs did not know the term Arab. Europe created nationalism, nationality, and state, but the Arabs maintained the original tribalism.
The Arabs were divided into tribes, fighting endless wars and divisions with each other. So, Lawrence exclaimed to the Arab tribes an Arab, nationalism, and liberation of Arabs.
Lawrence exclaimed, like Jesus, that the Arabs must unite and wage a war of independence against Turkey.
However, the Arabs, who have been tribal for thousands of years, did not understand Lawrence's words.
In fact, most Arabs were illiterate and could not understand Lawrence's claims. Eventually, Lawrence became an Islamist himself and organized a direct Islamic army to battle.
He led the war by handing out the spoils of the railroad blasts to the Arabs.
The Turkish army has brutally slaughtered and retaliated against the Arabs. Arabian troops accepted Turkish prisoners, but Turkish army killed Arabian prisoners after tortured them.
However, at the latter half of the war, the long-standing grudges of Arabs and Turkishs exploded.
When the Turkish army massacred the entire Arab village, Lawrence was furious and ordered that all enemies be killed.
After the fall of Ottoman Turkey, the Arab princes was supported Britain and France to build the kingdoms of Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
Currently, Levant, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States are all born under European rule.
It is interesting to note that the richest Gulf countries in the Islamic world were born in this era.