Commonsense About Ahmadiyyat — Page 20
controlled through their indebtedness by one of the four European great powers, chiefly Britain. Only the United States retained its independence. Britannia ruled the waves and Pax. Britannica imposed peace on the world. Britain was the mistress of the world, home of science and technology, industry and the workshop of the world. Naturally, the unchallenged Britain and. West Europe believed that it was the spontaneous development of European civilisation which had reached its climax and it was to last for ever. The inherent superiority of the West Europeans made them the natural rulers and owners of all non-European peoples, who had merely been there before, which fact did not confer on them any rights over the lands they lived in. The West. Europeans had become so perfectly civilised that wars between them were now unthinkable. . . About this time in 1897 there came the Diamond Jubilee of 60 glorious years of the great. Queen Victoria. London became full of the high and mighty from the ends of the earth as guests to celebrate the occasion. . The naval and military mights of Britain, the economic and financial affluences, the social glitters and pageantries, dazzled and dumbfounded the Sultan of Turkey, the Caliph of Islam, many emperors and kings, bejewelled maharajas and nawabs of. India-the brightest jewel of the British Empire-and sultans, nawabs and chieftains of Afro-Asia; as well as the President and. Senators of the United States, which was not yet accepted as a great power. They all returned home, captivated or envious or fearful or all three. (Paraphrased from Mankind and Mother. Earth by the historian Arnold Toynbee, OUP. ). It was not only the Europeans who had tremendous confidence in themselves and believed in their superiority and in their sciencebased, everlasting civilisation; it was also the leaders of the non-European world, including the Muslims, who grudgingly conceded the point that the unassailable European civilisation had come to stay. This produced great confusion of thought among the Muslims, whose confidence in Islam was shattered. . Ziya Gokalp in Turkey, Taha Hussain in Egypt and Muslim intellectuals in other countries frantically advised their respective 20