Saving Soviet Muslims: the politics of protection at Jerusalem's General Islamic Congress of 1931
Historians of the Middle East have extensively explored how imperial powers and international institutions during the interwar period used the idea of “minority rights and protection” to solidify their rule and influence over large parts of the region. Rather than focusing on the Eurocentric premises of this idea, the present lecture considers the role of Muslim anti-colonialists in challenging the utilization of the humanitarian discourse of protection by colonial powers. As a case study, it examines the 1931 General Islamic Congress (GIC) in Jerusalem, which brought Muslims from across Asia and Africa together to address various issues affecting Muslims worldwide. Amid the Stalinist anti-religious campaigns, Muslim emigres (muhajirs) from the USSR and their Arab co-religionists used the platform of the GIC to initiate a transnational campaign to protect the religious rights of millions of Soviet Muslims from Moscow’s policies. Investigating what the principle of “protection” meant for these anti-Soviet activists and their Arab counterparts, the lecture argues that this campaign inspired alternative visions of world order and protection of vulnerable populations, including those that were not necessarily internationally defined as numerical “minorities.” The lecture thus shows how Muslim thinkers – in contrast to European colonial empires – understood and reformulated the language of protection, and thereby recovers the role of Muslim anti-colonialists in the international history of minority rights during the interwar period.
Date:
26 November 2024, 17:15 (Tuesday, 7th week, Michaelmas 2024)
Venue:
68 Woodstock Road, Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details:
MEC Boardroom, Kirdar Building, 68 Woodstock Road
Speaker:
Dr Roy Bar Sadeh (University of Manchester)
Organising department:
Middle East Centre
Organiser:
Middle East Centre Administrator (St Antony's College, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
mec@sant.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Professor Laurent Mignon (St Antony's College, University of Oxford)
Booking required?:
Not required
Cost:
Free
Audience:
Public
Editors:
Caroline Davis,
Jennie Williams
