In the mid -nineteenth century, the concept of the ‘Muslim Ummah’ found immediate traction among Muslims in southern Asia. According to historian Mubarak Ali, the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid actively promoted a panislamm policy, in an attempt to strengthen the Ottoman Empire and reinforce the position of the empire against European powers.
Ali wrote that one of the reasons why this idea became popular among most Muslims in southern Asia was that, after the decline of more than 500 years of Muslim dominance in India, Muslims suddenly realized their minority state in the region. Some Muslim scholars tried to accept the emergence of European colonialism by forming a reformist variant of Islam as a way of adapting to Western modernity. This evolved to become a demand for a Muslim majority-statement in the region.
The concept of the nation had been evolving in Europe since the 18th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, it had become one of the most powerful ideas in the world. It was a geographical idea about territory with well -defined borders within which the populations that shared cultural, political and economic interests resided.
At the end of the 1930s, the Muslims of India warmed up with this idea. Directed by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, they sought to create a modern nation-nation of the Muslim majority (Pakistan), where they could navigate their own destination without any interference of “Hindu Brahman hegemony”, that Jinnah’s party feared India became the departure of British colonialists.
As globalization undoes the fabric of civic nationalism, the national states of India to Russia are adopting an older identity model: the state of civilization
Unlike a nation-state, which offered the 19th-century Ottoman Sultan was a “state of civilization.” A state of civilization is a political entity that identifies with a continuous cultural or historical civilization. Then, the Sultan was proposing a broader Muslim state built on shared civilizational features.
During the postcolonial era, when the empires had crumbled and the West had run ahead in the fields of politics, economy and science, the idea of the state of civilization seemed cumbersome and regressive. The idea of the nation-state seemed more appropriate for the postcolonial order. But these states had to accept certain universalities to be accepted in the community of national states. These universalities included human rights, democracy, freedom of religion, international laws, etc.
The concept of the state-nation was largely based on “civic nationalism” and pluralism, despite the fact that the national states founded on a particular faith or ethnicity were tolerated while the universalities accepted.
The concept of civilism-or is not new as such, but the term yes. It was coined in the 1990s with the appearance of ‘globalization’. The increase in interconnection and interdependence between nations began to weaken the traditional limits and the authority of the state-state. According to the American scholar Francis Fukuyama, globalization led to a decrease in national identity, reducing the power of the nation. The emergence of populism in the last 15 years is often considered a reaction against globalization and against the consequent decline of nationalism and/or national identities.
The commitment to ensure these resulted in radical nationalism (right wing), but rejects pluralism and universalities inherent to the idea of the nation. This radical nationalism began to mutate, becoming a “civilization nationalism” that seeks to create states of civilization. In most cases, it is the existing national states that seek to change their ideological disposition in this regard.
Russia is an example. After the disappearance of Soviet communism and the Soviet Union, the civilizing status is a recurring issue in the rhetorical and political discourse of the ruler Vladimir Putin of the ancient Ancient Russia. He insists that Russia is not only a nation-state, but a unique civilization with its own historical, cultural and spiritual identity, separated from the ‘Western civilization’.
India is another example. The Narendra Modi government, which came to power in 2014, has been described more and more to India as a state of civilization because, apparently, it is prior to colonial domain and Muslim invasions. Emphasis is placed on the practice of the centuries of Hinduism, which dates back to the Bronze Age. The perception of Modi of India as a state of civilization disagrees with the secular and diverse nature of Indian society, enshrined in the Indian Constitution. This has led to the “other” of minority groups, especially Muslims.
Turkiye Bajo Rece Tayyip Erdogan (since 2001) has positioned himself as a state of civilization, undermining Turkish nationalism/republicanism established for the first time by the founder of Modern Turkiye, Kamal Ataturk. Erdogan defines the identity and foreign policy of Türkiye as rooted in its long history and cultural inheritance, which covers several empires and civilizations that have existed in the Anatolian soil, especially the Ottomans.
Iran also sees itself as a state of civilization or as the continuation of an ancient civilization, despite being an Islamist theocracy since 1979. China is also explained more than a nation-state. It looks like a civilization with a continuous cultural identity that encompasses millennia.
Interestingly, the extreme right-wing parties and populists in the United States, and also in many European countries, have begun to call their national states as civil status, despite the fact that Europe is the birthplace of the idea of the nation-state. However, as in India, the emphasis on this regard in these regions is also more in ‘Nativism’. In this case, white Nativism. This marginalizes non -white groups.
Pakistan has experienced with two competing narratives to add elements of the state of civilization to their nationalism. The first sees the country as a continuation of the ancient civilizations that emerged on the shores of the Indo River. The other sees the country as a result of the initial propagation of Islam of the confines of Arabia.
According to the British political philosopher Christopher Coker, more and more governments and movements have been using the civilization currency for their political purposes. He wrote: “At the level of consciousness, political regimes are taking advantage of more primitive identities.”
Coker spoke of ‘Mitopoeia’, the process of doing myths. According to him, “Mitopoeia took place in the West and in the East. Two opposite forces, cosmopolitism and Nativism, now face each other, revealing how imagination can shape identities strangely and how intellectuals in the cranes with a political class can deceive both themselves and others.”
The state of civilization can be understood as a tool for a State that wants to legitimize the power of a particular type of political system. His general theme is the rejection of the aforementioned universalities and the isolation of the societies of the influence of other civilizations. Civilisation-State can have a broader meaning, but its intention is largely myopic.
Posted in Dawn, EOS, June 29, 2025
