ABSTRACT
Modern nationalism, which sorts out peoples and nations according to their national belonging and which often cuts through ethnic, religious, linguistic and interest groups, for two centuries has been an invention of the West, which exported it to its previous colonial possessions across the world for emulation as the ideal model for political and administrative organization of people who wished to live autonomously of others under their own sovereignty. These processes have had their impact on the emerging modern Muslim countries as well, when they rid themselves of foreign occupation as colonial possessions of other powers. Today they number some fifty-seven Muslim-majority countries, which are all members of the Conference of Islamic nations across Africa and Asia. But it is far from a forgone conclusion that the new nation-states have been able to cultivate well-rooted, homogeneous, and harmonious Islamic societies. Rather, as evidence in some of these countries suggests, their ancient tribal makeup, their subordination willy-nilly to different Muslim or multicultural empires (the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Mameluks, the Mongols, the Ottomans, and the Persians in the Middle East; the Almoravids and the Almohads in North Africa; or the Moghuls in India) left an indelible mark on their history and identity.
