“The Muslim World” Question during the Interwar Era Global Imaginary, 1924–1945

Abstract

Any study of the League of Nations should pay close attention to the minimal representation of the imagined “Muslim world” in this organization during its first decade. While the Eurocentric imperial internationalism of the League was criticized by interwar Pan-Islamic internationalist networks, there were frequent attempts by Muslims to engage the League, make it hear Muslim demands and discontents, and, later on, to make it more inclusive of Muslim polities. The Muslim global imaginary of the world order then lacked any dominant unitary pattern. In this chaotic political space, subaltern Muslim networks tried to revive earlier Pan-Islamic notions of solidarity to empower the demands of weak Muslim populations. When the Axis empires of the Second World War tried to utilize some of these Pan-Islamic networks for propaganda purposes, their failures revealed the illusion of Muslim unity. It was the eventual failure of a global illusion of a Pan-Islamic alliance with an imperial sponsor during the Second World War that made the United Nations the international venue of choice for post-war global Muslim political imaginaries.