Clash of Worlds

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[edit] General Information

Sociopolitical Documentary published by BBC in 2007 - English narration

[edit] Cover

[edit] Information

Clash Of Worlds tells the story of the extraordinary tensions and mutual misunderstandings, wars and reconciliations that have haunted two cultures, Christian and Muslim, during Imperial Britain's rise and fall.

It aims to show how present-day conflict in the Middle East and Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks in the West are informed and even motivated by a historic sense of injustice and oppression that Islamists believe arises directly from the past actions of the British Empire.

The series looks at three great clashes over the past 150 years: the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the Mahdi uprising in Sudan in the 1880s and the creation of the state of Israel in the first half of the 20th century

[edit] Mutiny

The first programme examines the causes and legacy of the Indian Mutiny of 1857. It reveals how a purist form of Islam, Wahabbism, was brought from Arabia to India in the 18th century, where it created the basis for a jihad (holy war) against the British. Later, in the form of Deobandism, this revivalist form of Islam was taken up in Pakistan, then by the Taleban, and today by disillusioned young Muslims in Britain.
Author Charles Allen, a leading authority on South Asian history, and award-winning writer and historian William Dalrymple share their knowledge and opinions of the mutiny and its background. The programme also makes use of newly discovered documents that show how the revolt centered on the King of Delhi, Bhahadur Shah II, a descendant of the Mughal Emperors from the great Islamic dynasty started by Babur in the 16th century.

[edit] Sudan

The Mahdi uprising in Sudan in the 1880s is the focus of the second programme in the series telling the story of the extraordinary tensions and mutual misunderstandings, wars and reconciliations that have haunted two cultures, Christian and Muslim, during Imperial Britain's rise and fall. The series shows how the centuries-old conflict between Islam and a Christian West can help in understanding the causes of terrorist acts in the 21st century.
Sudan is the largest and one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Africa. During the Mahdi uprising Muhammad Ahmed, a self-styled descendant of the Prophet who called himself the Mahdi (Messiah), declared "jihad" against the British. He killed the hugely popular British leader Charles Gordon, an evangelical Christian, in Khartoum in 1885. The Mahdi then set up an Islamic state; possibly the purist form of Islam the world has ever seen.
The film explores the British religious and political backlash that followed Gordon's death and the ferocious revenge that followed in the Sudan, during which the Mahdi's successor, the Khalifa, was killed.
A hundred years later, a new generation of Sudanese fundamentalists played host to another redeemer hell-bent on the destruction of the West. It was in Sudan that Osama bin Laden created Al Qaeda

[edit] Palestine

This final programme in the series looks at the politically-charged history of Palestine. It explores how decisions made by the British rulers of Palestine 90 years ago – when they supported the idea of a nation state for Jews in Palestine – are still blamed for intensifying a conflict that continues to this day.
In December 1917 the British General Edmund Allenby entered Jerusalem with TE Lawrence, the guerrilla leader of an Arab army, by his side. More than 800 years after they were evicted from Palestine during the Crusades, the British again ruled over the Holy Land.
From the deserts of southern Jordan, through the West Bank and Israel, this film traces the roots of the "Palestine Issue" and the competing nationalist demands that the British faced.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised a homeland for Jews. But many children in schools in the West Bank and militants fighting the Israeli army today consider British rule over Palestine as a simple betrayal of the Arab cause.