ds (750-1258). Hitti says that "within 100 years after the death of Muhammad his followers were the masters of an empire greater than that of Rome" (1). During the latter part of the Abbasid period, the unity of the Arab world disintegrated. Islam, however, continued to spread, and its influence deepened in the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, South and Southeast Asia as well as other areas under the Ottoman Empire, the power of which peaked in the 16th century and finally collapsed in 1918.
During the interwar period, most but not all Muslim nations remained under the control of Western colonial powers. The rest achieved independence after World War II and commanded the allegiance of a very large number of Muslims in North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and elsewhere.
During the colonial period, the primary force behind independence movements was secular nationalism. Lewis says that, during the 19th century, "the most important new ideas came from Europe, especially patriotism and liberalism" (39). To respond to the challenge of Western dominance, Arab and other Muslim cultures sought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to borrow ideas, institutions and technology from the West. Nationalist movements were often dominated by Western-educated elites, which, in some countries such as Syria and Lebanon in the immediate post-war period, included Christians. These new elites were in most Muslim countries allied with and at times repressed by more traditional ruling elites, such as monarchies in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Jordan, the officer class in countries such as Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Pakistan, and with various nationalist political parties, such as the Baathists in Syria and Iraq. The resulting post-independence regimes were often authoritarian but nevertheless adopted outward political structures and institutions, including constitutions, legislatures and, in a few countries, dem...