On Conversion and Secularization: Responding to Meziane's The States of Earth

One indelible mark of this era for fossil states was the confounding “problem” of Islam, which seemed to confound the disciplinary techniques of secularism—that is until the fateful fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1920. For John R. Mott, this combined with the discovery of oil in Persia (with the assistance of U.S. missionaries) and the larger crashing of the industrial West into “the Moslem world” signaled a Muslim downfall and an opportunity for “Protestant Powers” to finally remake the world. Meziane, too, has his finger on the pulse of 19th century Orientalism and the role of fossil fuel in the acceleration of 19th century imperialism. But rather than my Protestant, mainly Anglophone archives, Meziane offers an Arab/North African perspective on the colonial dimensions of the Anthropocene.