The document setting up these mandates called them territories “inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world” and said “the tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced nations who by reason of their . . . experience . . . can best undertake this responsibility.” In short, it spoke of Arabs as children and of Europeans as grown-ups who would take care of them until they could do grown-up things like feed themselves—such was the language directed at a people who, if the Muslim narrative were still in play, would have
...more
