The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times

by Christopher de Bellaigue

Overview

“The finest Orientalist of his generation” (Wall Street Journal) rewrites everything we thought we knew about the modern history of the Islamic world.

In this “stylishly written, surprisingly moving chronicle” (Harper’s), Christopher de Bellaigue presents an absorbing account of the political and social reformations that transformed the lands of Islam in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. “The best sort of book for our disordered days” (Pankaj Mishra), The Islamic Enlightenment “is at once new, fascinating and extraordinarily important” (Wall Street Journal) as it challenges ossified perceptions in Western culture that self- righteously condemn the Muslim world as hopelessly benighted. This false perception belies the fact that Islamic civilization has long been undergoing its own anguished transformation, and that the violence of an infinitesimally small minority is the blowback from this process. In reclaiming the stories of the “fascinating . . . individuals who would grapple with reform and modernization” (New York Times Book Review), de Bellaigue’s “eye-opening, well-written, and very timely” (Yuval Harrari) history shows the folly of Westerners demanding modernity from people whose lives are already drenched in it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631493980
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	08/14/2018
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	841,939
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Christopher de Bellaigue has worked as a journalist in south Asia and the Middle East, writing for the Economist, the Guardian, and the New York Review of Books. He is the award-winning author of four books, has made several BBC television and radio documentaries, and has been a visiting fellow at the universities of Harvard and Oxford. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 Cairo 1

2 Istanbul 53

3 Tehran 107

4 Vortex 155

5 Nation 201

6 Counter-Enlightenment 291

Conclusion 349

Acknowledgements 353

List of Illustrations 357

Notes 359

Bibliography 373

Index 383

Editorial Reviews

…[a] fascinating and elegantly written account of the impact of modernity on the Islamic world…The Islamic Enlightenment introduces us to a fascinating gallery of individuals who would grapple with reform and modernization in theory and practice…A book like this can only point to the sheer complexity of Muslim identities, loyalties and accommodations in the modern world, both among the hundreds of millions who lead lives of varying degrees of quiet and the troubled few. Far from spurning or avoiding modernity, Muslims are "drenched in it," as de Bellaigue points out, and in tracking the sinews of enlightenment through the last two centuries of Islamic thinking, this brilliant and lively history deserves nothing but praise.

The New York Times Book Review - Jason Goodwin

02/13/2017
In this expansive historical account and commentary, de Bellaigue (In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs) recounts Islam’s “painful encounter with modernity” through the history of Turkey, Egypt, and Iran. The text is broad in scope and bold in its aims, attempting to chart the sometimes contradictory and manifold contours of this “Islamic Enlightenment” and disturb paternalistic notions of “the Muslim world” on the part of imprudent Western observers. De Bellaigue does well to manage a wide swathe of political, economic, religious, and cultural historical personages in the vortex among Istanbul, Cairo, and Tehran, but his tone can be condescending, and his treatment of Islamic theologies of reform is overly simplistic. Even so, this is a text that demands attention for its splendid prose, command of an entire treasury of history, and ability to undermine the misplaced patronization of Middle Eastern Muslim nations over the last 300 years. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Excellent…Mr. de Bellaigue, the finest Orientalist of his generation, does the world a great service by charting the attainments of the region’s long 19th century….Focusing on Iran, Turkey and Egypt, ‘the three intellectual and political centres of the Middle East,’ Mr. de Bellaigue tells a story that is at once new, fascinating and extraordinarily important."

Wall Street Journal - Bartle Bull

"That there has been an Islamic Enlightenment at all will come as news to many. De Bellaigue’s account of the ‘very broad church’ of Islam in the modern world is splendid and timely."

Anthony Gottlieb

"A brilliantly learned and entertaining study of a topic that is of far more than merely antiquarian interest: the encounter between the Islamic world and the post-Enlightenment West."

Tom Holland

"Christopher de Bellaigue has long been one of our most resourceful and stimulating interpreters of realities veiled by fear and prejudice. In The Islamic Enlightenment, he cuts through the complacent opposition of Islam-versus-modernity to reveal a fascinating world: one in which complex human beings constantly change, improvise, and adjust under the pressures of history. It is the best sort of book for our disordered days: timely, urgent, and illuminating."

Pankaj Mishra

"A highly original and informative survey of the clashes between Islam and modernity in Istanbul, Cairo, and Tehran in the last two hundred years. Brilliant!"

Orhan Pamuk

"A stylishly written, surprisingly moving chronicle of intellectual and political flourishing in Egypt, Turkey, and Iran — ‘the brain of Islam’ — in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."

Harper's

"Elegantly written…’The Islamic Enlightenment’ introduces us to a fascinating gallery of individuals who would grapple with reform and modernization in theory and practice…In tracking the sinews of enlightenment through the last two centuries of Islamic thinking, this brilliant and lively history deserves nothing but praise."

New York Times Book Review

"The book reads at times like a thriller—it is a tale of reform and reaction, innovation and betrayal, a struggle, as the author would put it, between faith and reason. . . . With such divisive views elevated to state policy, a book that examines the Islamic world’s liberalization process—at least until the French and the English carved up the Middle East after 1918—is welcome."

Arab Weekly - Francis Ghilès

"Deeply researched . . . . Beginning with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 and ending with the late 20th century, De Bellaigue shows how the cultural struggles between modernity and tradition unfolded in Istanbul, Cairo, and Tehran. . . .De Bellaigue is a knowledgeable guide through huge sweeps of cultural history"

Christian Science Monitor - Nick Romeo

"Timely, thoughtful, and provocative."

Peter Frankopan

"An eye-opening, well-written and very timely book, which can help us understand better the complex relationship between the Muslim world and modernity. While both Islamic extremists and Western bigots find it convenient to stress the incompatibility of Islam and modernity, Christopher de Bellaigue shows that Islam is whatever Muslims make of it, and that at least some Muslims have made of it something very modern."

Yuval Harari

03/01/2017
Disputing the widely held, Western belief that the Muslim world is in need of an enlightenment, De Bellaigue (Patriot of Persia) argues that Islam has, in fact, experienced such insight. The author examines the developments in three major centers of the culture during the 19th and 20th centuries: Cairo, Istanbul, and Tehran. All three cities would transform during this era, and each would contribute numerous scholars, scientists, artists, and administrators to the Islamic Enlightenment. The Islamic world as a whole would see the adoption of modern medicine, the increase of education, improvements in the lives of Muslim women, and the decline of slavery. Modernization was a slow, painful process. Eventually, a counter-enlightenment movement arose in reaction to imperialism and subjugation by the West after World War I. This brought about the Muslim Brotherhood, the militant writings of Sayyid Qutb, and the Islamic Revolution in Iran. To some degree, the counter-enlightenment led to the extremism of today. De Bellaigue is an elegant and knowledgeable writer, offering a convincing case that this part of the world has been misjudged by the West. VERDICT Recommended for historians, religious scholars, or anyone interested in relations between the Middle East and the West.--Dave Pugl, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL

Library Journal

★ 2017-01-24
A pertinent study of how the Islamic world played quick catch-up to the West over the course of the 19th century.Contrary to patronizing observations by Westerners when confronted in the early 19th century with the "backwardness" of the Muslim East, the three centers of Islamic culture and intellect—Cairo, Istanbul, and Tehran—were undergoing turbulent inner revolution. In this well-organized and impressively concise yet sweeping history, British journalist and author de Bellaigue (Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup, 2012, etc.) takes as his narrative point of departure the clash of East and West that occurred with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 and concludes with the growing "counter-enlightenment" that has taken root since the 1980s. A brief look back reveals that what shuttered the once famously tolerant and open Islamic society of the eighth and ninth centuries, in Damascus, Baghdad, and Cordoba, was the inner schism between Sunni and Shia, the threat of the Crusades and Reconquista, and suspicion regarding rationalism. Intellectual curiosity and "a joyful engagement with the mechanics of the world" channeled into "a system for throttling human potential." With Napoleon came the challenge of embracing new forms of knowledge and innovation—or resisting them. Most importantly, whose side was God on? In an accessible, consistently informative narrative, the author delves into the lives and achievements of specific modernizers, many of them autocrats like Egypt's Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottomans' Mahmud II, and Iran's Abbas Mirza; and more subtle writers who helped generate their country's sense of self, such as Rifa'a al-Tahtawi and Namik Kemal. De Bellaigue emphasizes that while the spur to modernization in Egypt was Napoleon, in the Ottoman Empire, it was defeat by the Russians, while in Iran, it was the country's relative isolation as well as its shared Persian language. The counter-enlightenment accompanied the growing distrust of the West. A nonscholarly work that lay readers will find especially engaging.

Kirkus Reviews