The Islamic enlightenment : the struggle between faith and reason : 1798 to modern times / Christopher de Bellaigue.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

With majestic prose, Christopher de Bellaigue presents an absorbing account of the political and social reformations that transformed the lands of Islam in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Flying in the face of everything we thought we knew, The Islamic Enlightenment becomes an astonishing and revelatory history that offers a game-changing assessment of the Middle East since the Napoleonic Wars.

Beginning his account in 1798, de Bellaigue demonstrates how Middle Eastern heartlands have long welcomed modern ideals and practices, including the adoption of modern medicine, the emergence of women from seclusion, and the development of democracy. With trenchant political and historical insight, de Bellaigue further shows how the violence of an infinitesimally small minority is in fact the tragic blowback from these modernizing processes.

Structuring his groundbreaking history around Istanbul, Cairo, and Tehran, the three main loci of Islamic culture, de Bellaigue directly challenges ossified perceptions of a supposedly benighted Muslim world through the forgotten, and inspiring, stories of philosophers, anti-clerics, journalists, and feminists who opened up their societies to political and intellectual emancipation. His sweeping and vivid account includes remarkable men and women from across the Muslim world, including Ibrahim Sinasi, who brought newspapers to Istanbul; Mirza Saleh Shirzi, whose Persian memoirs describe how the Turkish harems were finally shuttered; and Qurrat al-Ayn, an Iranian noble woman, who defied her husband to become a charismatic prophet.

What makes The Islamic Enlightenment particularly germane is that non-Muslim pundits in the post-9/11 era have repeatedly called for Islam to subject itself to the transformations that the West has already achieved since the Enlightenment--the absurd implication being that if Muslims do not stop reading or following the tenets of the Qur'an and other holy books, they will never emerge from a benighted state of backwardness. The Islamic Enlightenment, with its revolutionary argument, completely refutes this view and, in the process, reveals the folly of Westerners demanding modernity from those whose lives are already drenched in it.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

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 © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

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.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Islamic history in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was written by historians who generally regarded Muslims as backward, betraying a prevailing European worldview rather than true history. As early as the mid-twentieth century, historians began recognizing Muslim accomplishments from the eighteenth century to WWI, and these shifts in attitudes could be thought of as the Islamic enlightenment. To make its case, this work looks at three main cultural centers: Cairo, Tehran, and Istanbul. (Notably missing are cultural centers in Timbuktu and Delhi.) The work then outlines the networks that facilitated the exchange of ideas among these centers and the subsequent social changes in the nineteenth century as well as the backlash to these modernist trends. Unfortunately, the discussion stops just before the Khomeini's revolution in Iran and the Islamization precipitated by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Although the book takes the position that the Islamic lands did undergo an enlightenment prior to the spread of colonialism, not all readers will draw the same conclusion. The Islamic lands did borrow ideas from the West and incorporate them within an Islamic context. The level of borrowing and innovation would determine the level of enlightenment indigenous to these Muslims ultimately, the crux of the Islamic enlightenment debate.--Hassanali, Muhammed Copyright 2017 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

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 intellectCairo, Istanbul, and Tehranwere 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 innovationor 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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

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.