Islamic Enlightenment

by Christopher de Bellaigue

‘Brilliant' Orhan Pamuk

'The best sort of book for our disordered days: timely, urgent and illuminating' Pankaj Mishra

'It strikes a blow … for common humanity.' Sunday Times

The Islamic Enlightenment: a contradiction in terms?

The Muslim world has often been accused of a failure to modernise, reform and adapt. But, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day, Islamic society in its Middle Eastern heartlands has in fact been transformed by modern ideals and practices, including the adoption of modern medicine, the emergence of women from purdah and the development of democracy.

Who were the scholars and scientists, writers and politicians that brought about these remarkable changes? And why is their legacy now under threat?

Beginning with the dramatic collision of East and West following Napoleon’s arrival in Egypt, and taking us through 200 tumultuous years of Middle Eastern history, Christopher de Bellaigue introduces us to key figures and reformers; from Egypt’s visionary ruler Muhammad Ali to brave radicals like Iran’s first feminist Qurrat al-Ayn and the writer Ibrahim Sinasi, who transformed Ottoman Turkey’s language and literature.

This book tells the forgotten story of the Islamic Enlightenment. It shows us how to look beyond sensationalist headlines to foster a genuine understanding of modern Islam and Muslim culture, and is essential reading for anyone engaged with the state of the world today.

Genres: History, Islam, Nonfiction, Religion, Middle East, Politics, Philosophy

448 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 2017

About the author

Christopher de Bellaigue was born in London in 1971 and has worked as a journalist in the Middle East and South Asia since 1994. His first book, In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize. His latest book is Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup. He lives in Tehran with his wife and two children.

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book, with the wrong title
“I hope I have demonstrated that many of the ideas, such as the value of the individual and the benefits of law, science and representative government, were adopted rapidly – so seamlessly, in fact, that they are now authentic features of Islamic thought and society”. This is what Christophe de Bellaigue writes in the final conclusion of his book. And that really is surprising, because in fact he has just taken us for more than 300 pages on a journey in which he has to admit time and again that the attempts to introduce Western modernity into the Islamic community of the Middle East have failed.

The list of very fascinating figures he presents that have struggled with that modernity and have tried to achieve an integration of Western values is endless, some of them entirely in accordance with Islam, others completely secular. These range from authoritarian figures such as Muhammed Ali Pasha in Egypt, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, shah Reza Phalevi in Iran, to explicitly Islamic thinkers and administrators, such as Rifaa al-Tahtawi in Egypt, Namik Kemalj in Turkey, and Mirza Karahani in Iran. Except for Ataturk, all of these figures have failed miserably and most of them have had to pay for it with their lives. At no time in the period that the Bellaigue covers, you can speak of a truly "Islamic Enlightenment," although the author claims otherwise. Maybe that’s because de Bellaigue constantly confuses terms such as Enlightenment, modernity, industrialization, and the rule of law. Of course, these terms are related to each other, but they cover absolutely different loads.

This book therefore is a conceptual failure and does not exactly give the reader what it promises (in other words: it has the wrong title). But nevertheless, this is a very interesting book. De Bellaigue brings the story of the struggle of the Islamic Middle East with Western modernity in a very appealing way; time and again it has tried to translate and apply this modernity in its own terms. Thus, the Middle East certainly was not passive and backwards as it still appears in some Orientalist views. And it is the great merit of the author that he gives a face to those attempts, translating them into people of flesh and blood; many of the figures he discussed were unknown to me and the short biographies of, for example, the Egyptian Mohammed Abdul and the Persian feminist Fatima Baraghani, invited me to know more about them. I can also support his global, underlying thesis, namely, that Western imperialism has caused such a shock in the very closed Islamic world and in such a short time has thrown all possible social domains of that society into crisis, in combination with an extremely humiliating, haughty and opportunistic attitude of the West itself , that it makes sense that the Middle East ended up with corrupt authoritarian regimes on one side and the most reactionary and violent radicalism on the other.

So this certainly is an interesting read, but additional weaknesses of this book are that the Bellaigue has mainly limited himself to the period of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and then in his final conclusion makes the leap to today. The focus on countries such as Egypt, Turkey and Iran certainly is justified, but as a result interesting Muslim countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia and their translation of Western modernity are kept completely out of the picture, and that is also a missed opportunity. (2.5 stars)

[Dmitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher de Bellaigue tells how the Islamic world was modernized during the 19th century and beyond. His thesis is that the centers of Egypt, Turkey and Iran had adapted Enlightenment ideals to advance progress. De Bellaigue writes: 'the term evokes the defeat of dogma, demotion of clergy, ascendence of democracy, emergence of individuals'. This may be a stretch when applied to the late Ottoman or Persian empires and successors. Althugh acknowledging 'Muslim civilization did not initiate the Enlightenment but ate of its fruit' doesn't necessarily mean religious reforms were made.

The book is organized into sections on Cairo, Istanbul and Tehran, followed by universal social changes, the rise of nation states, and setbacks after WWI. The Islamic ‘Golden Age’ between the 8th-13th centuries is briefly recounted, when arts and sciences flourished during the Abbasid caliphate. During Europe's ‘Dark Ages’, Arabic translations preserved Greek philosophy for a future Renaissance. The period has been covered extensively in 'Lost Enlightenment' by S. Frederick Starr. After the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 the court moved to Cairo, until it was defeated by the Turks in 1517.

At the end of the Golden Age, Islamic civilization fell into decline. Dogma replaced learning, and use of the printing press was banned on pain of death. The discovery of the New World went unnoticed in Istanbul until after 1798, when Napoleon had annexed the Ottoman jewel of Cairo. Unlike Edward Said's account in 'Orientalism' the French savants were seen as producing the 'Description de l'Egypte' to the amazement of Muslim scholars, who had renounced science in the 13th century. Soon the Rosetta Stone would be discovered and hieroglyphics deciphered by these same despised Franks.

Middle eastern modernization was hastened by forced incursions of the West. It was guided by the hands of 19th century autocrats, such as Egypt's Muhammad Ali Pasha, Turkey's Tanzimat sultans, and Iran's Qajar dynasty. Parliaments, courts, press and universities were created, but were controlled by authoritarian regimes. Modern militaries were formed to counter Western power, using European tactics and weapons. Central bureaucracies were established to administer empires, and eventually nation states. 20th century coups would later topple monarchies, and found constitutional republics.

With the advent of global trade, travel and communication the lands of Islam have grown closer and more connected, but social reforms have trailed behind. Western meddling in the Middle East has continued unabated, and spurred the rise of fundamentalist and radical Islamist movements. In the end this book is less about Islamic enlightenment and more about the gradual adoption of economic and political advances. It is a well written history of modern development within the Muslim world. Many influential figures and texts have been referenced, making this a challenging but well worthwhile work.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

In these frankly, traumatic times where various parties are taking more umbrage at each other’s point of view and the language is becoming more provocative one of the accusations levelled against the Muslim world is that they are failing to adapt to a modern world and modernise their culture. This has not always been the case though, as back in the nineteenth century the Muslim world embraced change and modern practices, medicine and universal suffrage. In this book on the Islamic Enlightenment, de Bellaigue goes back over 200 years to take us through the history of the region and the politicians, scientists and writers who have been key to driving the change in the region.

This is not a book you can rush, as de Bellaigue takes enormous pains to find the movers and shakers who drove through the change in this Muslim world and tell their story. It is full of complex tales and he is equally critical of the Muslim countries and of the Western states that carved up the region for their own ends whilst using the local political leaders to continue to oppress the populace. The amount of research that has gone into this makes for incredibly dense prose and I found it quite challenging to read. I also felt that sometimes the narrative of the stories of the people got lost in the detail. Will probably become a standard text in its time, but it is possible more for the specialist rather than the general reader.

[Murtaza · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting recreation of Islam's modernization over the past few centuries, focused specifically on three major sites of change in Iran, Turkey and Egypt. This is a standard intellectual history, and charts the lives of most of the well-known Islamic thinkers of this period (Afghani, Abduh, Kemal, Tahtawi, Ale Ahmad etc.), while also recounting the works of a few other lesser-known writers and activists. De Bellaigue's basic contention is that Islam as we know it today has been radically and irrevocably shaped by the forces of modernity. Even ferociously "anti-modern" approaches to religion are colored by their interaction with the thing they are rejecting. Islamism is not a rejection of modernity as much as an articulation of a different way of being modern, one that attempts to take inspiration and guidance from the past. Like quantum physics once something is being observed its own behaviors necessarily change, and Islam's interplay with Enlightenment ideas once it encountered them is no different.

Although the writing in this book is often quite inspired and there were many small anecdotes, quotes, and even a few narratives I was unaware of (particularly in Iran), for the most part the information here will be familiar to most students of modern Islamic history. The best parts were those that went deeper into history, including the reflections penned by Iranian students on their first trips to the West, the perspectives of women on the new opportunities in society, and the creation of "public opinion" through the mass press. It is also striking how positively that the West and its achievements were viewed in the Muslim world in the past, before the actions of colonial governments began to embitter perceptions. Its hard to imagine an Islamic cleric like Mohammed Abduh today, a man who felt perfectly comfortable being both an ardent Europhile and an "Islamist" and who saw no real contradiction between these two positions.

The book seems to have been intended as a rebuttal to the asinine claim made by some pop intellectuals that Islam is not modern and needs to be confronted by modern ideas. It generally accomplishes this, and is thus worthwhile for people seeking to understand contemporary Islamic thought and practice around the world - though I regret that he did not include South Asia. De Bellaigue does a good job of crafting a coherent narrative that enriches ones understanding of contemporary political events in many Muslim countries, places that are far from being mired in ancient ideas today, for better and worse.

[Tariq Mahmood · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Try and pray regularly for forty days, and see whether you can give up prayer afterward', different from 'give up praying for forty days and see whether you can ever resume the practice afterward?'. Jamal Al-Din Afghani, the founder of pan islamism.

The book demonstrates that Muslim countries have adopted and still desire enlightenment even when some of them are governed by Islamic movements. Turkey, Iran and Egypt are profiled before WW1 to the present.

If Islam engaged so successfully with modernity until the First World War, why since then has reactionary revivalism been able to impose itself on ever larger swathes of the Muslim world?

The rise of Islamism is a blowback from the Islamic Enlightenment – a facet, however detestable, of modernity itself.

Although Muslims were not the authors of the achievements that we now associate with the Enlightenment. No Istanbul blacksmith discovered movable type. No Muslim Voltaire sniped at the clerics by the Nile. But there is a great difference between accepting that Muslim civilization did not initiate the Enlightenment and saying that it did not accept its findings or eat of its fruit. This is a big claim to make. It means that Muslims are either congenitally barred or – even worse – have deliberately cut themselves off from experiences that many consider being universal. It means that the lands of Islam have remained aloof from science, democracy and the principle of equality. It is a claim that is often heard in today’s divided, rebarbative, edgy world, and it is nonsense.

'A very solid case for rise of resentment against their colonisers was inevitable and perfectly natural. If the West can today justify the rise of Far right due to uncontrolled immigration especially from the Middle East than the rise of Wahabism needs no explanation. The other impact was in countries like turkey and Iran who although never got colonised but were left with the perennial fear of takeover, which is still evident in their political psyche even today. So basically the organic like enlightenment movements were transformed into facist like militant movements which believed in hard lined nationalist policy back by military might, turkey of today is a classic example.

The issue with rise of political islamisation is two fold, at one level Muslims have to be better than others at moral and virtue if others are far more advanced at science and technology, and other is the huge weight of expectation which every Muslim has to carry around which does not let him effectively compete with the others in science, technology, entertainment etc....

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engagingly written, with a few great stories to tell. But his straightforward use of Orientalist tropes was a worry, and I felt his arguments were far too often set up to suit his line, with equivalences that aren’t and pertinent information left out until later, when it doesn’t spoil the argument.

The first parts had most of these faults. There he gives the impression that Enlightenment (as brought from Europe) was a project with no problems and no downside, and that benighted religion only ever gets in the way. Later this proves not to be so true, when religious people struggle for values such as freedom etc., and progressive religiousness occurs. To present Napoleon in Egypt as if wide-eyed Egyptians had never heard of ‘equality’, at the start of the book, then 100 pages later, on a different topic, to mention in a sentence Islam’s own ideas of equality – this was frustrating.

An example that sticks in my head: on the state of Turkish poetry before the modern turn, he hands over the verdict to a Victorian scholar who is exasperated with it after (for unknown reasons) he has written five volumes on the subject. Poetry may have been in a slump, but we know not to let Victorian gentlemen have the last word. Or else I’d quote the venerable author of A Literary History of Persia (four volumes) when he said Turkish names are too laughably barbarous to bother getting right: he’ll weary our ears with no more of them.

At the same time I read Marshall Hodgson’s account of the Muslim world’s collision with European modernity, in the third book of his The Venture of Islam. It’s old, but Marshall Hodgson was an original, deep thinker (the word genius is used) and a pleasant writer too, not a chore. I suggest the Hodgson.

[Eressea · Rating 1 out of 5]

今年的第二本伊斯蘭書籍
本來以為這本書是介紹伊斯蘭世界面對帝國主義時的掙扎
結果根本就是東方主義的偏見大全

整本書都在反覆強調自由民主文明開化啟蒙思想科學邏輯好棒棒
伊斯蘭教黑暗蒙昧封建反動保守顢頇野蠻自大好壞壞
就連那些思想家也要特意強調獵奇的一面，尤其嘲諷伊斯蘭的性觀念
好像在說就算是這些擁抱西方的先進，一樣不脫其落後的一面

但矛盾的是又推崇埃及土耳其的中興之主鐵腕西化
這時候血腥獨裁又變必要之惡了
反正為了揚西抑東整個價值錯亂
試問若不是西方的帝國主義
維新的必要性在那裡呢?

越看越不耐煩，雖然還是看完了
到了結論惋惜保守反撲
卻不檢討為何歐美的作為
讓作者推崇的價值失去市場
非理性的保守主義正是掙扎的結果啊

[Kumail Akbar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand the account is magisterial, as we are taken through a whirlwind tour of 19th and 20th century Iran, Turkey and Egypt meeting a variety of (to me mostly hitherto unknown) characters who sought to challenge established norms and institutions in these countries, much in the same way that much better known characters did in Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries. From individuals who sought to reform medicine in these lands to those who brought tools of political and intellectual emancipation (such as starting local papers) to those who started political and social movements (including a female prophetess!), the narrative is both informative and engaging.

However, once you keep aside the narrative and focus on the argument that the author is trying to make – that in contrast to modern perceptions there existed an Islamic Enlightenment which was presumably cut short by the forces of modernity and colonial politics – you realize that the argument made here is at best a flimsy one. For starters, the author’s contention that ‘Islam’ had an enlightenment does not really hold much water when he limits himself to just three countries, and those whose populations did not constitute the majority of the global Muslim population. One can argue that the historical role of these states in Middle Eastern and Islamic history privilege them over states in South Asia and South East Asia or even Central Asia where collectively more Muslims resided, but that would suggest that ‘Islam’ is more monolithic than it is, as the Islams of these regions might not be the same as the Islam practiced in Ottoman Turkey, in Iran or Egypt. A cursory look at the distribution of different sects of Islam (including subsects) during this time period would suggest this narrative assumed a level of homogeneity that did not exist in reality.

Furthermore, the author’s notion of an Islamic Enlightenment modeled along the lines of European Enlightenment seems inadequate as well. He never explicitly defines what this constitutes, is he talking about transforming agrarian economies into industrial societies, is he talking about social or political change, is he talking about the rule of law, we are never presented with a well-defined Enlightenment model that Islam was supposed to replicate; only a vague notion of progress that constitutes all of these elements in some arbitrary combination, some of the time. This is further complicated by the fact that at times the author seems to skip over what one would consider key social changes that lead to the enlightenment in Europe. For e.g. the author at certain points refers to how characters in his narrative sought an Islamic Luther or an Islamic Calvin – but such parallels already did exist in history and the author seemed to have written them out of his narrative of Islamic Enlightenment. If the puritanical literalism of the Reformation ultimately paved the way for Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, then there is no reason why the puritanical literalist movements within Islam (such as the Salafist movement) were not critically examined, and the absence of similar results not deliberated upon.

This is in stark contrast to minority – formerly Islamic sects – such as the Bahai – the impact of whose beliefs and practices are discussed in much more detail, as they conform to the narrative that the author is trying to stitch together. Such a lopsided approach which over amplifies the existence of outliers only tells us that there was the possibility of an Enlightenment within the lands of Islam, that there were some bright sparks here and there, but that the raging fire of reason and progress doused by the forces of modernity and colonial action never existed. In short, the author unfortunately managed to reconfirm that which he sought to undo with this work.

Rating 3.5 rounded to 4

[Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Christopher de Bellaigue is the former correspondent for The Economist in Tehran. He writes like a dream and has an insatiable scholarly bent. Some time ago, he got tired of people saying that what Islam need was an Enlightenment, like the West. He wrote a piece of the NY Review of books, arguing that Islam had already had its enlightenment, and that essay led to this book. De Bellaigue shows in elaborate detail that the Middle East, beginning with the Napoleonic conquest of Egypt in 1798 and continuing throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, was exposed to all the political, technological and cultural elements that shaped the West into what it is today. That part of the book is brilliant and required reading for anyone who wants to experience the contact between "East" and "West" at its fullest. But the argument stutters out at the end, since the world of Islam has emphatically not proceeded along the same lines as capitalist Christianity. The infrastructure of the Enlightenment is there to be seen, in roads and railways and parliaments and bookshops. But it didn't take, and de Bellaigue mostly explains the disappointing results in the same terms as any editorial writer might do. One is left with the uneasy thought: What if you gave an Enlightenment and nobody came. . .??

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Reviewer's Note: I just wrote a more in depth review of this book on my weekly book blog. If you like this review and would like to read more, click on the following link: https://tobereadnow.blogspot.com/2017... )

When thinking about the Middle East, modern is not one of the words your average American would ascribe to it. Indeed, if one just peruses right-wing media, you would think that the Middle East has been and always will be defined as in a Hobbesian state of nature. But, as the author of this interesting book points out in his preface, this is a historical fallacy. The Middle East has tried and continues to engage with modernity, but in its own way. Mr. De Bellaigue tries to convey the historic struggle between the Middle East's Islamic identity and the modern world in this book with some mixed results.

Mr. De Bellaigue starts his narrative with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. Napoleon didn't just invade with soldiers though. He brought with him scientists and scholars, laying bear the fact to Egypt, and the Middle East's, denizens that the Islamic world had fallen behind in the production of new ideas and innovations. This had not always been the case as many remembered at the time. Thus began the region's fitful attempts at reform that continue to this day. Mr. De Bellaigue focuses his narrative on three locations: Egypt, Turkey (formerly the Ottoman Empire prior to World War I), and Iran. He shows how public intellectuals engaged with modern thought and technology and how attempts at real reform were often stifled either by conservative rulers or Western imperialists. This is an eye-opening historical revelation.

At least, it would be. However, there are some major problems with this book. The biggest problem is that Mr. De Bellaigue's narrative blends together too much. It is very easy to miss when he has transitioned from one topic to the next, especially since there are no subheadings and few line breaks throughout the book. This isn't as big of a problem in the first three chapters as each one of them focuses on one region's first attempts at modernity, but the problem is still there. It gets worse in the last three chapters when Mr. De Bellaigue begins to talk about all three regions in the same chapter. Then not only is it easy to miss the transition from one public intellectual to the next, but also the transition from one region to the next.

This is not to say that this book is difficult to decipher. Indeed, Mr. De Bellaigue shines when he talks about the great works of literature of some of the great Middle Eastern writers of their time and how their ideas would influence their countries for years to come. Some of their work may even be interesting to look at on their own. However, Mr. De Bellaigue doesn't always give each of these great writers enough space in his book to breathe on their own.

In the end, while this is not the best book on Middle Eastern history (I would recommend The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan for that), it still may be useful for many Americans to read about the Middle East's attempts to modernize. It would certainly help them put the struggles in the Middle East they see on TV in a broader historical context.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book on a subject I knew little about. De Bellaigue, whose wife is Iranian, skillfully avoids both the postcolonial cringe of much contemporary Middle Eastern Studies, and the odious supremacism associated with the New Atheists, providing an intellectual history that is all points sympathetic and engaged. Starting with separate coverage of Egypt, the Ottoman Empire and Persia, he covers the collision of a confident Muslim World with the technological superiority of the West, and the different ways intellectuals and political leaders came to terms with it. Anticlericalism, feminism, atheism, and other modern ideas appeared stunningly quickly.

The book is clearly on the side of Enlightenment, but gives a sympathetic portrayal of how a counter-Enlightenment happened: not as something innate to people with an unfathomably different Weltanschauung, but as the result of Western faithlessness, the general instability and chaos of the 21st century, and the eternal pull of religion. The end of the book looks briefly at the Iranian Revolution and rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Overall, this is a good layman's survey which might point the curious reader towards new lines of research. I'm not sure how it differs from The Republic of Arabic Letters - but life's too short to read both.

[Ginny · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible writing. Nonexistent editing. Some sentences that are paragraphs long. A few half a page. Common to find 5 line sentences. Punctuation unreliable sometimes inside the quote and sometimes outside at the end of sentences. For this first "American"'edition to changes in spelling, conversion of weights and measures from metric.
Oh and the topic, very poorly organized and presented.

[Sense of History]

An appealing read, but with serious conceptual flaws. See my review in my global account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Laurent Franckx · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second time in just a few weeks that I am writing that a book is required reading, but here we are.
This book is dealing with one of the key questions of our time. When people in Europe discuss the integration of Muslim migrants, one of the more enlightened (pun intended) received wisdoms goes more or less like this: "Well, we know that until recently most Christians were rather bigoted, and we know that Christianity was really intolerant, and burned witches and heretics, and organized pogroms against the Jews, and so on, but then we had the enlightenment, and Christianity gradually assimilated the values of the enlightenment, and, in practice, our societies have become completely secularized. While we don't really know why the Christian powers-that-be did not repress liberal philosophers more vehemently, one possible explanation is that Christianity, as a religion was always open to discussion and debate (do you have a choice with four gospels that contradict each other on almost all essential points?). But then Muslims believe that the Quran is the literal word of God, and of course that does not leave much room for discussion. As a result, Islam is an intrinsically backward religion, who will remain stuck forever in the dark ages, and will reject any rational discussion on a topic that might lead to a questioning of the central tenets of the belief."
The great merit of De Bellaigue is that he thoroughly debunks this received wisdom. He shows that, when the great powers in the Middle East were confronted with Europe's superior technology, science and organization during the 19 century, after some initial confusion and rejections of modernity, intellectuals became interested in European ideas, and enthusiastically adopted them, up and including Darwinism, a free press and constitutional democracy. I will not repeat the details of De Bellaigue's argument here: there's so much too learn in this splendid book, and, yes, it will change the way you view the world (at least if you've been brought up in a Eurocentric view of the world).
Why not 5 stars, then? There are two major reasons.
First, the book focuses entirely on Egypt, Turkey and Iran, which gives the impression that De Bellaigue conflates Islam with the Middle East. I am not sure Muslims in North Africa, South Asia or Indonesia will agree with that. The motives for this geographic focus are not clear, but it does leave one with the suspicion that events in those other regions do not fit the main narrative.
Second, the book does not really attempt to answer the questions that are of the greatest interest to us: why did this period of enlightenment eventually fail and what does that bode for the future? De Bellaigue does suggest that the comeback of militant traditional Islamism was mainly the result of resentment against European imperialism and corrupt local elites who took over European values. Maybe. Or could it be that this enlightenment was mainly an elite project that was never internalised by society as a whole? After reading the book, we still have no idea.

As a side note, one point that struck me is the perfidious role of nationalism in this story. We have completely forgotten how, at the end of the 19 century, both the Ottoman and the Habsburg empires were truly multi-ethnic and multi-national. Together with the works of Joseph Roth and Dominic Liven (for instance) I have recently read, this book reminded me what a destructive force nationalism has been.

[Fons Mariën · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dit boek, een vertaling uit het Engels, lag al een paar jaar op mijn stapeltje 'nog te lezen'. Het vergt toch heel wat tijd en inspanning om het te lezen. De auteur studeerde Oriental studies in Cambridge en werkte als journalist onder meer in het Midden-Oosten. In dit boek brengt hij het verhaal van 'de ontmoeting tussen de Oriënt en het Westen in de Moderne Tijd', zoals de ondertitel luidt.

Christopher de Bellaigue focust vooral op drie centra: Caïro, Istanbul en Teheran en bij uitbreiding dus op Egypte, het Ottomaanse rijk/Turkije en Perzië/Iran. Het verhaal begint in 1798 wanneer Napoleon met zijn troepen Egypte binnenvalt en de krijgsmacht van de mammelukken makkelijk overwint. Dit islamitische land, dat net als de rest van de islamitische wereld verstoken is gebleven van moderne ontwikkelingen, wordt hierdoor hardhandig geconfronteerd met het (christelijke) Westen dat sinds enkele eeuwen vooruitgang kent, d.w.z. een ontwikkeling op ideologisch-filosofisch vlak (de Verlichting), op politiek vlak (denk aan de Franse revolutie) en op wetenschappelijk-technisch vlak. Het hoeft geen verbazing dat de Oriënt op precies het militaire gebied geconfronteerd wordt met een verder gevorderde Westen. De leiders van Egypte, het Ottomaanse rijk en Iran zullen in de periode na de overwinning van Napoleon dan ook in de eerste plaats naar het Westen kijken met het oog op het moderniseren van hun legers. In de negentiende eeuw worden soms door de machthebbers mensen naar het Westen (vooral Parijs en Londen) gestuurd om er kennis op te doen van de moderne ontwikkelingen, in het bijzonder op militair vlak. Pas in die tijd dringt ook de boekdrukkunst door, die voorheen in de islamitische wereld onbekend en onbemind was.

De auteur brengt zijn verhaal van de confrontatie met het Westen in detail. Hij schrijft vooral over individuen die open staan voor andere, westerse denkbeelden. Die personen zijn in de drie vermelde centra te vinden. Door hun contacten met het Westen doen ze voor de islamitische wereld nieuwe ideeën op, met name ook op politiek en staatskundig vlak. Zodoende ontstaat tegen het einde van de negentiende eeuw in bepaalde kringen een streven naar een constitutioneel en parlementaire staatskundige ordening, naar het Europese voorbeeld. Dat streven wordt tegengewerkt door de sultans, emirs en sjahs die hun absoluut gezag willen behouden. Deze confrontatie gaat door tot begin twintigste eeuw, wanneer de westerse invloeden zich doorzetten. Ondertussen is ook het Europese koloniale beleid reëel geworden, dat de oosterse machten in menig geval overheerst. De modernisering gaat daardoor verder zijn gang, maar pro-westerse hervormers worden in die context soms ook als collaborateurs gezien. Het verhaal gaat verder met de periode van dekolonisatie na de Tweede wereldoorlog. De Bellaigue behandelt ook de tegenwerkende, religieuze krachten en in casu de belangrijke tegenbeweging, met name de Moslimbroederschap die in de twintigste eeuw in Egypte het licht zag.

Dit boek gaat vooral over de vele individuen, intellectuelen, in de islamitische wereld die open stonden voor westerse, democratische ideeën. De tekst is doorspekt met talloze namen, die voor mij als westerse lezer onbekend zijn. Maar door de bomen zie je soms het bos niet meer. Het wordt naarmate de lectuur vordert steeds moeilijker om de behandelde figuren te onthouden en uit elkaar te houden. Globaal heb ik de indruk dat de 'islamitische verlichting' uit de titel toch vooral slaat op individuen, die zich in sommige gevallen echt afwenden van het geloof. In andere gevallen gaat het om mensen die zich na verloop van tijd toch weer wenden tot traditie en geloof om de eigenheid te bewaren of terug te vinden of die zich verzetten tegen Europese koloniale overheersing. Ik vind de term 'islamitische verlichting' dubieus, de ondertitel geeft volgens mij veel beter de inhoud weer.

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a bit like wading through toffee! The author uses really dense, complex language which is pretty exhausting at the end of a long day! Words like ‘jejune’ (naive, simplistic), or sentences like “it would become but rather a restatement of Islam’s undiminished applicability as a complete approach, in no need of amendment by western ways” make it quite an exhausting read.

There is also a significant gap between the 1980s and modern times, which is annoying. It’s an interesting subject matter but poorly executed.

[Daud Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Covers the beginning, and subsequent evolution of the Islamic world's encounter with Western ideas in extraordinary depth, while maintaining a (much-appreciated) sense of humour throughout. The only grouse would be that it focusses just on the Middle East.

The author deserves full credit for not allowing such a comprehensive treatment to become dull even for a moment.

Apart from improving your understanding of the spread of modernity in the Islamic world, the book also enriches your understanding of the political history of Turkey, Egypt and Iran, beginning from the late 18th century.

(It should be noted that the author uses exceedingly flowery language throughout, and though I found it quite beautiful, it may be off-putting to some)

[Gayla Bassham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a dense and sometimes difficult read, but ultimately a rewarding one. I felt like I learned a lot from it, and it made me eager to read more about the Ottoman Empire and the international politics of the late nineteenth century.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like a two and a half star rating. Not good but not bad.

[Galen Kenney]

As one reviewer had put it, reading this was like "wading through toffee" at times.
Well worth a read, though.
I am rather ignorant on the subject, so it was hard to understand why Bellaigue chose to focus upon Egypt, Iran, and Turkey until the end. But, the histories of these countries really helped parse out regional politics in relation to Western Europe (specifically France and Britain) and the later creation of Iraq, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.
The amount of detail I think was important in being able to examine religion as politic and a product of the present. By "present", I mean that any given moment in time when Islam is utilized and interpreted, it is actively engaging in the social and economic conditions of that moment.
The above point becomes important in deconstructing the treatment of Islam as monolith and the orientalist view of the East as being frozen in time, perpetually resistant to change.

I think this book is well worth the read, but might be a little overwhelming to us folks who are not as familiar with the history and politics.

[David Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

How did we get to this point in history, where we face "radical Islamic terrorism" in the West, where Iran is the only modern theocracy, and where Wahhabist Saudi Arabia exports extreme conservative Islamic thought to its neighbors?

De Bellaigue attempts to explain. He begins with the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798 and concentrates on Cairo, Istanbul, and Tehran. He doesn't attempt to explain any of the theological differences between the various Islamic groups. Instead, he focuses on the characters who have made an impact on Muslim thought. I liked the emphasis on these people; I enjoy the numerous little biographies and find them an easier path to understanding than an emphasis on the beliefs and ideas themselves. As a neophyte to the subject, I recognized few of the names and knew none of this history.

I think this was probably a good introduction to the topics covered, but I don't have any basis of comparison.

[Kārlis Dimdiņš · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book is overrated.

[Baobab · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this is a fascinating book, reading it made me aware of the limitations inherent in the author's thesis and approach. Put briefly, the author states that there was an "Islamic Enlightenment" in which exposure to Western culture, exploitation, and imperialism drove muslims to confront traditional notions of faith versus reason, leading to a period in which major cultural emphasis was put on separating and prioritizing human reason from religious faith. He supports his thesis by tracing the experience of three different muslim societies, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Iran starting with Napoleon's conquest of Egypt (1798-1801) up through the present time. The book traces the experience of these societies in separate, sometimes intersecting narratives up to the present day (the book was published in 2017). While the author emphasizes the progress of the secular by describing the major writers, thinkers, actors and politicians who impacted it, the story could easily be read as a "Why they hate us" across the centuries. The unrelenting western exploitation and degrading is depressing.

While the author has as much as he can handle with the material he covers, one has to wonder about all the muslim societies he left out, such as Morocco, Algeria, what is now Pakistan, and Indonesia.

I hope the author writes another book to develop the ideas he barely mentions in the Conclusion about what he calls the "Counter-Enlightenment" that has taken control in modern Turkey, Egypt, and Iran, and how the ideas behind the "Islamic Enlightenment" yet survive and influence events. In the meantime I enjoyed this book and learned a great deal from it.

[Alex Moran · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a disappointing and oddly argued book that feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. While De Bellaigue's knowledge of the subject is vast, the basis of his account is essentially Samuel Huntington's much discredited "clash of civilizations" thesis, but with a more liberal bent. This contradictory approach plays out in odd ways throughout the book. De Bellaigue also seems to think people like Tommy Robinson or Stephen Miller will one day read this and completely change their worldview, and so there are weird moments where he basically says "ah ha, how about that, racist?" These nods to this imagined audience should have been edited out of the book, as they read very oddly.

However, there are moments when De Bellaigue writes with a clarity that stands in stark contrast to the way some of the book is argued. The pages where he focuses on Turkish literature are particularly illuminating, and I would really like to see what more he has to say on this topic.

[Enise Tatlıdil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bellaigue has composed a thoroughly detailed timeline of events and significant figures in Iran, Egypt and Istanbul from the 18th century to present times. As a consequence of condensing such rich information into a 400 page read, he has used dense and complex prose that is difficult for general readers to grasp without deeper contextual and specialist knowledge.

Nevertheless, upon reading with a pace that allowed full digestion of the text, I was able to gain a sophisticated view of the enlightenment era in the East. Bellaigue infers this era to be a crash course in modernity for the East, and his efforts in researching and compiling such vast information with fine details is commendable.

However, weaved among many sentences, Bellaigue’s writing hints palpable undertones of Orientalist literature and an overall condemnation for the ostensibly passive East. This diversion from objectivity, coupled with the dense language and terminology, has prompted me to rate this work 2/5.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like de Bellaigue's dramatic, detailed style of presenting momentous events, making their relevance quite clear. For example he shows the impact of the great Persian female religious leader Tahereh Qorrat al-Ayn, who was killed in 1852 by Iran's shah (Nasr al-Din Shah), as he fought to eliminate the "heretical" Babist movement's moral threat. In her memory, the Turkish poet Suleyman Nazif wrote “Oh Tahereh! You are worth a thousand Naser al-Din Shahs!” (p. 152). Concerning Iran's constitutional revolution of 1906 to 1911, de Bellaigue captures the tension with global colonial powers. As Iran's new parliament threatened to reject previous agreements giving Britain and Russia controls over Iran’s revenues and loan repayments, those nations moved to restore the shah to full authority, or else “Russia will be forced to interfere, and will do so with the approval and sanction of England” (p. 249).

[Amine · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book starts well by laying out an interesting hypothesis: unknown heroes of feminism, science, and democracy have been ignored by mainstream history.

The first third of the book, mostly the Cairo and Istanbul chapters, follows the initial premise with remarkable detail. But signs of unrigorous (sloppy?) writing start appearing soon. I will let you enjoy this marvelous sentence: ‘of what this raggedy and sickly Persia consisted it was hard to say.’

Hence my question to the author: how can a writer spend months researching for a book and lose patience for details after a few weeks? It seems painfully apparent that the author succumbed to an easy and uninteresting form of analysis: orientalism. Edward Said’s opus should be next on your reading list.

[Devasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not previously think it possible for a book about Islamic countries to be so Eurocentric. The book is confusingly racist and Islamophobic while seeming to think itself progressive. No thank you!

[Patrick Elsey · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you know anything about modern historical writing you know this is bigoted garbage

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometime during the period I lived in Istanbul and was reading a fair amount about the history and literature of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, it occurred to me that Islam might have its own periods of reformation and counter-reformation. My referring to the historical process as reformation is fraught with many problems, particularly that the word reform, if used in a context that is potential religious, political or both, could suggest that the Koran itself needs reformation--heresy if there ever was one.
Choosing to use the word enlightenment is a much better choice than the one I would have made those many years ago when I considered the idea because it reflects on the elements from Europe entering into the Western Islamic world at that time. I found Bellaigue's starting point with Napoleon's army in Egypt ideal, because the difference in technologies comes to the forefront as the Mamluk army, brave and chivalrous, is massacred within an hour.
Though Napoleon is defeated, the issue remains: How will Egypt and in turn the Islamic world incorporate Europe's technological developments while preserving its distinct and powerful identity?
For more than two hundred years now this dialectic between modernization and traditional identities has moved back and forth in what is now Turkey, Egypt, and Iran. From Muhammad Ali's despotic program of modernization to the reign of Turkish president Recip Tayip Erdoğan, Belllaigue maintains the continuity of the historical developments by carefully constructing the character of influential personalities in the movement to modernize Islam, such as Hassan al-Attar, Jamal al-Din Afghani, Midhat Paşa, Sheikh Muhammad Abduh, Sayyid Qutb, Jalal al-e Ahmad and numerous others from these centers of Islamic faith who were grappling with the conflicts and contradictions they faced. These personalities are carefully placed by Bellaigue within the context of their societies and the economic and political challenges.
In disagreement with one or two of the reviews I read, the book is well written, always a challenge for what is a good, scholarly work for the interested reader as opposed to the academic. If there was any issue I had with the book it was the feeling that in order to contain the size of the book, Bellaigue left strings dangling. I know he did this to avoid becoming wrapped up in tangential if fascinating turns from the main thrust of the text. I don't blame him for this as I have a sense he found the material unwieldy at times because of all the potential digressions.
A reader may have ideological objections to this book, or they may disagree with the points the author makes (or may dislike the style he writes and is edited in), but there's no ignoring the value of a book that frames a window to look into how modern Islam has arrived at the point it is today. Though at present Egypt and Turkey are autocratic, and Iran is a theocracy, all these countries have parliaments, a concept that was unimaginable two hundred years ago. One only has to live in an Islamic country and understand a bit of its history to wonder at the changes that have been wrought.