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

Posted on 23 February 2019 by Christopher De Bellaigue

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. New Download The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times [ by ] Christopher De Bellaigue [ Kindle ePUB or eBook ] – kino-fada.fr 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 forthan 300 pages on a journey in 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 forthan 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 achie...In these frankly, traumatic times where various parties are takingumbrage at each other s point of view and the language is becomingprovocative 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 ...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 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 thin...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 adapted Enlightenment ideals to advance progress De Bellaigue writes the term evokes the defeat of dogma, demotion of clergyascendence of democracy, emergence of the individual This may be a stretch when applied to the late Ottoman or Persian empires, and their successors Acknowledging Muslim civilization did not initiate the 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 adapted Enlightenment ideals to advance progress De Bellaigue writes the term evokes the defeat of dogma, demotion of clergyascendence of democracy, emergence of the individual This may be a stretch when applied to the late Ottoman or Persian empires, and their successors Acknowledging Muslim civilization did not initiate the Enlightenmentbut ate of its fruit doesn t necessarily mean religious reforms were made.The book i...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 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 detestabl...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 Engagingly written, with a few great stories to tell But his straightforward use of Orientalist tropes was a worr... Reviewer s Note I just wrote ain depth review of this book on my weekly book blog If you like this review and would like to read , click on the following linkWhen 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 Reviewer s Note I just wrote ain depth review of this book on my weekly book blog If you like this review and would like to read , click on the following linkWhen 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...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 theenlightened pun intended received wisdoms goesor 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 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 theenlightened pun intended received wisdoms goesor 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...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 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 co...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, ...

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

English
23 February 2019

Christopher De Bellaigue