000			02422cam a22002417i 4500
020			_a9781847922410
020			_a1847922414
020			_a9781847922427
020			_a1847922422
041			_aENGLISH
082	0	4	_a909.0976708 _bCHR
100	1		_aDe Bellaigue, Christopher,
245	1	4	_aThe Islamic enlightenment : the modern struggle between faith and reason
260			_aLondon _bPenguin Random House _c2017
300			_axxxiv, 398 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : _billustrations (some color) ;
505	0		_aIntroduction -- 1. Cairo -- 2. Istanbul -- 3. Tehran -- 4. Vortex -- 5. Nation -- 6. Counter-enlightenment -- Conclusion.
520	8		_aA revelatory and game-changing narrative that rewrites everything we thought we knew about the modern history of the Islamic world. 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. 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.
650		0	_aIslamic modernism.
650		0	_aFaith and reason
650		0	_aIslam
650		0	_aIslam
942			_cBK
999			_c22653 _d22653