A revelatory history that uncovers the modern foundations of the
Islamic world.
Christopher de Bellaigue is the award-winning author of five books,
including The Islamic Enlightenment, which was shortlisted for the
Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction and the Orwell Prize for
Political Writing in 2017.
As a reporter in the 1990s and 2000s, he covered the politics and
invasions that shaped Turkey, the Middle East and South Asia for,
among others, the Economist, Guardian and New York Review of Books.
He has also made television and radio programmes and has lectured
at universities and in boardrooms around the world.
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 NOAH HARARI author of SAPIENS and HOMO DEUS*
This book is an enlightenment in itself, and a salient one in this
age when everyone seems to feel entitled to a firm opinion about
Islam and Muslims.
*The Times*
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*
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*
This is a nuanced and empathetic view of the Islamic world at one
of its most challenging and enthralling moments: its
history-changing encounter with western modernity… At a time of
profound suspicion and mistrust between the West and the Muslim
world, this is an important, beautifully written book that offers a
powerful corrective to the notion that Islam contains an inbuilt
prejudice against modernity. It strikes a blow, as the most
readable writers do, for common humanity.
*Sunday Times*
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