The Islamic Enlightenment

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. – David Aaronovitch * 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. – Justin Marozzi * Sunday Times *
It would be hard to imagine a more timely book than The Islamic Enlightenment. – Jerry Brotton * BBC History Magazine *
Luminous… [De Bellaigue] is a wonderful narrator, and these chapters burst with colour and detail … A dazzling feat of erudition and storytelling. It is also a necessary work, challenging many of the assumptions that animate contemporary narratives about Islam. – Kenan Malik * New Statesman *
A vigorous and thoughtful book … De Bellaigue has written a (beautifully illustrated) book that prompts an important conversation, and is extremely useful for our times. As well as introducing neglected histories and characters about which and whom we need to care, the work itself incarnates the essence of enlightenment. – Bettany Hughes * Guardian *
A tale of reform and reaction, innovation and betrayal … His cast of characters — “the Muslim pioneers we never thought existed” — is presented with flair and an acute eye… This is a civilised and beautifully written story of the advances and reverses of a great civilisation that lost its own way, was shunted into cul-de-sacs by predatory European imperialists — and yet was and is constantly searching out ways to bounce back. – David Gardner * Financial Times *
At a time when the gulf between Islamc and the West yawns distressingly wide, De Bellaigue’s book is a welcome and surprising corrective… An invigoratingly erudite read – Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times *

Christopher de Bellaigue is the award-winning author of The Lion House- The Rise of Suleyman the Magnificent, which was chosen as a book of the year by The Times, Sunday Times, Spectator and New Yorker among others, as well as five previous 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 he has covered war, politics, society and the environment in five continents for the Economist, the New York Review of Books, the Guardian and the BBC. He is the founder of the Lake District Book Festival in Cartmel, Cumbria, an Honorary Fellow of the University of St Andrews and in 2026 he will take up a Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford.

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