Siratunnabi sa.

  The history of modern Islam has often been explained in terms of the impact of “the West.” From this perspective the 18th century was a period of degeneration and a prelude to European domination, symbolized by Napoleon I’s conquest of Egypt in 1798. Yet it is also possible to argue that the period of Western domination was merely an interlude in the ongoing development of indigenous styles of modernization. In order to resolve this question, it is necessary to begin the “modern” period with the 18th century, when activism and revival were present throughout Islamdom. The three major Muslim empires did experience a decline during the 18th century, as compared with their own earlier power and with the rising powers in Europe, but most Muslims were not yet aware that Europe was partly to blame. Similar decline had occurred many times before, a product of the inevitable weaknesses of the military-conquest state turned into centralized absolutism, overdependence on continuous expansi...