Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

Islam and Modern Science: The Colonial Era • 157of Massina. In the Indian subcontinent, the eighteenth centurywitnessed a major reform–renewal movement led by Shah Wali Allahal‐Dihlawi (1702–1762). This internal process of reform and renewalwas, however, cut short by the invasion and colonization of thesesocieties by the European powers.These movements were ineffectual as far as the general decay wasconcerned. Of course,in the fifty some generations of Muslim history, three or fourgenerations hardly suffice to indicate any long-term trend.Yet the depression of Islamic social and cultural life in thelate seventeenth and eighteenth centuries does stand outin retrospect. This is so chiefly in the light of what followed.With the nineteenth century came the utter collapse of thestrong Muslim posture in the world: that nothing was done inthe eighteenth century to forestall this smacks of inexplicableweakness or folly. But the sense that there was a depression alsoreflects the actualities of the Muslim lands in the eighteenthcentury itself. (Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 134)What actually happened in the three powerful empires (theSafavi, the Indian Timuri, and the Ottoman) that emerged after thegreat realignment of the Muslim world in the post-Mongol era isakin to the slow growth of a cancer that remains undiagnosed untilit has spread throughout the body. When the rot was detected, it wasalready too late.What was decisive in Muslim lands at this time was especiallyone feature: the West’s tremendous expansion of commercialpower…by the latter half of the [eighteenth] century, decaywas becoming rout in the Ottoman, Safavi, and Indo-Timuridomains… by the end of the century, the accumulated strainsin the social structure of Islamdom called for radical newadjustments, which did supervene then with the forthrightestablishment of Western world hegemony. (Hodgson 1974, vol.3, 137)One of the most important changes to take place in the colonizedMuslim world at this time is related to the status of the Arabiclanguage. During the previous millennium, Arabic had remainedthe main language of intellectual discourse, encompassing religion