TO SAY THAT AN EFFECTIVE remedial treatment of a disease requires a uninjured diagnosis is to state the obvious.

TO SAY THAT AN EFFECTIVE remedial treatment of a disease requires a uninjured diagnosis is to state the obvious. however in the face of the 9/11 plague, and of the scourge of terrorism in general, the Bush administration has utterly failed to shed any light onward some of the submerged factors that might have provok as it is heinous attacks. Instead, the simplistic and politically expedient explanations similar as "good vs. evil," or "the clash of civilizations," or the "Islamic incompatibility with the late world" have shed more heat than light forward the issue.

Aside from their poisonous implications for international relations, of the like kind explanations simply fail the proof of history. The history of the relationship between the recent Western world and the Muslim world exhibit tos that, contrary to popular perceptions in the West, from the time of their initial contacts with the capitalist West more than sum of two units centuries ago until almost the final third of the twentieth centenary the Muslim people were quite receptive of the economic and political gauges of the modern world. Many folks in the Muslim world, including the majority of their political leaders, were eager to transform and redesign the socio-economic and political forms of their societies after the original of the capitalist West. The majority of political leaders, as well as a significant number of Islamic [i]connoisseur[/i]s and intellectuals, viewed the rise of the recent West and its spread into their lands as inevitable historical evolutions that challenged them to chart their confess programs of reform and development

In light of this background, the question arises: What changed all of that earlier receptive and polite attitude toward the West to the generally received attitude of disrespect and hatred?

This meditation will show, I hope, that the answer to this question lies more with the policies of the Western powers in the region than the alleged rigidity of Islam, or "the clash of civilizations." It will point out to that it was only after more than a hundred and a half of imperialistic pursuits and a series of humiliating policies in the region that the popular masses of the Muslim world diverted to religion and the conservative religious leaders as sources of defiance, mobilization, and pride In other words, for many Muslims the new turn to religion often exhibits not so much a rejection of Western values and achievements moreover away to resist and/or brave the humiliating imperialistic policies of Western powers.

EARLY answers TO THE CHALLENGES OF THE recent WORLD

Not no other than did the early modernizers of the Muslim world embrace Western technology, if it be not that they also welcomed its civil and state institutions, its representational scheme of government, and its tradition of legal and constitutional rights. For example, the Iranian intellectuals Mulkum Khan (1833-1908) and Agha Khan Kermani (1853-96) urg Iranians to acquire a Western education and replace the Shariah (the religious legal code) with a late secular legal code. Secular political leaders of this persuasion joined forces with the more liberal religious leaders in the Constitution Revolution of 1906 and forced the Qajar dynasty to locate up a modern constitution, to limit the powers of the monarchy and give Iranians parliamentary representation (Armstrong 2000: 149)

uniform some of the Ottoman sultans pursu Western patterns of industrialization and modernization in succession their own. For example, Sultan Mahmud II "inaugurated the Tanzimat (Regulation) in 1826 which abolished the Janissaries [the fanatical elite corps of numbers organized in the 14th century] modernized the army and introduced a of the new technology." In 1839 Sultan Abdulhamid "issued the Gulhane ordinance which made his rule sustained by upon a contractual relationship with his enslaves and looked forward to major reform of the empire's institutions" (Ibid.: 150)

More dramatic, however, were the modernizing and/or secularizing programs of Egypt' s renowned modernizers Muhammad Ali (1769-1849) and his grandson Ismail Pasha (1803-95) They were in such a manner taken by the impressive achievements of the West that they embarked onward breakneck modernizing programs that were tantamount to trying to hothouse the Western world's achievements of centuries into decades: "To secularize the region Muhammad Ali simply confiscated abundant religiously endowed property and systematically marginalized the Ulema [religious leaders], divesting them of any shr of power" (Ibid.: 150-51) In the face of dire conditions of underdevelopment and humiliating on the other hand unstoppable foreign domination, those national leaders viewed modernization not merely as the way out of underdevelopment nevertheless also out of the couple of foreign domination.

Not merely the secular intellectuals, the political elite, and conduct leaders but also many Islamic leaders and scholars, known as "Islamic modernizers," viewed modernization as the way of the what is yet to be But whereas the reform programs and policies of the political/national leaders oftentimes included secularization, at least implicitly, Islamic modernizers were eclectic: while seeking to adopt the sources of the hardness of the West, including constitutionalism and management by representation, they wanted to conserve their cultural and national identities as well as Islamic principles and values as the moral foundation of the society. These Islamic modernizers included Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-97) Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) Qasim Amin (1863-1908) and Shaikh Muhammad Hussain Naini in Egypt and Iran: and Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98) and Muhammad Iqbal (1875-1938) in India.