The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, And The Clash Of Arab Civilizations - Plot & Excerpts
It had been one of the seats of Sunni authority since Saladin, and Napoleon’s 1798 invasion touched off tremors resonating throughout the Muslim world. Political and religious leaders were forced to confront the fact that, in military terms at least, their world was no match for the foreigners. The nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century reform movement was Islam’s effort to meet and match the newness of the world revealed by the Christian West. The reformers took Muhammad and the early umma as an example, not in order to turn back the clock, but rather to rid Islam of the impurities that had accumulated over the centuries and restore the faith to its rational essence as practiced by the Prophet of Islam, his companions (al-sahaba), and the first four caliphs (al-rashidun). They were collectively known as al-salaf, the righteous forebears, and from them the reformers took their name, the Salafis. The Salafi laboratory was Cairo, a living museum of Islamic civilization whose architecture tells a story unfolding over a millennium.
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