On The Traces of Egyptian, Turkish and Iranian Modernity

A rather pompous, 'lightning' book review:

Islamic Enlightenment (2017, Bodley Head), by Christopher de Bellaigue:
Voltaire also analyzed his own society; and talking about how backwards the French Catholic establishment was, was riskier but also far better informed and far more enlightened, than any tutting screed against the small-mindedness of this or that fatwa from Al-Azhar in Cairo would have been. I believe — in other words — that it's far more enlightened to tilt against snug preconceptions in one's own society than lazily to agree with many of the prejudices against other societies. So I think that this book might have been more new and interesting if it had been written about foreign interventions in Middle Eastern states at some point in the Early Modern or Modern period. Because the machinations of a London stockbroker in the tobacco market of late 19th century Iran surely continue to have many counterparts in the European financial world of today, they're likely as relevant to present-day political events as e.g. antiquated religious mindsets that already have been replaced by revisionist new mindsets. Anyway, as a primer on modern Middle Eastern historical events, and despite causing me certain flashbacks to papers I read at university, I consider The Islamic Enlightenment abundantly footnoted and respectably written.

Source: Penguin Random House UK, online