"At the beginning of the twentieth century, every single leading Muslim intellectual was in love with the west, and wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France"
About this Quote
The absolutism ("every single") is doing rhetorical work more than historical accounting. She’s compressing a messy spectrum of reformers, modernists, and nationalists into one blunt image to make a cultural argument: early 20th-century Muslim intellectual life often treated Europe as the model of modernity - administrative efficiency, constitutionalism, science, public education. The romance language ("in love") also matters. It suggests desire and aspiration, not simply geopolitical calculation, and it sets up the inevitable betrayal: if love curdled into resentment, something happened.
That "something" is the subtext Armstrong wants you to supply: colonial domination, racial hierarchies, broken promises after World War I, imposed borders, the gap between Western liberal ideals and imperial practice. In her broader project as a popular historian of religion, she’s arguing against essentialist explanations of conflict. The intent is diagnostic: if attitudes swung from admiration to antagonism within a century, the driver is history and power, not timeless theology.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Armstrong, Karen. (2026, January 16). At the beginning of the twentieth century, every single leading Muslim intellectual was in love with the west, and wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/at-the-beginning-of-the-twentieth-century-every-103405/
Chicago Style
Armstrong, Karen. "At the beginning of the twentieth century, every single leading Muslim intellectual was in love with the west, and wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/at-the-beginning-of-the-twentieth-century-every-103405/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"At the beginning of the twentieth century, every single leading Muslim intellectual was in love with the west, and wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/at-the-beginning-of-the-twentieth-century-every-103405/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
