Masons and Muslims

I have recently been posting on the astonishingly widespread influence of Freemasonry both in Anglo-American culture, and in Continental Europe. But that global influence went even further, into some regions and contexts that today seem almost incredible.

To illustrate this, I turn to the origins of modern Islamic thought. At the end of the nineteenth century, Islam worldwide was in a parlous condition, as the vast majority of the world’s Muslims fell under the rule of European empires. The largest “Muslim nations” were the British, Dutch and French empires. Muslim thinkers could not agree how to confront the overwhelming challenge of Western Christian modernity. Should Islam imitate the West? Should it revert to its original sources, in a kind of fundamentalist revival?