Sadly, this would be short-lived as Muzzafar’s son, Mohammad Ali Shah, took over and destroyed the parliament that his father helped form. This parliament, called the Majlis, laid the foundation for free speech and press, and more civil liberties. The modernist sought for change and in 1906 the Qajar at the time, Muzaffar al-din, conceded on a constitution that greatly limited his powers and implemented a form of parliament. This movement was called Constitutionalism and it fueled the intellectuals to take a stand against the Qajars that only furthered their personal well-being, not the nation’s. These intellectuals, who were taught Western history and studied Western philosophers of political thought, pushed for political reform in Iran. He sought to equal the West when it came to education and this, in turn, created a new class of modern intellectuals that would shape the modern history of Iran. In order to become more “Western” the Iranian Prime Minister, Amir Kabir, implemented educational reforms in the 1840’s. There wasn’t a prevalent belief in the idea of the “individual” prevailing over the society both socially and economically, like what was seen in Europe at the time, but rather it was a society that was founded in tribal loyalties and a greater sense of community, which made it difficult for an economy driven by competition. Social constructs in the Islamic world made it difficult for industrialization to take off. Though the use of the steam engine was prevalent in the Muslim world before the Europeans discovered it, the way in which the West utilized it to produce consumer goods at a high and cheap rate, affected the Muslim world greatly. The rise of industrial inventions, such as the steam engine, helped fuel European expansion physically, but most importantly, economically. He examines the rise of industrialization in Europe and how that affected the social and economical environments in the Islamic world. Ansary focuses on both the Middle East and Europe during the 19 th century. In Chapter 14 of Tamim Ansary’s, Destiny Disrupted, the focus is on the external factors that influenced the rise of modernism in the Islamic world.

Ansary destiny disrupted