"The Muslim world of the nineteenth century

has long been considered as a century of inescapable reform of an ossified world, until then closed to progress but eventually exposed to a new wind of European ideas triggered by Western intervention. The transfer of technologies and ideas has been seen as playing a pivotal role in this process, but the considerable impact of colonial workings and Western modernity has also been noted, especially the growing national sentiments and movements that espoused certain Western values, purportedly leading to the irreversible secularisation of individuals and nascent states. The teleological perspective on modernisation became the main thread of this narrative of modernity, in which Islam also played its part, as represented in the emergence of 'Muslim reformism' (a term coined by French orientalism) toward the end of the nineteenth century.

--Rachida Chih, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, and Rüdiger Seesemann. "The Nineteenth Century: A Sufi Century?" in Sufism, Literary Production, and Printing in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Rachida Chih, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Rüdiger Seesemann. (Würzburg : Ergon Verlag, 2015), p. 3.