276 DESTINY DISRUPTED
something had to change, that people living in Iran or Afghanistan or Asia
Minor or Egypt or Morocco had to become in some way ... more West-
ern. Thus, as awareness of the Industrial Revolution seeped through the
Muslim world, secular reform ideas gained ground in Islamic countries.
In Iran, after the 1840s, an extremely energetic prime minister named
Mirza Taqi, also called Amir Kabir, "the Great Leader," launched a crash pro-
gram to "modernize" the country. By "modernize," he meant "industrialize,"
but he understood this to be a complicated process. He knew Iran couldn't
just acquire industrial goods. To really match up to the Western powers de-
vouring their country, Iranians had to acquire some aspects ofWestern cul-
ture. But what aspects? The key, Amir Kabir decided, was education.
He built a network of secular public schools across the country. Just out-
side Tehran, he established the university mentioned earlier, Dar al-Funun
or "house of wisdom," where students could study foreign languages, sci-
ence, technical subjects, and the history of Western cultures. Iran started
sending students abroad, as well, to countries such as Germany and France.
Not surprisingly, these students hailed largely from privileged urban fami-
lies assocated with the court and government bureacracy-not from rural
peasant stock, merchant families, or high-status religious families. And so,
the new educational program expanded social divisions that already existed
in this society.
Graduates pouring out of the secular education system were tapped to
staff a "modernized" government bureacracy and army. (Modern in this
context meant "more like you would see in Europe.") Thus, the Iranian re-
sponse to industrialism generated a new social class in Iran consisting of
educated civil servants, army officers, university students, teachers, techni-
cians, professionals, anyone who had graduated from Dar al-Funun, any-
one who had studied in Europe .... This burgeoning class developed an
ever more secular outlook and grew ever more receptive to thinking of
Islam as a system of rational, ethical values rather than a revelation-based
manual for getting into heaven.
Constitutionalism, a second phenomenon born in Europe, now began to
have an impact in Iran, largely because this new class was open to it. Con-
stitutionalism is not quite the same as democratic idealism, since even to-
talitarian dictatorships can have constitutions, but a constitution is