RISE OF THE SECULAR MODERNISTS 305opposite: suddenly, women were forced to wear head scarves and men were
beaten for appearing in public without beards. But the principle of beating
and imprisoning people for their clothes and grooming-this principle,
both sides embraced.
The three rulers between Istanbul and the Hindu Kush could use state
power to push the secular modernist agenda. Other parts of Dar al-Islam
still lived under imperial rule but had vigorous independence movements,
which were also led by secular modernists. In India, for example, the most
prominent Muslim leader was the suave, British-educated attorney named
Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
In short, secular modernism surged up throughout the Muslim world
in the 1920s, one society after another falling under the sway of this new
political creed. I will call it secular modernism, even though the term is in-
adequate, because secular-modernist-nationalist-statist-developmentalist is
too cumbersome and even then doesn't cover the entire movement. Suffice
to say, this was a broad river of attitude and opinion that drew upon ideas
explored earlier by the likes of Sayyid Ahmad of Aligarh, Amir Kabir of
Iran, the Young Turks of Istanbul, and countless other intellectuals, edu-
cated workers, professionals, writers, and activists from the middle classes
that had been emerging in the Middle World for a century. Suddenly,
Muslim societies knew where they were going: the same way as the West.
They were behind, of course, they would have to play desperate catch-up,
but that was all the more reason to hurry, all the more reason to steam-
roll over nuances and niceties like democracy and get the crash program
underway-the core of which crash program was "development."
In Mghanistan and Iran, the state damped down on citizens, but did so
in pursuit of a "progressive" agenda. Monarchs in both countries set out to
build roads, dams, power plants, factories, hospitals, and office buildings.
Both established airline companies, set up state-run (and state-censored)
newspapers, and built national radio stations. Both countries continued to
grow their secular public schools. Iran already had a national university
and Mghanistan founded one now. Both governments promulgated poli-
cies to liberate women and draw them into the public realm. Both were
eager to make their countries more "Western" but saw no connection be-
tween this and expanding their subjects' freedom. What they promised was
not freedom but prosperity and self-respect.