# Modernity and the Millennium, by Juan Cole

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-21 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Denis MacEoin, Modernity and the Millennium, by Juan Cole, bahai-library.com.
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> 
> Modernity and the Millennium, by Juan Cole
> 
> Denis MacEoin
> 
> Times Literary Supplement, 1999
> 
> Modernity and the Millennium: the Genesis of the Bahá'í Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East
> 
> Author: Juan R.I. Cole
> 
> Publisher: New York, Columbia University Press, 1998, also distributed by Kalimat Press as Volume Nine of the series Studies in the Bábí and Bahá'í Religions)
> 
> xi + 264 pages, notes and index. ISBN 0-231-11080-4 and 0-231-11081-1 (pbk).
> 
> Review by: Denis MacEoin.
> 
> New prophet, new law
> 
> Our perception of the Middle East and Islam being what it is, it's not very
> surprising that most Westerners think of the region as hopelessly
> unreformed, as, perhaps, beyond reform, in a way that is not thought true
> of, say, non-Muslim Africa or Latin America. Faced with Saudi conservatism,
> or the Taliban at work in Afghanistan, the average onlooker may well be
> forgiven the judgment, however sweeping.
> 
> There is no question but that, in recent years, Islamic revivalism has
> embraced a "back to basics" ethic that manifests itself most notoriously in
> public floggings, the enforced veiling of women, or calls (as in Pakistan)
> for the universal implementation of shar'ia law. Yet, go back a century or
> so, to Turkey or Iran or Palestine and an equally astonishing picture
> presents itself: one of both religious and secular reformism on a
> breathtaking scale.
> 
> In country after country during the second half of the last century and the
> first decades of this, Muslims demanded and achieved reforms, that, in the
> nature of things, encompassed both religion and State. Everything had to be
> modelled on the expanding, successful West, of course, and very little was
> considered sacrosanct. Reform affected law, education women's rights,
> minority rights, and even the character of the Islamic State itself (as in
> the agitation that led to the new Iranian constitution of 1906).
> 
> Juan R. I. Cole's elegantly presented study brings the period and its
> reformers bark on to centre stage, while doing so through an unfamiliar
> medium: the reformism of a new, post-Islamic religion, the Bahai faith,
> which exists today as a widespread and rapidly growing new religious
> movement. This is not as perverse as it may seem. Bahá'ísm ranks very high
> indeed in the hate list of modern Muslims, sandwiched somewhere between
> Salman Rushdie and Zionism. The reason is simple: despite the smallness of
> its numbers, Bahá'ísm represents the ultimate threat to Islam; it is a
> movement that abrogates Islamic law and puts a new prophet and a new law in
> its place.
> 
> This has all sorts of resonances today, but in the last century (Bahá'ísm
> developed through the 1860s, 70s and 80s) it was heady stuff. Secular
> reformers had already seen the inevitability of abolishing Islamic law,
> while their clerical opponents perceived a future devoted to rearguard
> actions in defence of the faith.
> 
> The Bahá'í prophet, Baha' Allah (1817-92), stands out as a moderate figure
> in this debate, abrogating Islam while insisting on the primacy of religion
> within the State. Cole presents the prophet's teachings in an original and
> accurate manner, demonstrating for the first time in many years the
> liberalism and even radicalism that exemplified the new creed, and tracing
> connections with reforms in Istanbul, Tehran and elsewhere. Modern Bahá'ís
> have tarnished that picture by a heavy-handed conservative interpretation of
> Baha' Allah and his ideas, and it is refreshing to see someone of Cole's
> stature rescue both from their smothering embrace.
> 
> It is a pity, however, that Professor Cole didn't spend a little more time
> discussing the Azali Babis. The Babis were a militant sect that preceded the
> Bahá'ís, and the Azalis were and are its only surviving splinter group, and
> great rivals of the Bahá'ís at one time. Although their numbers were tiny,
> many Azalis played an important part in the Iranian constitutional
> revolution. The Bahá'ís, on the other hand, were conspicuous by their
> absence. Yet Babism is backward-looking, mystical, conservative and crippled
> by some of the most impractical laws in religious history whereas Bahá'ísm
> is in principle liberal, forward-looking, delighted by modernity and eager
> for social improvement. There is an anomaly here that the present work only
> goes part of the way to explaining.
> 
> But even a partial explanation is much more than we have had before. Above
> all, Cole is to be congratulated for his forthrightness in treating Baha
> Allah, the main focus of his research, not as a god, but as a man and an
> articulate exponent of human rights and reformist principles. If, in future,
> we are to see a realistic biography of the Bahá'í leader, it will be along
> these lines, rather than those of the hagiographies which have, until now,
> dominated the field.
> 
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> previous at archive.org.../maceoin_cole_modernity_millennium;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> — *Modernity and the Millennium, by Juan Cole (Used by permission of the curator)*