Armstrong asserts that European societies were able to achieve political hegemony through the innovation of capitalism, which “enabled the West to reproduce its resources indefinitely, so that Western society was no longer subject to the same constraints as an agrarian culture” (163). This economic system, she goes on to assert, made secularist European societies open to change in a way that pre-capitalist agrarian societies (like those in the Islamic world) were not. As Europeans began colonizing other cultures, the world order shifted, and Islam suddenly found itself in a defensive political position. Muslims struggled to make sense of this historical turn of events; what did it mean about the spiritual wellbeing of the ummah? Islamic thinkers quickly started trying to adapt to the modernization that had been forced on them, but reconciling the Islamic approach to politics as inherently religious with the secularist government structures of the colonial governments would prove profoundly difficult.

In the aftermath of European colonialism, Islamic cultures have been forcibly secularized. In Egypt, secularist president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1954-1970) pursued Islamic political groups with ruthless violence. In Iraq, the secularist monarchy dismantled Shariah, ripped the head coverings off religious women, killed peaceful protesters, and secretly tortured dissenters.