Late-19th-century reformers blamed Islam’s decline on Ottoman tyranny, not on Islam itself

Evidence

The theme of the book, like that of many others of the time, is the weakness and backwardness of Islam and the problem of how to remedy this. His analysis is along the lines familiar among the Muslim, mainly Turkish, reformers of the 19th century. The Islamic community had become moribund, having lost its corporate being and loyalty. This backwardness was the result of tyranny, of the decline of Muslim civilization and the lack of genuine racial and linguistic bonds binding Muslims together. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 844

Categorization

• XREF: Counterbalances Western Orientalist causality — here Muslim reformers themselves diagnosed decline via corporate-body and racial-bonds language, echoing Western nationalist vocabulary,