The Modern Reformist Movement in Islam goes back to the closing decades of the nineteenth century with its epicenters spanning the major capitals of the Ottoman Empire and beyond it, the Saharan and riverine nodes in Africa and the Indo-Persian and Malay worlds in Asia, altogether constituting one extended vibrant field of magnetic resonance. Heir to a proud heritage of empire and culture, and once the crown of world communities because of its ethical foundations, the ummah, now saw itself dethroned and ousted as it heaved its way through the labor pains of a new age of uncertainties and false starts. While, at about the same period, Europe had reached its pinnacle of power and glory, exerting strong gravitational pulls throughout much of the globe, whether through outright military, political, and economic domination or, more subtly and detrimentally, through the seductive appeal of its model of civilization, the Muslim ummah had languished in its own weaknesses and complacencies and was caught unprepared for the challenges of the modern age. Vital reformist currents slowly emerged as the natural defenses of a threatened immune system would, mixed reactions and responses to the traumatic dislocations experienced by the community in the course of an uneven civilizational encounter with the modern West.