This presentation examines the emergence of Enlightenment critique in the writings of Christian and Muslim intellectuals in the modern Middle East. Framed within the broader context of the nineteenth-century religious revival—both Catholic and Islamic—that accompanied the transformation from imperial to national orders, it focuses on two groups of scholars: the Catholic Jesuits and the Muslim reformers, each active in the intellectual and cultural spheres of the Levant and Egypt. Adopting a trans-religious perspective, the lecture seeks to uncover the shared guiding principles that shaped a cross-confessional intellectual tradition critical of Enlightenment thought in its political and social dimensions. The analysis highlights the deep conceptual affinities between the Catholic revival in the East and Islamic reformism as they developed toward the end of the nineteenth century.