Bernard Lewis, 85 year old professor emeritus at Princeton University, is the universally acknowledged dean of Middle East studies in the West, so it is only fitting and proper that we turn to him to tell us "what went wrong" in the Islamic world to breed the hatred and violence that was so horrifically brought home to the United States on September 11th. The fascinating case he makes here is that the early success of Islam has actually been a bane rather than a blessing, retarding the development of the Muslim Middle East and resulting in a particularly anxious reaction to the rise to world dominance of the West. Mr. Lewis begins, as he is always careful to do, by calling our attention to the preeminence that the Islamic world once enjoyed. He pays homage to the civilization they created and justifies the enormous pride they took in their achievements : For centuries the world view and self-view of Muslims
seemed well grounded. Islam represented the greatest military power
But he also notes that even before the Renaissance, the West had begun to progress rapidly and soon caught up, then passed, and eventually came to dominate--militarily, economically and culturally--the Islamic world. Thus : In the course of the twentieth century it became
abundantly clear in the Middle East and indeed all over the lands of Islam
that
This provides the conceptual framework within which we must seek to understand the anti-Western, and particularly anti-American, animus that seems to have become the defining feature of much of Middle Eastern culture. Obviously, from a Muslim perspective, something went terribly wrong. In an analysis that has profound implications for the future, Mr. Lewis traces the causes of this decline to the very roots of the Islamic past. In its simplest terms, Mr. Lewis's argument is that the success of Muhammad in establishing not merely the Muslim religion, but also a state dominated by that faith, served to create a society that is totalitarian by its very nature, bound by rules and strictures that make it too static to adapt and compete with a West where Christianity, in contrast, does not demand control over the political and economic spheres. The problem is to be found at the very foundations of the respective faiths : The absence of a native secularism in Islam, and
the widespread Muslim rejection of an imported secularism inspired by
The first, and in many ways the most profound difference,
from which all others follow, can be seen in the contrasting
In a sense, Judaism and Christianity had the concept of the secular state forced upon them by circumstance from their very beginnings, whereas in Islam the eventual separation of church and state will mark a tremendous departure from the system established by the Prophet. Where Christian theologians like St. Augustine developed complex theories to explain and justify the secular state, Muslim thinkers never even had to face the dilemma. Little wonder then that modern Muslims are so reluctant to take this necessary step. There is another important effect to consider, of the failure to separate church and state in the Islamic world. The faith itself has become implicated in the decline of Islam relative to the West. For quite some time, the Muslim Middle East, which still boasted the expansive Ottoman Empire, was able to more or less ignore the developments in the West, but finally in the 1800s when Western texts began to be translated into Turkish, they had to take notice : With the crumbling of the language barrier direct
observation of the West was now possible, and an increased recognition
and
Middle Easterners found it difficult to consider
what we might call civilizational or cultural answers to this question.
To preach a
This can not have been other than shocking to the Islamic world, this sudden realization that the infidels were outdistancing the faithful. As Mr. Lewis writes, there have been many attempts to explain away this turn of events, many of them centered around conspiracy theories, but several hundred years on, and with the nations of Asia too having surpassed the Middle East in terms of economic development, such theories are no longer tenable. So we are arrived at the present moment and it seems inarguable that the Islamic world does find itself in dire straits, falling further and further behind the West. In fact, the situation may be even worse than it seems, because many Muslim states are able to paper over their real weakness thanks to their enormous oil revenues. Remove this source of state income and just imagine how awful the economic situation would be in the Middle East. In her book Islam : A Short History, religious scholar Karen Armstrong explains where Muslims find purpose in their lives and religion : In Islam, Muslims have looked for God in history.
Their sacred scripture, the Koran, gave them a historical mission. Their
chief
Mr. Lewis, though he does a terrific job of explaining what has happened to disrupt the well-being of the Muslim community, does not really offer solutions to the current crisis. But how, we must ask, can Islam begin again? If the analysis Mr. Lewis presents is accurate--and one would note, we've yet to hear a better explanation of what went wrong--then Islam is faced with only three possibilities : (1) Islam can retreat into isolation and try to ignore the rest of the world--sort of the North Korea option. (2) Islam can fight the rest of
the world and try to return humankind to a kind of pre-modern status, plunge
us backward
or,
The first option seems unrealistic based on what we know of human beings. If nothing else, the Islamic world is too geographically widespread to really isolate itself and too dependent on oil revenues to withdraw completely. The second is foolhardy, because the West will inevitably win this struggle and may then simply force option three upon a defeated and depopulated Islamic world. That leaves the third option, certainly the most desirable from our perspective, but one which requires a series of steps which will be truly wrenching, and which have only previously occurred in the Islamic world when a pro-Western dictator controlled the countries involved and secularized against the will of the people (Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Iran under the Shah, laying the ground work for today's Iran which is at least groping towards some kind of secularization). This process--which can hopefully be done more democratically than in those prior instances and which we could think of as an Islamic Reformation--will involve decoupling the Muslim faith and clerisy from the political state and from the economy. It will mean that government will not always act in accord with Islamic tradition, and may not even make a pretense of trying to maintain some of those traditions. It will require the acceptance of less economic equality (egalitarianism is central to Islamic economic teachings), in exchange for greater wealth and rising living standards in the entire society. It will entail making women full participants in Islamic society. It will require accepting the existence of Israel, but will guarantee the creation of a Palestinian state. Most of all, it will require acceptance of the idea that Islam itself will decline somewhat in popularity, and in its centrality to society, and that it will suffer some significant doctrinal alterations, all of which has happened to Judaism and Christianity in the West. In turn, the culture will display certain inevitable signs of moral degradation as people are freed from strict observance of Islamic law. It is unfortunate but true that as people's material wants are sated, their spiritual needs seem to change, and their willingness to follow strict moral codes deteriorates. However, one would like to think that the Islamic states could actually improve upon the Western example in this regard. Many Muslims are justifiably repelled by much of Western culture, particularly : the sex, drugs, and violence; the disintegration of families; and the overemphasis on individuals at the expense of a coherent and cohesive society. But they now have a unique opportunity to learn from our mistakes and to try to avoid the worst of these problems. Imagine, for instance, if a Muslim nation adopted a constitution which at the same time that it reduced the control of Islamic law over the purely political and economic spheres, enunciated that it was the intention of the state to still vindicate the most important ethical and moral precepts of the faith in the social sphere. Where the American Constitution has a Bill of Rights that declares certain individual liberties to be beyond the control of the state and the society; an Islamic constitution might, in addition, contain explicit provisions that protect certain Islamic practices and moral decrees from interference by the state. Such an innovation might enable these states to combine greater freedoms with higher purpose, to free up the energies, imaginations, and productive capacities of their peoples, while also keeping them focused on working toward achieving a morally and spiritually centered society. In the end, such a regime might enable them to more fully realize the kind of just community which their faith demands of them, one which creates material wealth more efficiently than does their current system, but which retains its unique Islamic character. If they could accomplish this bold vision, Islam, which seven hundred years ago led the West toward the Enlightenment, might again blaze a trail toward a brighter future for all mankind. In this book, Bernard Lewis has ably described what has gone wrong in the Islamic world; it is long past time for them, and us, to start addressing these problems. (Reviewed:) Grade: (A) Tweet Websites:-ESSAY: King and Country (Bernard Lewis AND James Woolsey, October 29, 2003, Wall Street Journal) -ESSAY: "I'm Right, You're Wrong, Go To Hell": Religions and the meeting of civilization (Bernard Lewis, May 2003, Atlantic Monthly) -ESSAY: Targeted by a History of Hatred: The United States is now the unquestioned leader of the free world, also known as the infidels. (Bernard Lewis, September 10, 2002, Washington Post) -TRIBUTE: A Sage in Christendom: A personal tribute to Bernard Lewis (FOUAD AJAMI, May 1, 2006, Opinion Journal) -ESSAY : Lunch with the FT: Bernard Lewis (Michael Steinberger, August 9 2002, Financial Times) -ESSAY: Put the Iraqis in Charge: Why Iraq is proving much tougher than Afghanistan. (BERNARD LEWIS, August 29, 2003, Wall Street Journal) -PROFILE: Lewis of Arabia: A visit with America's greatest Middle East sage. (TUNKU VARADARAJAN, September 23, 2003, Wall Street Journal) -ESSAY: Fighting for the Soul of Islam (Jim Hoagland, July 13, 2003, washingtonpost.com) -REVIEW ESSAY: Bernard Lewis: Soft on Islam (Derek Copold, The Texas Mercury) -REVIEW: of THE CRISIS OF ISLAM: HOLY WAR AND UNHOLY TERROR By Bernard Lewis (Jasper Griffin, The Spectator) http://www.commentarymagazine.com/bk.warren.html-REVIEW: of Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman and The Crisis of Islam by Bernard Lewis (David Warren, Commentary) -Bernard Lewis : Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus (Princeton University) -EXCERPT : FIRST CHAPTER of 'What Went Wrong?' By BERNARD LEWIS -BOOKNOTES : What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Bernard Lewis (C-SPAN, December 30, 2001 ) -ESSAY : What Went Wrong : By all standards of the modern world�economic development, literacy, scientific achievement�Muslim civilization, once a mighty enterprise, has fallen low. Many in the Middle East blame a variety of outside forces. But underlying much of the Muslim world's travail may be a simple lack of freedom (Bernard Lewis, February 2002, The Atlantic) -ESSAY: Deconstructing Osama : Bin Laden is still popular in the Arab world. Why? (BERNARD LEWIS, August 23, 2002, Wall Street Journal) -ESSAY : THE REVOLT OF ISLAM : When did the conflict with the West begin, and how could it end? (Bernard Lewis, The New Yorker, November 19, 2001) -ESSAY : Did You Say 'American Imperialism'? : Power, weakness, and choices in the Middle East.(Bernard Lewis, 12/17/01, National Review) -ESSAY : Jihad vs. Crusade : A historian's guide to the new war. (Bernard Lewis, September 27, 2001, Wall Street Journal) -ESSAY : The Roots of Muslim Rage : Why so many Muslims deeply resent the West, and why their bitterness will not easily be mollified. (Bernard Lewis, Atlantic Monthly, September, 1990) -ESSAY : Jihad vs. crusade: A historian's guide to the new war. (Bernard Lewis, 9/26/01, Wall Street Journal) -ESSAY : Islamic Revolution (Bernard Lewis, The New York Review of Books, January 21, 1988) -ESSAY : The Enemies of God (Bernard Lewis, The New York Review of Books, March 25, 1993) -ESSAY : Culture and Modernization in the Middle East (Bernard Lewis) -ESSAY : State and Civil Society Under Islam (Bernard Lewis, New Perspectives Quarterly) -ESSAY : Iran in History (Bernard Lewis) -EXCERPT : Chapter One of Bernard Lewis. Race and Slavery in the Middle East -REVIEW : of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World. Edited by John L. Esposito (Bernard Lewis, First Things) -AUDIO INTERVIEW : What Went Wrong? : Scholar Portrays Islamic World as Culture in Turmoil (Robert Siegel, 1/03/02, All Things Considered) -AUDIO INTERVIEW : Bernard Lewis (Fresh Air, NPR) -INTERVIEW : @random interview with Bernard Lewis (Random House) -INTERVIEW : A Discussion with Bernard Lewis (Middle East Forum) -INTERVIEW : Islam, Fundamentalism and Osama Bin Laden's Jihad : Q and A with Bernard Lewis (Culture Kiosk) -INTERVIEW : The Armenian Issue Revisited : There Was No Genocide: Interview with Prof. Bernard Lewis (Dalia Karpel, 23/01/98, Haaretz) -AUDIO INTERVIEW : Islam and the West: The Last Thousand Years (June 21, 2000, The Connection, NPR) -DISCUSSION : The Multiple Identities of the Middle East By Bernard Lewis (Assaf Moghadam, Middle East Forum) -PROFILE : Affinity For Afghans (George F. Will, October 25, 2001) -PROFILE : A Sage for the Age (Jay Tolson, 12/3/01, US News) -PROFILE : Bernard Lewis : The Islam scholar U.S. politicians listen to (Emily Yoffe, November 13, 2001, Slate) -PROFILE : Bernard Lewis, unplugged : Professor Bernard Lewis, the great historian of the Muslim world, talks about bin Laden, the Intifada, and the new threat from Iran (Yaron London, Jewish Issues) -PROFILE : British Svengali Behind Clash Of Civilizations (Scott Thompson and Jeffrey Steinberg, November 30, 2001, Executive Intelligence Review) (beware, they're Larouchees) -ESSAY : The Methodology of Bernard Lewis in his approach to the intellectual aspects of Islamic History. (Mazin S. Motabbagani, Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University, College of Da wa at Madinah , Department of Orientalism, 1994) -ESSAY : The Clash of Ignorance (Edward Said, October 11, 2001, Media Monitors Network) -ESSAY : Clashing Metaphors: Post-Colonialist's Critique is Disingenuous and False (DEREK COPOLD, November 15, 2001, Austin Review) -The Bernard Lewis Trial -ESSAY : "BERNARD LEWIS CONDEMNED FOR HAVING DENIED THE REALITY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE (Kevork Oskanian) -ESSAY : Us vs. Them (Jameson Taylor, October 2001, Ashbrook.org) -ESSAY : Radical Islam vs, Islam (David Forte, September 2001, Ashbrook.org) -ESSAY : It's the Regime, Not the Religion (David Forte, September 2001, Ashbrook.org) -ESSAY : Democracy and Islam : A new report highlights the lack of freedom in the Islamic world. (Claudia Winkler, 12/18/2001, Weekly Standard) -ESSAY : The New Imperialism (Pepe Escobar, Asia Times) -ARCHIVES : Bernard Lewis (NY Review of Books) -ARCHIVES : Bernard Lewsis (Foreign Affairs) -ARCHIVES : "bernard lewis" (Find Articles) -ARCHIVES : "bernard lewis" (Mag Portal) -REVIEW : of What Went Wrong : Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Bernard Lewis (SERGE SCHMEMANN, NY Times) -REVIEW : of What Went Wrong (Paul Kennedy, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW : of What Went Wrong (Robert Irwin, Washington Post) -REVIEW : of What Went Wrong (Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer) -REVIEW : of What Went Wrong (FRITZ LANHAM, Houston Chronicle) -REVIEW : of What Went Wrong (John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review) -REVIEW : of What Went Wrong? (Stephen Schwartz, National Review) -REVIEW : of The Multiple Identities of the Middle East by Bernard Lewis (Geoffrey Wheatcroft, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW : of The Multiple Identities of the Middle East, by Bernard Lewis (David Pryce-Jones, National Review) -REVIEW : of The Multiple Identities of the Middle East by Bernard Lewis (Efraim Karsh, Commentary Magazine) -REVIEW : of The Middle East A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years. By Bernard Lewis (Fouad Ajami, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW : of The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (Daniel Pipes, Wall Street Journal) -REVIEW : of The Middle East (Heather E. Morse, National Strategy Review) -REVIEW : of The Middle East (Andrew Hammond, Middle East Times) -REVIEW : The Middle East (John O. Voll, Historian) -REVIEW : of Islam and the West by Bernard Lewis (Ross Mullin, banned-books) -REVIEW : of A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of Life, Letters, and History, by Bernard Lewis (Christopher Caldwell, National Review) -REVIEW : of A Middle East Mosaic (Efraim Karsh, Commentary Magazine) -REVIEW : of A Middle East Mosaic (Michael Widlanski, Jerusalem Post) -REVIEW : of A Middle East Mosaic. Fragments of Life, Letters and History, Bernard Lewis (Denys Johnson-Davies , Al-Ahram) -REVIEW : of Semites and Anti-Semites by Bernard Lewis (Daniel Pipes, The Wall Street Journal) -REVIEW : of Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Age of Discovery. By Bernard Lewis (Robert Royal, First Things) -REVIEW : of The Assassins by Bernard Lewis (Kevin Rushby, The Guardian) -REVIEW : of The Jewish Discovery of Islam : Studies in Honor of Bernard Lewis Edited by Martin Kramer (Daniel Pipes, Commentary Magazine) -REVIEW ESSAY: LOST IN TRANSLATION: The two minds of Bernard Lewis. (IAN BURUMA, 2004-06-14, The New Yorker) -AWARD : The 1998 Ataturk International Peace Award has been presented to Professor Bernard Lewis, an academic at Princeton University in the United States Book-related and General Links: ISLAM vs. THE WEST : -ESSAY: Does Islam Need a Luther or a Pope? (Edward Feser, 12/04/2003, Tech Central Station) -BOOKNOTES : Author: Daniel Pipes Title: Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From Air Date: January 25, 1998 (C-SPAN) -ESSAY: Islam and Globalization: Secularism, Religion, and Radicalism: Far from being incompatible with it, Islam will have its place in the globalizing world. Islamic revival is part of the world-wide religious resurgence that corrects the secularist bias of European modernity. Globalization is a driving force in this process. (Sean L. Yom, 4/2002, International Politics and Society ) -ESSAY : How Islam Lost Its Way : Yesterday's Achievements Were Golden; Today, Reason Has Been Eclipsed (Pervez Amir Ali Hoodbhoy, December 30, 2001, Washington Post) -ESSAY : Occidentalism (Avishai Margalit, Ian Buruma, January 17, 2002, The New York Review of Books) -ESSAY : Inside the Islamic Reformation : A report on the currents that are pulling the Islamic faith in new directions (Dale Eickelman, Wilson Quarterly) -ESSAY : Crusading They Went : The deeds and misdeeds of our spiritual kin (John Derbyshire, December 3, 2001, National Review) -ESSAY : Where Ignorance Isn't Bliss : In need of a lesson (Robert Conquest, October 1 2001, National Review) -ESSAY : Fighting Islam's Ku Klux Klan : The Muslim world cannot forever attribute all its ills to the Great Satan, America (Kanan Makiya, October 7, 2001, The Observer) -ESSAY : RADICAL ISLAM'S ASSAULT ON HUMAN LIFE : Anti-reason, anti-freedom ideas in Islam encourage terrorist fanaticism. (Edwin A. Locke THE AYN RAND INSTITUTE October 3, 2001) -ESSAY : Mullahs and Heretics (Tariq Ali, 7 February 2002, London Review of Books) -ESSAY : The Intellectual Mission of the Saracens : The author argues that Islamic culture saved the wisdom of the ancients from extinction during the middle ages. (Edward Hungerford, December 1886, The Atlantic) -ESSAY : The difficult future of holy struggle (Jan 31st 2002 , The Economist) -ESSAY : Enemies within, enemies without : Islam remains a tolerant faith, despite its apparent new ferocity (Sep 20th 2001, The Economist) -ESSAY : The next war, they say : Are Muslims and the people of the West doomed to perpetual confrontation? Not if they both see that this is a moment for change. (Brian Beedham, Aug 4th 1994 , The Economist) -ESSAY : Atatürk s Ambiguous Legacy (Cengiz Çandar, Wilson Quarterly) -ESSAY : The Rage of Islam : Our inability to understand terrorists and their deep grudge against us is a serious problem (Dinesh D'Souza, December 11, 2001, Red Herring) -REVIEW ESSAY : Fundamentalism (Walter Laqueur, Partisan Review) -ESSAY : Two Concepts of Secularism (Wilfred M. McClay, Wilson Quarterly) -ESSAY : Why Export Democracy? (G. John Ikenberry , Wilson Quarterly) -ESSAY : Democracy Inc. (Eric Bjornlund, Wilson Quarterly) -ESSAY : Holy Pollers (Jonathan Zimmerman, November 2001, New Republic) -ESSAY : A is for Arabs : From algebra and coffee to guitars, optics and universities -- an alphabetical reminder of what the West owes to the People of the Crescent Moon. (George Rafael, Jan. 8, 2002 |, Salon) -ESSAY : Fatal Contact: The Western influence on Islamic radicals ( John O'Sullivan, November 05 2001, National Review) -ESSAY : The End of Islamic Ideology (Hamid Dabashi, June 22 2000, Social Research) -ESSAY : Islam a religion of peace? : The controversy reveals a struggle for the soul of Islam. (James A. Beverley, January 7, 2002, Christianity Today) -ESSAY : Stranger in the Arab-Muslim World (Fouad Ajami , Wilson Quarterly) -REVIEW : of Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 by Efraim Karsh & Inari Karsh (Daniel Pipes, Commentary Magazine) Copyright 1998-2015 Orrin Judd |