"The Anger of the Arab World"

​​In the course of many decades of intellectual activity, the British academic Bernard Lewis has gained an excellent reputation. Born in London, Lewis taught at the elite Princeton University in New Jersey until his retirement in 1986. Now approaching his 90th birthday, he still gives lecture tours and continues to produce best-selling books focussing mainly on the relationship between the Arab-Islamic world and the West. Though highly respected, Lewis is still a controversial figure, and there are two main reasons for this.

Firstly, he presents his ideas with the faintly haughty tone of a patriarch seemingly immune to the slightest self-doubt; and secondly, his world-view can sometimes seem reductive and over-simplified, for he tends to depict the West and the Islamic world as two unitary, monolithic entities in irreconcilable opposition to one another.

In contrast to the recently-deceased German scholar Annemarie Schimmel, whose study of Islam was attended by a deep affinity to its culture and civilisation, Bernard Lewis still refers explicitly to the "otherness" of the Islamic world. And so, despite his familiarity with Islam, he still maintains a cool and sometimes highly critical distance. For Lewis, one thing is clear: "The Clash of Civilizations" is a reality; and in this struggle, the Islamic and Western worlds are irreconcilably opposed.

On the other hand, Lewis has repeatedly emphasised how the Muslim faith lends an inalienable dignity to all its adherents, from the proudest prince to the humblest peasant; and he has also noted that no other culture has ever matched its ability to do so. In The Crisis of Islam (2003), too, we find some strikingly contrasting statements contained within a single volume.

Twenty-four pages devoted to introduction to "Islam"

It's characteristic of Lewis's style of argument that he devotes 24 pages of his first chapter to the question, "What is Islam?" (Other authors have written studies the size of telephone books, in which they meekly avow that they can do no more than sketch the complexity of Islamic culture.) Lewis begins by emphasising the extent to which the Arab-Islamic world has been marked, and formed, by the experience of Western colonialism. He adduces the very names of Arab countries as evidence of this: "Syria" and "Libya", for example, are appellations drawn from classical antiquity, revived by the European imperialists as they drew lines around their newly-acquired "areas of influence".

The borders of these novel geographical entities were frequently very different from those of their ancient namesakes. Turkey, too, adopted its current name from the European vocabulary; indeed, it did so only after the Republic had been established, on the model of European nation-states, in 1923. In this context, Lewis makes it clear that Western dominance continues even today; therefore, current accusations that the West is pursuing imperialistic policies in the region are not without a certain credibility.

Christendom and Islam are closely related civilisations

Lewis takes pains to deconstruct prejudices against the Arab-Islamic world. He points out, for example, that Islam - unlike Christian Europe - has rarely persecuted religious minorities; that the Islamic world offers no blanket support for hatred against the West; that Christianity is also very well capable of being fundamentalist; and that the dictatorial Arab regimes are not Islamic in origin, but European.

Yet some of Lewis's theses are highly debatable; thus, he declares that imperialism also brought certain rewards, including "the improvement of the infrastructure, public services and the education system (…) as well as the abolition of slavery and the widespread suppression of polygamy."

A chapter entitled "The Discovery of America" makes fascinating reading. It includes a description of how little contact there was between the United States and the Arab world until the Second World War, and Lewis argues that the anti-Americanism which took root after 1945 was a European import – or, to be more precise, an ideological import from Germany.

There was a German school of thought that saw the USA as a civilisation without culture - a soulless construction often compared unfavourably with the spiritual depth of "rooted peoples". According to Lewis, this Weltanschauung was shared by writers as various as Rainer Maria Rilke, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger and Martin Heidegger.

Lewis's chapter on the Soviet Union also brings together various aspects of the topic that are usually ignored or neglected. He points out, for example, that although the USSR invaded Afghanistan and suppressed Islam in the Central Asian and Caucasian republics, the Communist political system was never totally discredited in the Arab world. (The Islamic counter-attack on the Soviet Empire was in large part the result of American machinations.)

As the author remarks, "The Americans, by contrast, received no thanks at all for their efforts to save Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo or Albania." In Lewis's analysis, the relationship between the United States and Israel also appears in a new light.

The humiliation of the Arab world

Lewis notes the humiliations suffered by Islam in the past and still experienced today. He describes a feeling of shame and dishonour, coupled with a widespread reaction of contempt towards the West, as one essential reason for the resurgence of revolutionary Islamism in recent years. And referring to the two extreme poles of the debate – with some people claiming there are no irreconcilable differences between the Islamic world and the West, while others already see two foes lining up for battle – Lewis comments as follows:

"Both of these perspectives contain a grain of truth, yet both are dangerously misleading. Islam as such is not an enemy of the West, and there are growing numbers of Muslims, both there and here, who desire nothing better than a closer and more friendly relationship with the West and the development of democratic institutions in their own countries. But a significant number of Muslims - notably but not exclusively those whom we call fundamentalists - are hostile and dangerous, not because we need an enemy, but because they do."

Although substantial portions of this book have already been published elsewhere, The Crisis of Islam is still well worth reading, for a variety of reasons: it is beautifully written, it contains an abundance of unusual perspectives, and it does an excellent job of elucidating some highly complex themes. And above all: Lewis's conclusions may at times be provocative, but they are, on the whole, balanced and equitable.

Lewis Gropp

© Qantara.de 2003/2005

Translation from German: Patrick Lanagan

"The Anger of the Muslim World", much-debated article by Bernard Lewis, published in The Atlantic Monthly, September 1990