A more nuanced understanding of the Islamic world
Reuel Marc Gerecht has written a fascinating memoir for Bernard Lewis’s 90th birthday in the Weekly Standard.
[Bernard Lewis's] bestselling books and post-9/11 articles all hark back to Lewis’s greatest work, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, published in 1982. Perhaps the most illuminating book ever written on the Islamic world–a history book that has the chance of being read 50 years from now as closely and as profitably as when it was written–The Muslim Discovery of Europe allows the reader to see how Muslims saw the West, from Islam’s earliest days to modern times. (The Muslim Discovery of Europe’s only real competitor would be The Venture of Islam, the three-volume masterpiece by the University of Chicago’s late, great Marshall Hodgson.) Lewis’s book could have been subtitled The Origins of Curiosity About Infidels, for it is a 1,400-year trek through the development of Muslims’ encounters with unbelievers. There are many reasons European civilization raced ahead of other, once-superior civilizations. These reasons all somehow combined to explode the rapacity and range of the West’s curiosity, both individually and collectively expressed.
As Lewis regularly points out, the word curiosity doesn’t really have good equivalents in Islamic languages [see our related pieces here and here -- ed.]. The Columbia University literary critic Edward Said, who loathed Lewis and the “orientalist” tradition behind him, never really understood to what degree curiosity (and sympathy)–not dark, imperialist, exploitative motives–drove Western scholarship about the Islamic world, especially during the formative “orientalist” age. A Palestinian Christian Arab by birth, whom Lewis famously debated on stage and dueled in the pages of the New York Review of Books in 1982, Said never really understood, either, how Western scholars could be proud, not particularly apologetic patriots and also profoundly respect foreign faiths, cultures, and lands. (Said never understood, as far as that goes, how men of differing views could remain civil. Under Lewis and his close friend Charles Issawi, a phenomenally accomplished scholar of both modern and medieval Islamic history who had fairly sharp political differences with Lewis, Princeton University was a refuge from the Third-Worldist, anti-Israeli political storms that made many Middle Eastern studies departments in America socially and intellectually unpleasant.)
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR A WESTERNER to digest Lewis’s work without it profoundly affecting how he sees the Muslim Middle East. A determination to use primary material so that Muslims can speak for themselves animates all of Lewis’s writings. President Bush’s faith in the medicinal value of democracy for Muslims raised under dictatorship undoubtedly has its strongest roots in America’s abiding trust in representative government. But Lewis’s nuanced writings on democracy in the Muslim world, and his former students and his many friends, who’ve all absorbed over the years perspectives of the British émigré-turned-American citizen, have probably helped to flesh out the administration’s rapidly evolving understanding of Middle Eastern politics and faith after 9/11. (An understanding that may now be vanishing as the Near East Bureau at the State Department regains control of American policy in the Middle East.) Published at the time of the invasion of Iraq, before President Bush’s most important speech in November 2003 about the need for representative government in the Middle East, Lewis’s commentary on democracy in The Crisis of Islam anticipates and amplifies the president’s themes:
The creation of a free society, as the history of existing democracies in the world makes clear, is no easy matter. The experience of the Turkish republic over the last half century and of some other Muslim countries more recently has demonstrated two things: first, that it is indeed very difficult to create a democracy in such a society, and second, that although difficult, it is not impossible. The study of Islamic history and of the vast and rich Islamic political literature encourages the belief that it may well be possible to develop democratic institutions–not necessarily in our Western definition of that much misused term, but in one deriving from their own history and culture and ensuring, in their way, limited government under law, consultation and openness, in a civilized and humane society.
The forces of tyranny and terror are still very strong and the outcome is far from certain. . . . The war against terror and the quest for freedom are inextricably linked, and neither can succeed without the other. The struggle is no longer limited to one or two countries, as some Westerners still manage to believe. It has acquired first a regional then a global dimension, with profound consequences for all of us. . . . If freedom fails and terror triumphs, the peoples of Islam will be the first and greatest victims. They will not be alone, and many others will suffer with them.
Many years ago, when I was still an Iran-watcher in the CIA’s clandestine service, I thanked Lewis, who had been my teacher at Princeton, for his writings and the long conversations that he’d so generously had with me. I could respect Iranian holy warriors, who then interested the United States government more than their Sunni counterparts, because the professor had helped me to see them as they really were. He’d taught me how to time travel–to reach back and touch the events, people, and literature that still define so much of the Muslim soul.
“I could respect Iranian holy warriors…because the professor had helped me to see them as they really were.” Our understanding of of the Islamic world has come quite a distance in a few short years, has it not? We are in a war with people who believe they are to command good and forbid evil. Unfortunately, their idea of what is good and what is evil differs from ours in some critical matters.
UPDATE
Austin Bay liveblogged President Bush’s speech at West Point, in which the President undertook to give an ideological underpinning to our new cold war against the Islamists, which we have said is long overdue:
Bush is –- correctly -– comparing his situation to Truman’s. “President Truman laid the foundatoin for victory in the Cold War.” He made that clear when he said: “We are laying the foundation for victory.” Bush also looked at the difference between the USSR and Islamist terrorists. MAD worked on the Soviets -– it won’t work on Islamist terrorists. But there are “important similarities.” Like the Cold War we are fighting a murderous ideology.” “Like the Cold War our enemy dismiises free people [as weak]…Our enemies believe that innocents can be murdered to further a political vision.”
We note that President Bush used — for the first time? — the term “Islamic fascists” in his press conference with Tony Blair the other day. This is a marked improvement over the nonsense about “evildoers,” which is simplistic and does nothing to explain that there are serious men as well as thugs who are our enemies. We don’t know whether the “Islamist terrorist” phrase above was George Bush’s or Austin Bay’s, but it is clear that the US Government is beginning to officially acknowledge the specifically religious dimension to this war. That in itself is a critical step on the road to victory.
UPDATE II
We refer you to a spooky post by AJ Strata about a time when these matters were not so clearly understood.
UPDATE III
Here’s what the President said at West Point that named names:
West Point has expanded Arabic language training, has hired new faculty with expertise in Islamic law and culture, brought in members of the 101st and 82nd Airborne to train you and share their experiences on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. And each of you endured grueling Saturday training events where you practiced identifying IEDs, conducting convoy operations and running checkpoints. By changing to meet the new threats, West Point has given you the skills you will need in Afghanistan and Iraq — and for the long war with Islamic radicalism that will be the focus of much of your military careers.
The “long war with Islamic radicalism that will be the focuse of much of your military careers” — careers of, what, thirty years or more? Doesn’t sound anything like “cakewalk,” does it?