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Points of View
Bernard Lewis DisappointsScholar on Islam offers apologia for clash between East and West.There may be no more prestigious academic position in this country than chairman of Near East Studies at Princeton University. For much of the last 80 years, the chair was occupied first by Lebanese-born Philip Hitti, then Bernard Lewis, an English Jew.A tireless researcher fluent in Semitic languages, Lewis proved himself a worthy successor to Hitti. A prolific writer, he has published a host of texts dealing with the tenets of Islam, minority problems in the Middle East, and the collision of traditional societies with modern European nationalisms. In the wake of 9/11, Lewis counseled the world in What Went Wrong about the relationships between the industrial West and Islamic nations.As questions remained unanswered, Lewis contracted to publish The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror in 2003. It was an expansion of his essay that appeared in The New Yorker; this award-winning book, like its earlier incarnation, can only be termed disappointing. From its overlong citation of Osama bin Laden's "Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders," which takes up four pages of the introduction, to Lewis' parting wish that the Chinese, Russians or Indians address the threat of al-Qaeda, Crisis of Islam is an exercise in caution.Before addressing the contents of bin Ladin's fatwa, endorsed by like-minded jihadists in Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Lewis advises his readers that the statement is "a magnificent piece of eloquent, at times poetic Arabic prose." This, by way of introducing a document that indicts the United States for "occupying the [holiest] lands of Islam" seven years, of collaborating with Israel in the "calamitous slaughter and humiliation" of Muslim peoples.If, already in the italicized pages of a text, the United States is perceived as "the great Satan" and the enemy of civilization because of its imposition of imperial power upon land that is sacrosanct, one can only ask: Why did we commit forces to the Gulf region back in 1991? Not last year. 1991.Why did American men and women place their own lives in jeopardy for a society that did not respect them? Why did they face the nightly terror of buzz bombs that conceivably carried poison gas? Lewis admits we created a coalition to protect Saudi Arabia and to free Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. But that isn't how radical fundamentalists perceive the situation.Following World War II, emerging nations viewed the United States as the patron and protector of the old European colonialists. Why we should have been cast in the role of demon instead of the Soviet Union (which, by Lewis' own admission, dealt ruthlessly with its 50 million Muslims) is never explained.Once the U.S.S.R. made a deal with Egypt's Nasser to construct the Aswan Dam, much of the Third World viewed it as the benefactor of the dispirited. According to Lewis, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, the United States chose to see Muslims as enemies "because we have a psychological need of an enemy to replace the defunct Soviet Union."The true crisis, then, Lewis would have us believe, is not within Islam, but ourselves. For, as we have been reminded since 9/11, "Islam is one of the world's great religions. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught men of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance."The author of several books dealing with racial minorities and Jews under Islam, Lewis does point out that Umar ibn al-Khattib, Muhammad's second successor, expelled Jews and Christians from Arabia -- over a period of time -- and with some humanitarian considerations. This medieval form of ethnic cleansing was accompanied by his imposing several disabilities (a poll tax, marking with a badge, segregation in unsanitary ghettos, discrimination in education, lack of access to honorable professions, barring Jews from public baths or facilities, charges of ritual murder, even pogroms). But the ahl al kittab, that is, people of the book (the Bible), monotheists, Christians and Jews, enjoyed legal protection (dhimma status) under Islam. "What we would call being second-class citizens," Lewis writes, "was far better than the total lack of citizenship that was the fate of non-Christians and even of some deviant Christians in the West."Lamentably, the voices of reason and understanding have been remarkably silent over these past two decades. As bin Laden exhorts each of his followers to "kill the Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them and whenever he can," the voices we hear come from Sheik Ahmed Yasin of Hamas, Fadlallah of Hezbollah, and Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister of Malaysia.Periodically, Lewis rescues his audience with declarative statements couched like commandments, but that leave the reader floundering. To wit: "In many regions, even in countries of ancient civilization like India, serious historical writing begins with the arrival of Islam."Those of us in the West have often heard that "for Muslims, no piece of land once added to the realm of Islam can ever be finally renounced." But the question is why not?Why was it permissible for Muslim warriors who conquered Palestine in the seventh century to sack or build over Christian and Jewish shrines and not endure a comparable humiliation? Why is the presence of Americans or Christians on Arabian soil deemed a "desecration"? How are we to reconcile Lewis' image of a "tolerant" society with one that regards itself as "the sole custodians of God's truth"?If the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder (defined by Lewis as the killing of innocent women, children and the aged), why has there been no general outcry against suicide bombers? And why, if the people of the Middle East are bound up with honor and memory, if events and personalities frequently invoked date from the seventh century, should we excuse their short-term loss of memory? Why does their "memory of Saddam Hussein's attack on Kuwait fail" when they can remember, as if it were yesterday, the battle of Karbala in 680? Some of Lewis' observations are clumsy or misleading -- implying Islam is unique among western religions in having no priesthood, asserting that much hostility directed toward the United States stems from its earlier support of tyrants such as Saddam Hussein and Hafez al Assad, and reciting a hackneyed claim that only through the illegal supply of Czech arms to Israel in 1948 was the Jewish state able to survive.We do learn a few things wandering through this theosophical garden: the Organization of the Islamic Conference numbers 57 nations (including Surinam and Guyana in the Western Hemisphere), and only one, Turkey, has operated democratic institutions. Most areas surveyed are abysmally backward in the number of scientists generated, published articles and books, or research papers cited. And to anyone who suggests that the ruthless killing perpetrated 9/11 may be justified, Lewis offers a "clear no."It is a feeble rejoinder, framed around a discussion of the canard that Jews allegedly knew of the impending attack on the World Trade Center. It is as thin as Lewis' assessment of the real villains in all of this -- the Saudi royal family. Ever faithful to their Wahhabi mentors, the Sauds established madrasas that trained teachers in "bigotry and violence." They exploited the industrial nations' dependency on oil and the boundary lines of new states drawn by colonial functionaries."Imagine," writes Lewis, "that the Ku Klux Klan or some similar group obtains total control of the state of Texas, of its oil, and therefore of its oil revenues, and uses this money to establish a network of well-endowed schools and colleges all over Christendom, peddling their peculiar brand of Christianity." Well put. But Lewis cannot leave well enough alone. Consciously or otherwise, his summary chapter redirects the burden of guilt for misunderstandings upon the West. The reader is treated to three pages of rants from bin Laden, scoring American "crusaders" for their oppression, lies, immorality, debauchery, greed, ruthlessness, support of corrupt regimes, occupation, subjugation and theft. The litany of sins includes corrupt elections, Zionism, racism, and the separation of church and state that removes God from the legal process. "You are," bin Laden wrote in November 2002, "the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind."Lewis doesn't agree -- but by the time the reader closes this book, he or she will be so overwhelmed with caveat and apology that he or she will not care."