Islam and the West

By Bernard Lewis

Book Overview

Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," Bernard Lewis has been for half a century one of the West's foremost scholars of Islamic history and culture, the author of over two dozen books, most notably The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, The Political Language of Islam, and The Muslim Discovery of Europe. Eminent French historian Robert Mantran has written of Lewis's work: "How could one resist being attracted to the books of an author who opens for you the doors of an unknown or misunderstood universe, who leads you within to its innermost domains: religion, ways of thinking, conceptions of power, culture--an author who upsets notions too often fixed, fallacious, or partisan."
In Islam and the West, Bernard Lewis brings together in one volume eleven essays that indeed open doors to the innermost domains of Islam. Lewis ranges far and wide in these essays. He includes long pieces, such as his capsule history of the interaction--in war and peace, in commerce and culture--between Europe and its Islamic neighbors, and shorter ones, such as his deft study of the Arabic word watan and what its linguistic history reveals about the introduction of the idea of patriotism from the West. Lewis offers a revealing look at Edward Gibbon's portrait of Muhammad in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unlike previous writers, Gibbon saw the rise of Islam not as something separate and isolated, nor as a regrettable aberration from the onward march of the church, but simply as a part of human history); he offers a devastating critique of Edward Said's controversial book, Orientalism; and he gives an account of the impediments to translating from classic Arabic to other languages (the old dictionaries, for one, are packed with scribal errors, misreadings, false analogies, and etymological deductions that pay little attention to the evolution of the language). And he concludes with an astute commentary on the Islamic world today, examining revivalism, fundamentalism, the role of the Shi'a, and the larger question of religious co-existence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
A matchless guide to the background of Middle East conflicts today, Islam and the West presents the seasoned reflections of an eminent authority on one of the most intriguing and little understood regions in the world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195090616
• ISBN13: 9780195090611
• Release Date: October 1994
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Well written and interesting

This book is an introduction to the history of Islam's interactions with the West. It begins with an overview of the advances of Muslim armies into Europe and explains that Western voyages of discovery soon led to the West surpassing the Muslim world economically and then militarily. And we see that in the century prior to the end of World War One, the Muslims were in steady retreat against Europeans. Lewis shows how in Western eyes, the Ottoman Empire went from being regarded as wicked and threatening to being mysterious but weak. That brings up the issue of how Muslims live under non-Muslim rule. And we discover that the major issue is simply whether or not Muslims are free to practice their way of life. Lewis then brings up the issue of translating Arabic terms. In most cases, translations are not a big problem. But there are some concepts which are not really the same in Arabic as they are in Western languages, such as "state," "freedom," "democracy," or "revolution." The author shows how the meaning of these words relates to Muslim behavior when Muslims have Western allies in wartime. Perhaps the most interesting section is the one on Orientalism. Here, the author describes the frightful politicization of Middle East studies. Lewis shows how politics, generally antizionist politics, has often substituted for scholarship in this field. In my opinion, this understates the problem. The academic world has to maintain standards to be of value. If these standards are abandoned in one part of history, that will bring down the esteem and value of the entire discipline. This is a very informative book, and it's easy to read. I highly recommend it.

Top Flight Scholarship

Bernard Lewis is not regarded as the foremost scholar of Middle East for naught. Islam And The West is a serious dissertation not so much of the Muslim culture and Islam faith, which are very large subjects, but how one should even attempt to understand them. This is a short, but very substantial book.The author points out that many popular interpretations and beliefs about Islam, which are common currency in the Christian West, are actually incorrect. Still more notions which are common in the West have no real equivalents in the Islamic paradigm. It is not hard to see, with a deep understanding of the Islam faith and the Muslim culture, that many "commonsense" formulations of, say, the Palestinian solution, simply won't work, or why most people could not comprehend the Islamic Revolution (actions of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers,) or of the Taliban. This is simply because the Islamic faith is not comparable to the Christian or Judaic faith, the Islamic state is not equivalent to the Western state, or any other state, for that matter, and that the Islamic teaching is central and all encompassing to the purpose in life of the "fundamentalist" Muslim. Our faith in such fundamental concepts as patriotism, peaceful co-existence, trade, and a good many others are either non-existent or even forbidden in the Islamic mind. Use of these concepts in formulating political solutions in that part of the world will inevitably fail.Islam And The West is a must-read for politicians, journalists, scholars and ordinary Joes like myself, who have a serious interest in the Middle East issues. Besides the high quality of the studies presented, Bernard Lewis's writing style, especially with his careful choice of words, and elegantly crafted sentences, surely has helped make this book a classic.

A story of friction.

More than many historians, Lewis' writing is meaty. Despite being written at a summary level, you get a sense of the depth of his research and his intellect in every page - in contrast to, for example, Bernard Kaplan, who, while often interesting, sometimes rambles and occasionally seems abstruse. Put another way, if you are inclined to highlight important passages in this book, you might want to use a paintbrush rather than a highlighter.For the better part of a millennium the Muslim world (dar al-Islam) looked down on Christendom (part of dar al-Harb). Then, in the late 1600's, things began to change. Europe came to surpass Islam in every field - militarily, politically, culturally - culminating in the dismembering of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. This has colored the Muslim sense of self ever since - a situation made worse by the Islamic (especially Arabic) sense of pride and superiority. The reasons behind it and what to do about it occupy endless debate within dar al-Islam. That same debate is at the heart of Lewis' book. "For Muslims, Islam is not merely a system of belief and worship, a compartment of life, so to speak, distinct from other compartments which are the concern of nonreligious authorities administering nonreligious laws [as is generally the case in the West]. It is rather the whole of life, and its rules include civil, criminal, and even what we would call constitutional law." (pg. 4.) Both Christianity and Islam contain, "The idea that there is a single truth for all mankind, and that it is the duty of those who possess it to share it with others..." (pg. 5.) Despite the common heritage, two distinct cultures emerged. Attempts at secularization met some success in the twentieth century, but militant fundamentalism is on the rise, bred by frustration, fueled by religious zeal, and sustained by hatred. The goal is a return to a utopian view of the authentic Islam of the time of the Prophet Muhammad and the rashidun.Lewis' book is a collection of essays describing the interaction between Islam and the West and the impact each has had on the other. It is but one of a dozen or so books about Islam that he has written over the past several decades, each with a different approach to Islam. This one is a story of friction between two cultures. Well written and readable, it is interesting at times, scary at others, but always illuminating.

Short but facinating work

Bernard Lewis, the dean of Middle East scholars, has been much lambasted by people like Edward Said, who have pummeled him with all manner of polemics. None of that caterwauling masqueraded as debate has removed Lewis from his throne as the leading living Middle East scholar. What makes Lewis such a marvel is that, in a field beset with politics, he neither seeks to eviscerate nor canonize his subject. Here is a man who loves Arab culture and Arabic, but is capable of insightful commentary and analysis.Lewis' work on how Islam and "the west" encountered each other, defined themselves as being in opposite of the "other," and the conflicts that arose is still the standard. Even more enjoyable, Lewis writes with a wonderful readable style and presents the information in an accessible way. I highly recommend this book and, if you like it, you should pick up his other classic, Middle East and the west. 2

outstanding

Bernard Lewis gives the reader two fascinating trips in this book: one into the world of Islam, and the other into the scope of his scholarship. I can't recommend it enough to those interested in learning more about Islam and the West. And, by the way, his essay on Edward Said is worth the price of the book alone...