The events of Sept. 11 have produced a huge quantity of verbiage in Western countries, particularly the United States. In hundreds of articles and a few books, scholars and journalists have attempted to explain the factors that led 19 young men to perpetrate horrendous assaults on America’s corporate, financial and military institutions, killing over 3,000 persons and shaking the foundations of a proud and till then unassailable superpower.
In this quest for understanding, the voice of Bernard Lewis is magisterial. Over 40 years, Lewis has attempted to explain Islam and the Middle East: at all major events pertaining to the history and politics of this region, his interventions have been authoritative. It is therefore hardly surprising that, within a few months of Sept. 11, Bernard Lewis should hit the bookshops with: “What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam And Modernity In The Middle East” (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2002). This book has been followed a year later by “The Crisis Of Islam: Holy War And Unholy Terror” (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2003). Both books have been on best-seller lists in the United Kingdom and the US for several weeks.
Unfortunately, there is little that is new in terms of fact, insight or interpretation in what Lewis now has to offer. As long ago as 1963, in the context of then prevailing Arab resentment of American “imperialism,” Bernard Lewis had asserted: “We shall be better able to understand this situation if we view the present discontents of the Middle East not as a conflict between states or nations, but as a clash between civilizations.” Over the last 40 years, his central thesis pertaining to Islam and its encounter with the West has remained substantially unchanged.
“What Went Wrong?” gives a summary of Islam’s achievements over the first thousand years of its existence and its steady decline over the last 400 years, as the West, i.e., the Christian world of Europe and later the US, outstripped it in military, industrial, scientific, technological and intellectual achievement. Bernard Lewis then explores the more difficult terrain of Islam’s present-day relationship with the West. He believes that in searching for explanations for their loss of prestige and power, Muslims in contemporary times have indulged in a blame-game, identifying Western imperialism, and specifically the US, as the villain responsible for their failure and their lowly status, rather than seeing serious flaws in their own culture which have led to their present-day malaise.
In both books, while focusing on “Islam,” Lewis fails to place the experience of Islam in the larger framework of contemporary experience. Thus, he presents fact by fact the expanding gap between “Western” achievement and “Islam.” However, we vainly look for instances that would indicate some unique inherent characteristic of Islam the religion or way of life that would account for this gap. Similarly, while examining the present-day scene of poverty and tyranny, which Lewis posits as the central characteristic of contemporary “Islam,” we cannot but note that these characterize not just “Islam” but most of the developing world be it Buddhist Asia, Christian Latin America or Christian-Muslim Africa.
Lewis’ chapter on the “Rise of Terrorism” in the “Crisis of Islam,” which is central to his exploration of modern-day Islam, reads like a tract of an emotionally engaged pamphleteer rather than an objective scholar familiar with Muslim history and society. Lewis commences his chapter with the assertion that “most present day terrorists are Muslims and proudly identify themselves as such.” He ignores the fact that, over the last few decades, terrorism has been a worldwide scourge, having manifested itself in several different countries and societies — Germany, Japan, Italy, Greece, Argentina, Yugoslavia, Nepal, Sri Lanka — without acquiring a religious appellation.
In his anxiety to paint Muslims in the ugliest of colors, Lewis fails to recall the activities of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the IRA Catholics in Northern Ireland, the Christian Basques in Spain, or the various ongoing struggles on behalf of the proletariat in Nepal, India and large parts of Latin America. It could also be argued, at least from the perspective of the victims, that the ongoing depredations of Israeli troops in different parts of Palestine and those of Serb Christians in Bosnia and Kosovo are acts of terrorism.
However, beyond these semantic problems, Lewis has more serious failings. In both books, Lewis refers to the practice, in modern times, for certain sections of Muslims to seek salvation in the face of Western triumph by harking back to an idealized, pristine Islam. He sees in this a rejection of modernity and asserts that this forms the basis of present-day fundamentalism and violence.
It is true that Islam has seen a number of reform movements over the last 300 years, many, if not most of which harked back to the ideal Islam of the days of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). However, with the exception of the Taleban, hardly any one of them rejected modernity. Where is this “clash” between Islam and modernity that Lewis speaks of?
In page after page, the author himself sets out the various attempts, over nearly 300 years, of Muslim rulers and societies to understand and learn from the West and effect changes in their polity. Indeed, every aspect of Muslim life has been subject to Western influence — military organization, media, law, education, diplomacy, and, in recent times, even political philosophy and institutions. These attempts at modernization may occasionally have been half-hearted and not entirely successful, but there certainly has been no “clash” of Islam with modernity. Today, most Islamic movements share a common call for the transformation of society through a response to contemporary challenges rather than to reproduce the past.
Again, much of the contemporary Islamic discourse is eclectic and moderate. Though the acts of violence and terror emanating from the Muslim world in the name of Islam are the most familiar manifestation of “Islam” in Western consciousness, they are in reality only the most extreme and marginal expression of political Islam.
Even the anecdotal evidence indicating some degree of popular support for Osama Bin Laden in Muslim countries only confirms what is already widely known: that there is a strong anti-Westernism in the Arab/Western world, and that Osama Bin Laden has cleverly tapped into these feelings to obtain a degree of acceptance. However, what this evidence does not affirm is that his methods are approved of; or, that his messianic status is accepted; or that he can significantly affect the political order in the region. Most observers actually see through his manipulation of populist causes such as Palestine or Iraq.
Lewis repeats in both books his now-standard contention that “the idea that... any part of human life is in any sense outside the scope of religious law and jurisdiction is alien to Muslim thought.” This view of Islam is monolithic, essentialist, out of date, and wrong.
Most Islamic countries do have an order that is “Islamic” in that it reflects the dominant social and cultural ethos of the majority of their people. But, “Islam” does not exhaust the identity of the nation or entirely determine its political and economic policies. The latter are largely geared to providing economic opportunities, and, over time, expanding the political space to respond to emerging aspirations. The context in which these policies are developed is obviously secular in that the state primarily engages itself with largely religion-neutral concerns such as economic development, technology, globalization and modernization in general.
Besides the various over-simplifications and misrepresentations that mar Lewis’ books, there are serious omissions: in his detailed analysis of the origin of the sources of Islamic anger, as also the forces that have encouraged the rise of Islamic consciousness in contemporary times, Lewis makes absolutely no reference to Israeli violence in Palestine. He also fails to note that, throughout the Cold War, Washington viewed Islamists as “natural partners.” And, he does not mention the role played by the US in converting the national struggle of the Afghan people against Soviet occupation into a modern-day jihad.
It is difficult to understand how an acknowledged scholar of the Middle East entirely fails to examine the two significant issues that constitute the centerpiece of contemporary experience of this region, experiences that have been credited, rightly or wrongly, with inspiring Islamist consciousness and even the extremist violence that Lewis set out to investigate.
Today, the Islamic world is in a state of considerable ferment. Every aspect of life — political, economic, religious, social — is being reviewed amid passionate debate: New winds are being breathed into education and intellectual life; the media is more robust in criticizing the powerful as never before; laws and legal systems are being revamped; there is an increasing sensitivity in regard to human rights and gender relations; and economic policies are being questioned and reforms contemplated. The most significant change is in the area of religious discourse, with a new emphasis on tolerance and accommodation, and rejection of extremism and violence. The pace of change is too much for some and too slow for others. And, debate rages even about this. Sadly, none of these themes finds any mention in Bernard Lewis’ books.
What then is the purpose of Lewis’ intervention in contemporary Islamic discourse? The conclusion is unavoidable that Lewis’ purpose in publishing the two books has less to do with enlightening confused and frightened Americans and more to do with contemporary US politics. Lewis’ scholarship is intended to describe Islam as the despised “Other” to the so-called Judeo-Christian West (equated with modernity and freedom), and thus set the stage for the inevitable “clash of civilizations.”
It is Lewis, not Huntington, who is the father of the “clash of civilizations” thesis, and it is Lewis who is today using his magisterial position in Islamic discourse to mobilize Christendom against Islam. In doing so, he seeks to serve the political ideology of the messianic American neo-conservatives (made up largely of Christian evangelists and right-wing Zionists) who are assiduously using Sept. 11 to promote a “clash” with the Muslim world. His scholarship is shoddy; his influence is alarming. We can only mourn the emergence of the scholar as a political hack.
— Talmiz Ahmad is the outgoing Indian ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
