What Went Wrong? By Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis, a retired professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, considers the problems within Islam which have led to its decline in the modern world.  He examines how the Muslim World has failed to look outward as it contacts and interacts with first Europe and then both America and Asia as the world has changed from the local perspectives of the medieval period to the global views of today.  As Islam came to dominate the world during the late middle ages it looked only inward, not granting the infidel world sufficient attention to be able to respond as western thought, science, and technology gradually at first and then with increasing rapidity came to dominate Islam’s older and more conservative ways. 

As ideas such as the nation/state and liberal democratic government with clear separation between religious and secular views came to dominate in the West, Islam recognized no difference between the inner (religious) experience and the outer (worldly) life.  As these ideas developed in the West, freedom languished in Islam.  Women remained subservient and unable to exert needed influence.  Observance of the pillars of Islam superseded the advances offered by technology.  Lewis details how western advances such as printing, government, mass communications, military strategy, and the development of the civil society languished in the three major political divisions within Islam – Turkey, Arabia, and Persia.  As complacency gives way to dismay and, finally, fear, the Muslim world, rather than looking at its own reaction to the advances of modernity, looks outward for others to blame. 

The concept of “the other” emerges, contrasting Islamic and Western Christian perspectives on the world.  Islam seems to view us (the Infidel) as the other, beneath, even not worthy of, consideration.  We, on the other hand, have a tendency to view others as “just like us” if we could only reach out to them on a people to people basis.  Thus, Bush knows (mistakenly) that if he looks an adversary in the eye, he can make a connection to bridge (almost) all differences at a human level.  The absurdity of this position can be seen, for instance, in Lewis’ comments on the lack of translation of western literature in the Islamic world.  “This was clearly a cultural rejection: you take what is useful from the infidel; but you don’t need to look at his absurd ideas or to try and understand his inferior literature, or study his meaningless history.” (139)  If knowledge is power, Islam has ceded power to the West. 

If it is true that our literature creates our imagination about ourselves (Benjamin Bloom contends that Shakespeare created the West’s conception of the capability of man for self conscious thought.), then the absence of western literature in translation, let alone the learning of western languages to permit Muslim peoples to experience the works in their original forms, eliminates the ability (or willingness) of the middle eastern mind to gather the scope of  western imagination into its conception of a broader world.  Indeed, such imagination is not only limited, it is actively rejected in favor of the rhetoric of cultural domination and consequent violent resistance.  Thus, too, the presence of Israel, sharing a language but reflecting a culture containing a fusion of western and eastern thought and practice represents an even more threatening cultural bridge and must be eliminated. 

Lewis leaves the reader with very little room for optimism.  He suggests the only hope for emancipation of the Muslim world to follow its talents towards greater productivity and renewed positive engagement with the west lies in the unstoppable inroads made by modern communication in the form of satellite television and the Internet, technological advances difficult to control by autocratic rulers.  Finally, I am left with one question: Is there some element in the nature of Judeo/Christian thought, the way faith and belief structure thought and lead to action that gives the western mind an advantage over Muslim ways of acting?  If such an advantage exists, if indeed it turns out to be an advantage, how can Islam respond?  Lewis, and Tom Friedman, suggest that more thoughtful voices within the Muslim world are beginning to look for responses more creative than suicide bombings and universal theocratic governments.  Regardless, the conflict between these peoples whose essential world view differs to such an extent, must continue for the foreseeable future.