Voices of Islam (272 page)

Lewis is perhaps the best known example of scholars who have fine-tuned a textual and philological approach to the study of Muslim societies. He has also been criticized as the epitome of an ‘‘Orientalist’’ mode of scholarship.

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It was precisely this accusation that informed so much of Said’s paradigm- shifting study
Orientalism.
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In the years following the publication of
Orientalism,
Said and Lewis exchanged vitriolic personal attacks in the pages of
New York Review of Books.
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My concern here is not to undertake yet another personal attack on Bernard Lewis. Nor is it my intention to begin by calling attention to Lewis’ involvement in right-wing politics and pro-Zionist groups. One cannot entirely avoid that topic in a thorough engagement with Lewis, because Lewis himself does not avoid it (especially in his TV appearances). However, I will begin by exploring his assessment of Islam, Muslims, and modernity.

Lewis’ focus on Islam is bound up exclusively in the Middle East. In fact, in many of his works he uses the phrases ‘‘Muslims’’ and ‘‘Middle Easterners’’ interchangeably, as if all Muslims are Middle Easterners, and all Middle East- erners Muslims. This confusion even shows up in the titles of Lewis’ works.
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For a scholar of his rank, he seems unaware or unconcerned with the fact that over half of all Muslims in the world live east of Lahore, Pakistan. In reality, Muslims are more South Asian than Arab, more Southeast Asian than Middle Eastern. The Muslim populations of Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan easily dwarf the entire population of the Middle East. However, Lewis’ focus on the Middle East is entirely consistent with the Arab-centric view of Orientalist scholars whose approach to Islam is primarily mediated through the study of Arabic (and to a far lesser extent, Persian) texts. In fact, so much of Lewis’ concerns with Islam and Muslims begin and end with the broader Eastern Mediterranean in general, and Palestine/Israel more particularly.

Lewis’ voluminous and prominent publications extend back to the year 1950. As John Trumpbour reminds us, Lewis had used the idea of a clash among civilizations as far back as 1964.
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However, the most recent phase of his public polemic against Muslims dates back to four decades later, to a 1990 article in
The Atlantic Monthly,
titled ‘‘The Roots of Muslim Rage.’’
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The subtitle of this piece was even more specifi ‘‘Why so many Muslims deeply resent the West, and why their bitterness will not easily be mollified.’’ The essay starts in the same way that many of Lewis’ works do, with an acknowledgement that ‘‘Islam is one of the world’s great religions.’’ When- ever this phrase appears in Lewis’ book, it is followed by a brief paragraph praising the achievements of premodern Muslims in scientifi areas and in creating a culture of tolerance. Lewis oftentimes compares this medieval achievement with what he identifies as the more inferior medieval situation of Christendom. Almost without fail, the praising of premodern Muslims serves as a foil against which Lewis posits the alleged backwardness and failure of modern Muslims. The rest of the ‘‘Muslim rage’’ essay is a long and total- izing diatribe against modern Muslims. The first significant idea that Lewis introduces without any supporting evidence is the notion that Muslims har- bor hatred for the West not for any particular action of the West—specifically

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not for colonialism, or for U.S. support of corrupt and dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world. Rather, Lewis posits that Muslims hate the West simply because it is the West, and represents Western ideals:

At times this hatred goes beyond hostility to specific interests or actions or poli- cies or even countries and becomes
a rejection of Western civilization as such, not only what it does but what it is,
and the principles and values that it practices and professes. These are indeed seen as innately evil, and those who promote or accept them as the ‘‘enemies of God.’’
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[emphasis added]

This notion of ‘‘they hate us because we are Western civilization’’ has proven surprisingly resilient. It is echoed, as we shall see, by Samuel Hunting- ton in his ‘‘Clash of Civilizations’’ theory. In the days following September 11, 2001, even the usually astute Colin Powell stated that the attacks on New York City and Washington were ‘‘attacks on civilization,’’
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as if the members of Al Qaeda simply represented a vacuum of civilization, as opposed to a violent movement with a vastly different set of values. To attribute the reason for hatred to another group is of course not a task to be undertaken haphazardly, and can only be undertaken through engaging—even if ulti- mately dismissing—the rationale provided by one’s opponents. Lewis does neither in this case, simply deciphering the motivations of the unspeaking and unnamed (and thus unable to resist and challenge)
Other.

There is a good bit of scholarly debate regarding the very issue of whether or not it is proper to speak of a single Western civilization, rather than a plurality of strands of history and schools of thought. Even if we grant the existence of a singular Western civilization, one has to be willing to specify exactly what Western civilization is thought to stand for. If we assume that it stands, among other things, for freedom, democracy, individual rights, and so on, then it is a legitimate question to ask why anyone (that is, Muslims) would hate freedom or democracy? The argument of ‘‘they hate us for what we are, not what we do’’ is ultimately a convenient exercise in allowing the ‘‘us’’ to construct an enemy, attribute a motivation to ‘‘them,’’ and ultimately to demonize them. However, it does not allow the audience to move any closer to understanding the real objectives that any adversary might have with our specifi policies. Even when we are likely to disagree with those gripes and critiques, it behooves us to understand more clearly the perceptions and motivations of an oppositional group.

A more fundamental critique is the positing and positioning of Muslims as an ‘‘other,’’ an oppositional group. But I will come back to this notion in a concluding remark on pluralism in the North American scene. Lewis then presents the ‘‘struggle between these rival systems’’—which he identifies as Islam and Christendom—and traces this rivalry back to the very foundation of Islam: ‘‘It began with the advent of Islam, in the seventh century, and has continued virtually to the present day.’’ Islam is Islam, and Christendom

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is Christendom, and never the twain shall meet, so Lewis would have one believe. One would be well advised to ask whether it is proper to speak of a distinct, crystallized identity for Europe (a term that Lewis takes as identical with Christendom) in the seventh century, as opposed to particular entities such as the Byzantine empire, and so on. Also, Lewis’ depiction of the rela- tionship between the Islamic and Christian civilizations consists of ‘‘long series of attacks and counterattacks, jihads and crusades, conquests and reconquests.’’ This model of focusing on clashes is again appropriated by Huntington and others. What is missing from this picture is the entire range of intellectual collaborations, intermarriage, trade, diplomatic exchanges, indeed peaceful coexistence between the two civilizations. In Lewis’ assess- ment, places like Cordoba where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived side by side in peace, and engaged the deepest aspects of each others’ traditions simply do not register.

In subsequent sections of this essay, Lewis summarily brings up various reasons for potential anti-Americanism among Muslims today: U.S. support for Israel, American support for ‘‘hated regimes,’’ and colonialism. He quickly moves to dismiss the relevance of all these factors as ultimate explan- ations, through phrases such as ‘‘This accusation has some plausibility
...
. But it does not suffice.’’ The very wording of these reasons as ‘‘accusations’’ betrays Lewis’ own positioning. In place of an examination of these ideas, Lewis moves into what he identifi as ‘‘something deeper that turns every disagreement into a problem and makes every problem insoluble.’’ This ‘‘deeper’’ problem is none other than ‘‘Muslim rage.’’ The very language of ‘‘rage’’ as a psychological profile of over a quarter of the world’s population is a sad reminder of earlier nineteenth-century discussions of ‘‘the savage mind,’’ ‘‘the Negro mind,’’ and so on. While the limitations, indeed absurd- ity, of those terms are now fully recognized, Lewis still feels entitled to use terms like ‘‘Muslim rage.’’ In doing so, he places himself in the nineteenth- century racist Euro-colonial discourse.

It is later in this essay that Lewis introduces the problematic phrase ‘‘a clash of civilizations,’’ which Huntington would later borrow. Lewis starts out in a fairly conventional manner diagnosing the ills of Muslim society through identifying what is ‘‘lacking’’ from Islam. In identifying the importance of secularism, Lewis states: ‘‘Muslims experienced no such need and evolved no such doctrine.’’ Said, among others, has pointed out the problematic of explaining Muslim events through what is
not
there.
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Lewis’ approach is as helpful in identifying the course of action that is Islamic history as describing an orange by stating that it is not an elephant. Lewis, while not a psychologist

—and quite averse to anthropology—does not hesitate to offer a psychologi- cal model which seems to detect something quite perverse in the most ordinary of Muslims. Even when Muslims display kindness and generosity, these emotions are seen by Lewis as potentially masking a deeper, more underlying hatred and violence. Of course no proof can be offered for this,

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apart from Lewis’ own authority. Yet again unnamed, unspeaking, and unex- aminable subjects are evoked to observe the following: ‘‘There is something in the religious culture of Islam, which inspired, in even the humblest peasant or peddler, a dignity and a courtesy toward others never exceeded and rarely equaled in other civilizations.’’ In typical Lewis fashion, this compliment must be followed with a brutal insult:

And yet, in moments of upheaval and distortion, when the deeper passions are stirred, this dignity and courtesy toward others can give way to an explosive mixture of rage and hatred which impels even the government of an ancient and civilized country—even the spokesman of a great spiritual and ethical religion—to espouse kidnapping and assassination, and try to find, in the life of their Prophet, approval and indeed precedent for such actions.
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The last item that needs to be noted in Lewis’ essay is his assessment of the responsibility of the West in ameliorating the ‘‘clash of civilizations.’’ According to Lewis, there must be a ‘‘hard struggle’’ within Islam between fundamentalism and a more tolerant version of Islam (which Lewis is not quite sure what to call). And what is to be the role of the West in this strug- gle? Signifi nothing. ‘‘We of the West can do little or nothing. Even the attempt might do harm, for these are issues that Muslims must decide among themselves.’’ To sum up Lewis’ worldview, the U.S. support for Israel and other oppressive regimes in the Middle East are overblown excuses, colonialism is not really an explanation of the political resentment of Muslims against the West, and finally, there is nothing that the West can do to help. The fault and the responsibility rest solely with Muslims.

Muslims can do no more than partially agree with Lewis, even as they part ways with him in a profound fashion. Clearly, we as Muslims have a respon- sibility to ensure justice and pluralism within our own communities. To that extent, we as Muslims have a responsibility to be ‘‘witnesses for truth, even if it means to speak against’’ our own selves and our community—as the Qur’an reminds us.
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However, Muslims also insist that the responsibility to urge humanity toward an age of pluralism rests not just on the shoulders of Muslims, but on all of humanity. As the most politically and militarily hegemonic civilization that the world has ever known, the West is not exempt from this responsibility. Contrary to Lewis, there are things that those of us in the West—particularly in the United States—can and need to do in order to bring about a day where justice and freedom are guaranteed for all.

Lewis has pursued the same theses more recently, but with greater ferocity. All that seems to have changed is that he is now afforded an even more visible public platform. His
What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response
concludes with a section in which he describes the Muslim encoun- ter with modernity using cliche´s such as ‘‘badly wrong,’’ ‘‘poor,’’ ‘‘weak,’’ ‘‘ignorant,’’ ‘‘disappointing,’’ ‘‘humiliating,’’ ‘‘corrupt,’’ ‘‘impoverished,’’

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‘‘weary,’’ ‘‘capricious,’’ ‘‘shabby,’’ ‘‘dictatorships,’’ repression,’’ and ‘‘indoctrination.’’ All of the above descriptions are simply from one page (p. 151) of
What Went Wrong.
This barrage of totalizing insults comes unnamed and unchecked and is directed at any and all Middle Easterners/ Muslims. In the subsequent pages, Lewis is even more direct than he was in ‘‘Roots of Muslim Rage.’’ Whereas the Muslim resistance to Western imperi- alism had been an ‘‘accusation’’ before, in
What Went Wrong
it is now a ‘‘scapegoat.’’ Furthermore, Anglo-French rule and American infl are posited as a benign ‘‘consequence, not a cause’’ of ‘‘the inner weakness of Middle Eastern states and societies.’’
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The brutal oppression of Palestinians in the past century, the forcible exile of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland, the ongoing illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, all of these are handled by Lewis as part of his narrative on ‘‘anti-Semitism.’’
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The Palestinian peoples, if they exist at all for Lewis, are only the subjects of hatred for Jews, not even capable of experiencing loss and lament. It is hard indeed to read Lewis’ dia- tribe against modern Arabs and Muslims as being entirely separate from his profound Zionism. His description of the state of Israel, with one of the most potent armies in the world according to the IDF itself
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, armed with over 220 nuclear warheads (in violation of U.N. resolutions
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), as ‘‘surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned by neighbors’’
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seems either out of touch with reality or deliberately misleading. Lewis’ dismissal of modern Arabs (and indeed Muslims) is intrinsically tied to his insistence that Arabs accept not the right to existence of the State of Israel (which Arab governments have affi d on a number of occasions), but rather the very brutal system of occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. As Said remarked in 1978, Lewis’ project is to explain why the ‘‘Muslims (or Arabs) still will not settle down and accept Israeli hegemony over the Near East.’’
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