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What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern
Response, by Bernard Lewis. Oxford University Press, 2002, 192
pages.
The Lost Civilization
by Stephen Cox
Bernard Lewis is the most distinguished Western historian
of Islam and Islamic nations. Since objective, self-critical scholarship seems to
be at a low ebb in Islam itself, he may be the most distinguished historian of
that subject in the world. Now in his late eighties, he stands serenely above his
colleagues, looking down with a gracious smile. Asked in a recent C-Span
interview to say whom he expected to inherit his legacy, he replied that he was
too young to worry about legacies. Certainly he wastes no time on the little gods
of the academic left, such as Edward Said, who once attacked Lewis for writing an
article called "The Roots of Muslim Rage." Said claimed that Lewis's "ideological
colors are manifest in [that] title." All one can say is, "Where?"
| | Stephen
Cox is a professor of literature at the University of California San Diego
and the author of "The Titanic Story." |
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Lewis is far too skeptical and ironical, and also far too elegant, to manifest
any belligerent "ideology." The title of his new book, "What Went Wrong?", has a
polemical quality that finds few echoes in the book itself. The work is a
carefully balanced and moderated discussion of a complex (and fascinating) topic
— the process by which a culture that once was "far ahead" has somehow
become "far behind."
I've placed those two phrases in quotation marks, to satisfy all those people
who refuse to believe that cultures can ever be judged or ranked. Lewis believes
that they can. His criteria, however, cannot be accused of stringency. He merely
assumes that cultures that encourage education and the arts, that practice a
modicum of tolerance and generosity, and that are alive to the benefits of new
technology are in those respects demonstrably "ahead" of other cultures. It's a
modest assumption, and it works a good deal better, as a tool of cultural
analysis, than the radical relativist assumptions that are currently more popular
in the academic world.
Everyone knows, or thinks he knows, that while the medieval West was boring
and tyrannizing itself to death, Islamic civilization was practicing religious
toleration, exploring science, maintaining graceful urban environments, and
perpetuating the learning of the ancient world. There is some truth to that
picture, although the tints are usually too rosy. Lewis points out, for instance,
that Islam revealed no interest in perpetuating the literary or humanistic
achievements of the Greeks; when it came to copying or translating Greek
manuscripts, only directly useful (e.g., scientific) material was chosen. And
when it came to tolerance for other people, nothing like equality was accorded to
professors of non-Islamic religions; they suffered grosser discrimination under
Islam than any group now suffers in the Western world. But when measured by most
standards of high civilization, Islam was still far ahead of Christendom.
Then came the changes in the West, centuries of change: the reform of
religion, the invention of alternative ways of practicing it, and finally the
separation of religion from the state; the development of political systems in
which parties could contest for power while respecting basic rules of decency,
order, and fairness; the scientific revolution and all that it continues to
portend; the abolition of slavery; the achievement of civil equality between men
and women; enormous revolutions in literary and artistic methods, expanding the
power of individuals to express themselves; a multitude of new ways of enjoying
life and promoting its dignity. |
| Once, when measured by
most standards of high civilization, Islam was far ahead of Christendom. Then
came centuries of changes in the West. |
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So much for the West. In Islam, no such innovations occurred. The Islamic
regions of the world steadily lost wealth, power, and influence. In some regions,
even the wheel lost out to the camel. While the West's knowledge of Islam was
often ludicrously small, Islam's knowledge of the West remained, for centuries,
still more limited. Islam's learned men knew nothing about the Reformation, the
Renaissance, or the scientific revolution. Printing established itself in most
areas two or three centuries after it had spread throughout the West. It took
until the 1960s for Saudi Arabia to follow the West and outlaw slavery. Modern
Islamic contributions to science, technology, and constructive political action
have been minimal. Even symphonic music has been naturalized only in Turkey.
Surveying this bleak cultural landscape, Islamic intellectuals have often
reacted (as Lewis indicates) by asking, "Who has done this to us?" Sometimes that
question has been appropriate. It was from the West that Islam imported
nationalism, socialism, and the technical means of political repression, none of
which did anything good for their Eastern customers. What is at least equally
notable, however, is the list of beneficial items that have not been widely
imported: separation of state from religion, equal rights for women and
minorities, patterns of personal identification that are not purely religious or
local or ethnic.
Many Islamic thinkers, not all of them currently residing west of the
Bosporus, understand these problems. They no longer ask "Who has done this to
us?" but "What has happened?" and "What can be done about it?" Their influence,
however, has not been sufficient to alter a seemingly intractable cultural
gestalt. Neither in Lewis's book nor in the daily news does "What can be done?"
receive its answer.
But though he offers no solution, he does provide a superbly clear and
intelligent analysis of the shape and origins of the problem. His book is perhaps
the most accessible introduction to the history, especially the cultural history,
of the Islamic world; and it says much of interest about the cultural history of
the West as well. Lewis has the gift of stepping back and seeing each culture, as
if for the first time, noticing features that people immersed in either
Christendom or Islam ordinarily cannot see for themselves. And perhaps that's
where solutions start. . . .
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