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Summary: Why Islam needs to move into the 21Century
Review: It is important to understand the downward spiral that the middle east is going into by grasping at an era that has no place in the modern world. It is time the US ends it's unholy relationships with dictators and Islamic fanatics and helps the innocent people of that region who are caught up in the middle of things. History has called the US to save the world once more and it is now time to answer.
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Summary: Fascinating and easily accesible
Review: Lewis scores again with this brief but compelling tome. It has angered many in the Islamic world (5the truth can be painful) for merely reciting facts. Recommended for anyone seeking to understand the hatred that is facing the U.S. and its religous roots.
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Summary: Normally, I would refrain
Review: ...from reviewing books I haven't read, but I figure if IslamoNazis, Chomsky fans, and Euros hate it, it must be pretty good.
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Summary: Superb work by a first-rate scholar
Review: This short book is rich with historical insights that are in short supply in our popular culture's superficial understanding of the relationship between Islam and the West. In an age of pugnacious pundits, Bernard Lewis-a professor emeritus from Princeton-is a genuine scholar. He writes with eloquence, tact, and measured judgment. After a distinguished career as an historian of the Middle East, he has in recent years been called upon to provide perspective on the animosity between much of Islam and the West. This cannot be done in sound bites, but in 184 pages Professor Lewis succeeds admirably in summarizing and explaining the last 1400 years of Islamic-Western relations. He clears up a number of commonly held confusions and misrepresentations of Islam without sugar coating the dangers the world faces from Islamic terrorism. As such, The Crisis of Islam is a valuable primer for those seeking to make some sense of geopolitical events after September 11.Lewis states that Muslims have long memories and root their present ambitions in their perceptions of both the recent and the very distant past. In a video from October 7, 2001, Osama bin Ladin spoke of the "humiliation and disgrace" suffered by Islam for "more than eighty years" (xv). While most Americas wondered what this might mean, Lewis points out that bin Ladin's Muslim listeners "picked up the allusion immediately and appreciated its significance" (xvi). In 1918 the Ottoman Empire, ruled by a Muslim sultan (or caliph), was defeated and its capital, Constantinople, was occupied. The empire's land was parceled out to the British and French empires. To Muslims, this was an unanticipated and unparalled reversal of their long history of global conquests, since for "Muslims, no piece of land once added to the realm of Islam can ever be finally renounced" (xxviii-xxix). This loss of social and religious influence in the face of the global influence of non-Muslim nations (particularly America) is in large part what constitutes "the crisis of Islam" today. Muhammad, despite early setbacks in Mecca, was a very successful religious reformer, businessman, statesman, and warrior. The Qur'an proclaims Islam as the culminating manifestation of ancient monotheism that is destined to cover the earth. Lewis notes that "in Muslim tradition, the world is divided into two houses: the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam), in which Muslim governments rule and Muslim law prevails, and the House of War (Dar al-Harb), the rest of the world, still inhabited and, more important, ruled by infidels" (31). We often hear from Western analysts that "jihad" primarily means an inner struggle for religious purity, but Lewis disagrees. For the majority of Muslim history, Jihad has been interpreted "to mean armed struggle for the defense and advancement of Islam" (31). The "presumption is that the duty of jihad will continue, interrupted only by truces, until all the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule" (31-32). But does the concept of jihad justify the fury let loose against America on September 11, 2001? Lewis thinks not. He cites an hadith (an influential saying of the prophet recorded outside the Qur'an), where suicide is said to be "punished by eternal damnation in the form of the endless repetition of the act by which the [person] killed himself" (153). Modern Islamic terrorists today differ from the traditional Muslim martyr who was "willing to face certain death at the hand of his enemies or captors" (152-153), but not to be the direct cause of his own death. Thus, the September 11 terrorist attacks had "no justification in Islamic doctrine or law and no precedent in Islamic history" (154). One hopes Lewis is right, but how many Muslims worldwide are as knowledgeable of their own tradition as this scholar? Tragically, many seem more willing to heed the violent interpretations and pronouncements of Osama bin Ladin and cohorts. Lewis is neither an apologist for the West, nor an antagonist of Islam. He is rather a learned and fair-minded scholar whose reflections on these vexing issues are urgently needed today. Douglas Groothuis, Denver Seminary
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Summary: Claptrap
Review: If you are looking for truly anti-muslim claptrap, this is undoubtedly the book to read. If you would rather not be bothered by scholarly and considered discource, but rather have a good Islam bashing, uni-dimensional, neo-conservative propaganda, please do read this book. It is good to see Mr Lewis and his legion are shedding their academic facade and showing themselves for what they truly are - muslim haters.
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Summary: another biased work from Lewis
Review: Following his provocative "the roots of Muslim rage" article that appeared in 1990, Lewis continues to pump pseudo-academic works that express anger at Islam as the main cause of everthing in the Middle East. anything he writes now will be the best-seller, not because of the power of his ideas, but because of the power behind his ideas, that is the very political circles that benefit from marketing his ideas. such circles make sure that his books are widely available in different formats, positively critiqued and disseminated. Lewis' essential agenda is to project the entire problem of political violence as a domestic, Muslim born problem that has much to do with Muslim inability to come into terms with modernity. He refuses to give any responsibility to old and new imperialist interests, colonialism, and the current military presence of the United States/Britain in many parts of the Muslim world. as though these Muslims do not know how to be thankful for the US for supporting their dictatorial regime and then coming to their help to save them. Lewis does not refer to US backing of Israeli atrocities in Palestine at all. his arguments boil down to the argument that Islam is in crisis, because Muslims failed to catch up. This conclusion totally releases the burden of past and current Western imperialist designs on the Middle East as a cause of anger, thus framing the issue according to political interests of the Western imperialism: "they are in crisis and we need to save them." I believe Lewis' works are still useful for any psychological or anthropological studies that examine how problems in the Middle East can be looked upon from ethno-centric perspective.
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Summary: Drop off that Historian Mask
Review: This book is skillfully written to attack Islam. Bernard Lewis In this book manipulates the readers' subconscious to associate Islam with the most discredited, racist and violent philosophies, ideas and organizations.
His skill lies in laying various strands of ideas side by side, meshing diverse but potent words within his sentences and never making a direct linkage; this technique allows him to direct his readers attention in a subliminal manner and keeps him at a respectable distance from his subject matter, thereby attempting to retain the veil of objectivity that every historian loves.
If you are looking for an honest and balanced account on Islamic history do not read this book because the author is wearing the mask of the academic historian to insult Islam and Muslim civilization. The book is full of hatred, racism and unscientific unacademic approach. This book aims to poising the reader's mind and inject it in a very shrewd and skillful way with negative images and attitudes towards the Islamic history and culture. Mr. Lewis spent his life studying Islam but unfortunately he learned nothing about Islam. He needs either to start over or do a better research, which is too late considering his age, or he needs to drop his academic mask and present himself honestly as unti-Islamic ideologist so people know that he is a preacher rather than a historian.
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Summary: Best Single Book to Understand the post-9/11 World
Review: This is the single best book that I have found to understand the post-9/11 world. It is short and risks being simplistic, but Lewis tells you the history and even religion you need to know to grasp what is happening and to understand where folks like Osama are coming from. Lewis tries to be even handed, but he will call a spade a spade. He will be truthful at the cost of being politically incorrect and offensive. For months I was put off from getting this book because of the bad reviews here. But I finally bought it and have no regrets.
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Summary: Look for someone more credible
Review: In academic circles, Bernard Lewis has been routinely discredited. His approach, an outdated orientalist approach that comes from a racist, colonialist worldview, is not only outdated, it's bigoted. He writes in reductionist phrases and huge generalizations about 1.3 billion people and a religion whose tenets he's not really clear about. Everything he writes is colored not by academic research but by his racist division of the world into "us" and "them." There are many more credible academic voices on Islam, ones that recognize that people of all religions differ wildly. There is no one Islam, just as there is no one Christianity. Try Stephen Humphreys' "Between Memory and Desire: the Middle East in a Troubled Age." Humphrey is a very respected scholar and he takes a realistic approach, not a generalizing ivory tower approach. John Esposito's books are accessible and good, though his Catholic bias comes through at times.
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Summary: A key to understanding the present conflict
Review: Lewis is without a doubt one of the top scholars of Middle East history and always presents a fair and balanced analysis of current events informed by a vast knowledge of its history. This is a brief and helpful explanation of the reasons behind the current divide between the West and Muslim Arabia. Lewis takes us on a historical journey through the Middle East with particular attention to its relations with the West, first Europe, then America. You will learn about... The history of the region is thoroughly steeped in the experience of the rise and fall of empire. Though the idea of a modern clash of civilizations as expounded by some lacks sufficient evidence and is only defended with great difficulty, the age of empire was a clash of civilization, particularly where Islam met Christendom on the eastern edge of Europe and the western edge of first the Arab empire, then the Ottoman empire. This was particularly acute in Palestine, as it was holy ground to both faiths, and the Crusades and their aftermath are examples of the ferocity of this clash. The experiences of the Crusades and their attendant horrors helped to lay a foundation for resentment between cultures. Islam does not have to be an inherently intolerant faith, although it has had its intolerant moments, particularly in the Arab caliphate and the Safavid Empire of Iran. This is not much different however than much of the behavior of medieval Europe under the suzerainty of the papacy. However, unlike Christianity, Islam began as a religion tied to the state and the expansion of the first Muslim empire was inseparable from the spread of the religion. While modern Europe began emerging under the prodding of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and political reform, the Ottoman Empire fell into a period of retreat that ended in its post-WWI dismemberment by the West. Since that time the development of political institutions and the diffusion of culture has been a transfer of Western ideas eastward, and in some cases outright implantation by the West. While Europe had hundreds of years to develop the modern concept of the nation-state, Islam had it imposed. Imposition is never as successful as indigenous evolution, and the failure of "modernity" as we understand it was aided by its failure. History is contingent by its nature. The rise of the House of Saud and its marriage to an emergent 18th century Wahhabist extremism, aided by vast revenues from a future exploitation of oil in the 20th century, provided the resources and means needed to spread an intolerant and oppressive form of Islam around the world. A radical ideology came to govern Arabia, the center of the Muslim world, a place Muslims regard as the source of their religious tradition. An imposition of political constructs unfamiliar and doomed to failure, a lack of effective economic management of resources, vastly deficient standards of living in a globalizing economy dominated by America, plus extremist religious fundamentalism and the wealth and patronage needed to spread it around the world. The result: international terrorism. We are where we are for very specific reasons. Lewis brilliantly explicates this.
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