There is no doubt that Bernard Lewis, as a scholar, as a profound respect for Islam as a religion, and for the history that Islamic peoples, be they Arabic, Turk, or Persian, have contributed to world civlization. If anything, that presumption of respect only makes his most recent book, The Crisis Of Islam, all the more important because of the way that it casts a critical light on contemporary Islamic philosophy and government.
Though not intended to be a definitive history, the book lays out a fairly clear history of Islam’s encouters with the West, and of Muslim reactions to those encounters. Some of those reactions have been positive, but more than a few have been negative, especially to the extent that Islam has found itself falling behind not only the West, but also the Asian East.
More than anything, Lewis makes clear that it is the Islamic world view, radicalized by religious teachings, and a lack of a democratic tradition have radicalized Islam to the point where the outsider is viewed as the enemy, are the primary factors that have led the Islamic world where it is today. Lewis also makes clear that we need to understand this world view if we are ever going to effectively fight radical Islam.
The ultiimate question, pervading throughout the book, is how any group of men could be inspired to blow themselves up and fly airplanes into skyscrapters. Even Lewis doesn’t have an answer for that one, though he does point out that such actions are clearly contrary to any intrepretation of Islam. What is clear, though, is that, unless we deal with men such as these, the future of the world could be grim indeed.
