Bernard Lewis, “What Went Wrong?” in The Atlantic (January 2002)

This is my summary of what Lewis, as an historian of Islam, says in this article, in which he seeks to understand the reasons for current problems in the Islamic world. 

 Muslim modernizers, via reform or revolution, sought to bring Islam out of its 20th century malaise in three main areas:

1. Military: But this brought humiliating defeats.
2. Economic: Exacerbated dependence on external aid or on a single resource – oil, which is doomed to be superseded.
3. Political: Resulted in shabby tyrannies

Reasons of Muslims’ humiliation:

1. Reduced to being followers of the West
2. Behind East Asian nations, e.g. Japan, Korea. “Following is bad enough; limping in the rear is far worse.”

Muslim explanations for the plight of Islam:
A. Blaming what has happened on the outside:

1. For a long time the Mongol invasions of the 13th century were blamed for the destruction of Muslim power and Islamic civilization. But flawed: (a) Some of the greatest cultural achievements of Islam, especially in Iran, came after, not before the Mongol invasions; (b) Mongols overthrew an empire that was already fatally weakened.
2. After the rise of nationalism (a European import): (a) Arabs often blamed the Turks, who had ruled them for many centuries; (b) The Turks “could lay the blame for the stagnation of their civilization on the dead weight of the Arab past”; (c) Persians blamed Arabs, Turks and Mongols.
3. After British and French dominance in the 19th and 20th centuries: (a) Much of the Arab world blamed Western imperialism; (b) Now the US, along with other aspects of Western leadership. Unconvincing: (i) “Anglo-French rule and American influence, like the Mongol invasions, were a consequence, not a cause, of the inner weakeness of Middle Eastern states and societies”; (ii) Post-colonial development of many former British possessions has been impressive, e.g. Singapore, Hong Kong.
4. Anti-Semitism, which Lewis sees as European-style, particularly fanned by Nazi Germany in the Arab world.
5. The Western upsurge resulting from discoveries and scientific, technological, industrial and political revolutions. But why did these emanate from and within the West and not from and within the Islamic world?

B. Blaming what has happened on the inside:

1. Finding fault in Islam itself. But although freedom in the medieval Islamic world was limited, it was often better than alternatives. Lewis reasons, “If Islam is an obstacle to freedom, to science, to economic development, how is it that Muslim society in the past was a pioneer in all three – and this when Muslim were much closer in time to the sources and inspiration of their faith than they are now?”
2. Blaming particular Muslims for damage done to Islam: (a) Islamists/fundamentalists blame Muslims for adopting alien notions and practices; (b)Modernists blame Muslims for retaining the old ways, especially castigating the ubiquitous Islamic clergy for their inflexibility and targeting fanaticism rather than religion as such; (c) Some see the main culprit as a failure to separate religion and State; (d) Others see the main culprit as the relegation of women to an inferior position.

Discarded Solutions:

1. Socialism: this failed.
2. Nationalism: “The overwhelming majority of Muslims now live in independent states, but this has brought no solution to their problems.”

Oppressive, ineffectual Middle Eastern governments deliberately employ the blame game in their propaganda “to explain the poverty that they have failed to alleviate and to justify the tyranny that they have introduced. They seek to deflect the mounting anger of their unhappy subjects toward other, outside targets.”

In the wake of September 11 Lewis comments:

To a Western observer, schooled in the theory and practice of Western freedom, it is precisely the lack of freedom—freedom of the mind from constraint and indoctrination, to question and inquire and speak; freedom of the economy from corrupt and pervasive mismanagement; freedom of women from male oppression; freedom of citizens from tyranny—that underlies so many of the troubles of the Muslim world.

He closes by stating his view that it up to the people of the Middle East to sort out their problems.

www.facetofaceintercultural.com.au

Posted November 6, 2009

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