In the Middle East today, there are two prevailing opinions about why
the Islamic world now lags behind the West, according to Bernard
Lewis. The first is the Islamic world has simply failed to keep up
with modernity. The second is almost the exact opposite: it has
become too much "like the infidels" and abandoned its own heritage,
tradition, and faith.
BERNARD LEWIS:
Let me begin with a word of explanation. In spite of its title and
the time when it appeared, this book [What went wrong, B.Lewis, 2002]
is not a discussion of the events of September 11th.
The book was already in page proof when
that happened. I added a paragraph in some of the later printings on
the last page, but that was the only change that I made. I cannot,
therefore, pretend that the book is in any way a discussion of recent
and current events.
I can, however, reasonably claim that it may throw some light not on
the circumstances arising from September 11th, but on those leading
to September 11th. By that I refer not merely to the immediate
preceding events, but to the longer perspective which it is the task
of the historian to perceive and present.
The core of the book is a series of public lectures which I gave in
Vienna in 1999 at the Institute für Wissenschaften vom Menschen. The
theme of the lectures was the three-hundredth anniversary of the
signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, a treaty which ended a
long and bitter war fought between the Ottoman Empire and the
Austrian Empire, or the Holy Roman Empire as it still was in those
days. There were many wars, but this one was of particular importance
for a reason which I shall explain in a moment.
We hear a lot nowadays about "the clash of civilizations, " a term
which is used in a number of different senses. I have used it myself,
but in a sense which is different from the one that is currently
popular. Let me explain what I meant by "the clash of civilizations"
because it is very relevant to the present topic.
There have been many civilizations in human history, almost all of
which were local, in the sense that they were defined by a region and
an ethnic group. This applied to all the ancient civilizations of the
Middle East—Egypt, Babylon, Persia; to the great civilizations of
Asia—India, China; and to the civilizations of Pre-Columbian America.
There are two exceptions: Christendom and Islam. These are two
civilizations defined by religion, in which religion is the primary
defining force, not, as in India or China, a secondary aspect among
others of an essentially regional and ethnically defined
civilization. Here, again, another word of explanation is necessary.
In English we use the word "Islam" with two distinct meanings, and
the distinction is often blurred and lost and gives rise to
considerable confusion. In the one sense, Islam is the counterpart of
Christianity; that is to say, a religion in the strict sense of the
word: a system of belief and worship. In the other sense, Islam is
the counterpart of Christendom; that is to say, a civilization shaped
and defined by a religion, but containing many elements apart from
and even hostile to that religion, yet arising within that
civilization.
The late Marshall Hodgson of Chicago University, who was the first to
draw attention to this confusion, suggested that we use the
word "Islamdom" as the counterpart of Christendom, an excellent
suggestion. Unfortunately, it didn't take, perhaps because the word
is so difficult to pronounce.
In present usage, therefore, we still use the word "Islam" in these
two different senses: the name of a religion and the name of a
civilization. A good deal of misunderstanding in the public discourse
of the last few months arises from a failure to recognize and
appreciate this very simple, basic fact.
I shall be speaking of Islamdom rather than Islam, of a civilization
shaped by a certain religion but nevertheless containing many
elements that are distinct from it, and sometimes even hostile to it,
that arise from within.
These two religions and civilizations, have been in almost continuous
clash for the fourteen centuries since the rise of Islam in 17th
century Arabia. What has driven them into conflict with each other is
not their differences, but their resemblances.
There are many religions in the world, almost all of which are
relativist in approach. They all believe that their truths are
universal, but not exclusive. Just as mankind has invented different
languages to talk to each other, they have invented different
religions to talk to God, and all of them are equally true and
equally false. That is the generally accepted view, except for two,
Christianity and Islam.
The Jews came up with the strange idea that there is only one God,
thus endangering the universal tolerance of ancient polytheism. The
Christians and the Muslims went one step further and said, "Not only
is there only one God, but there is only one way to that God, ours.
All the other ways lead to hell." Where you have two religions side-
by-side, both with the same doctrine, both claiming to be the
exclusive possessor of God's final revelation to humanity, with the
duty therefore to bring it to the rest of humanity and not keep it
selfishly for themselves, when, moreover, these two are historically
consecutive and geographically adjacent, conflict between the two
becomes virtually inevitable.
Conflict arises more from their resemblances than from their
differences. Christians and Muslims have met time and time again in
the course of the centuries, even in the Middle Ages, in what was
known as disputation, theological argument between the two sides.
Between Christians and Muslims this was possible because they used
basically the same theological language. When a Christian said to a
Muslim or a Muslim said to a Christian, "You are an infidel and you
will burn in hell," each understood exactly what the other meant
because they both meant the same thing. Their heavens are rather
remarkably different, but their hells are almost identical. Remarks
of that kind would be utterly meaningless to a Hindu, a Buddhist, or
a Confucian.
This is a necessary introduction to what I have to say about what
went wrong. For most of the fourteen centuries of conflict between
these two, Islam was, by far, the most advanced, creative, original,
and powerful. From its birth in 7th century Arabia, Islam spread with
extraordinary speed around the Mediterranean, across North Africa,
into Spain, beyond the Pyrenees into France, to Italy, Sicily,
eastwards across Asia into India and China. It was, in a sense that
Christianity did not dream of being at that time, a world power, an
international polyethnic, you might even say intercontinental,
civilization, while Christendom was still poor, primitive and limited
substantially to Europe. I say "substantially" because there were
Christians outside Europe, in the Middle East and particularly in
Ethiopia, but they remained relatively small and unimportant groups.
For most of the encounter between Christendom and Islamdom, it was
Islam that was successful. In warfare, three times they invaded and
conquered substantial parts of Europe: the Moors in Spain, Portugal,
and even in to France; the Tatars dominated Russia for centuries; and
third, last, and perhaps greatest in its impact, the Turkish
invasion, the conquest first of Anatolia, then in 1453 of
Constantinople, the great Greek Christian citadel, and then into
southeastern Europe, reaching twice as far as Vienna.
Now, there are always ups and downs. The Muslims were in Spain for
almost 800 years. This long struggled ended with their expulsion by
the Spanish Christians. But this was remote, at the far end of the
world as far as they were aware, and its impact in the central lands
of Islam was limited. We can look at things nowadays in a historical
and global perspective. People in the 17th century had neither such
perspective. They were concerned with what was happening now and
here.
And as far as that went, in the 17th century Islam was still
triumphant. Remember, in the 17th century there were Turkish pashas
ruling in Buddha and Belgrade, Turkish armies besieging Vienna, and
Barbary corsairs raiding the coasts of Europe as far away as England
and Ireland, and on one occasion even Iceland, looking for human
booty.
And then came the dramatic change. The first Turkish siege of Vienna
was what in sports language one might call a draw, or in chess
language a stalemate. Neither side won. They confronted each other
for more than a century.
Then the Turks tried again, in 1683 the second Turkish siege of
Vienna, and this time the outcome was unequivocal. It was a
calamitous defeat. Here I quote the contemporary Turkish historian
Sulabdam al-Afaq [phonetic]: "This was the most calamitous defeat
that we have suffered since the foundation of our state." One must
commend the 17th-century Turkish historian for his frankness. One
only wishes that present-day Middle East historians would achieve
equal candor.
The failure to take Vienna was followed by a headlong flight through
the Balkans and the Treaty of Karlowitz, in 1699, the first treaty
imposed on the Ottomans by victorious Christian enemies.
There had been other defeats elsewhere, but they didn't strike the
imaginination in quite the same way as this defeat between the two
major powers of the two worlds, the Ottoman Empire, the last in many
ways the greatest, and certainly the most enduring of all the Islamic
states, and the Holy Roman Empire, representing Christendom, the
successor of the Byzantium emperors in the Christian world.
The signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz marked the beginning of the
debate which has been going on ever since. It began with the Ottoman
elite—military, bureaucratic, political— discussing this agonizing
question: "What went wrong? More specifically, why is it that in the
past we were always able to defeat the infidels; now the infidels are
defeating us? In the past, we always captured territory from the
infidels; now they are capturing territory from us."
The debate began with the Ottoman elite. It spread in the course of
time to wider elements of the population and from Turkey to other
Islamic lands, as the awareness of the changed relation between these
two historical rivals became more widespread.
1 comment… read it below or add one
Islam is doomed, due to its internal self contradictions. It is in its last days on earth.