I have never figured out why Islam - the most anti-rational religion in the world - is so attractive to Western intellectuals. The Brits were particular suckers for it, although that may have had something to do with its tolerance for pederasty.
I have always wondered about Lewis’s claim that the Armenian Genocide wasn’t really a genocide after all. I suppose he’s right in the classical definition of the word, whereby a Sate’s whole apparatus is aimed at killing the whole of a people, but it still sticks in my craw.
I once knew an avid deer hunter who liked nothing more than to recount his successes at bringing down the big trophy buck. Toward the end of his life, as he perceived the approach of his own demise, he said one day about the coming hunting season, "Ah hell, let 'em live."
Nice play on words!
My conclusion is that he eventually reached the age when senility was supplemented by Alzheimers selective memory loss.
Poor Mr. Lewis - disparaged now by both sides.
Lewis was the single bulwark for decades against the propaganda of Edward Said and his lies about Islam and the Muslim world. It is Lewis, later picked up by Samuel Huntington, who coined the phrase and described the Clash of Civilizations. He did this in 1990 when neither Bostom nor many others had a clue about what was incoming from the East.
Lewis is no apologist for Islam. The left despises him for disparaging Islam.
But Bostom can use the word "pathognomonic" in a sentence (sort of), so I guess he must be right.
He turns 99 today.
Bernard Lewis turns 100 today.