Translated by Jonathan Silverman/Jewsweek.com
Posted on 01/31/2002 6:36:44 AM PST by Romulus
A Sage for the Age
Professor Bernard Lewis, the great historian of the Muslim world, talks about bin Laden, the Intifada, and the new threat from Iran.
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Translated by Jonathan Silverman/Jewsweek.com
Jewsweek.com | Bernard Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton University, is considered by most of his colleagues as the greatest historian of the Muslim world in our generation. He is Jewish, a native of London, in his 80s. Among his many students are teachers and analysts who work in universities in Israel and the Arab countries. His age hardly shows: he moves easily, exhibits an ironic sense of humor, clearly conscious of his importance. He travels a great deal. He frequently visits Israel as a guest of Tel Aviv University, and he sometimes visits the neighboring countries too, but he understandably refuses to talk about that. Government leaders frequently consult with him and he has been in great demand during the past year. The breadth of his knowledge and his decisive views are aimed to assist the ones in power in the West to shape their policy towards the Muslim world.
"The Patriarch of the Islamicists", as he is called in the American press, stands out as a partisan of classic liberal values. He is often attacked because he refuses to comply with the spirit of the times, in which the voice of relativism is strong, which is cautious about judging cultures from the point of view of western culture. In his best known debate, he faced Edward Said, the well-known Palestinian professor of literature, in whose book "Orientalism" he condemns Lewis and scholars like him. He charges that their studies are another means which the West uses to strengthen its imperialistic rule.
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One may assume that the following interview will harden his opponents and hearten perplexed Israelis. Ariel Sharon can find in his words encouragement for his position on the need for complete victory before any gesture.
YOU PEGGED YOUR HOPE ON THE OSLO PROCESS.
That would be correct.
WERE YOU PROVED WRONG?
To my great regret, I must confess I made a mistake.
WHAT DID THE ERROR IN YOUR ASSESSMENT STEM FROM?
Historically, the Palestinian leaders have consistently made the wrong choice. It started with their refusing the terms of the Peel Commission and their rejection of the UN Partition Plan. They made mistakes in their choice of friends: during the Second World War they chose the Nazis, during the Cold War they chose the Soviet Bloc and in the Gulf War they joined with Saddam Hussein. Do they have an astonishing instinct that pushes them to the verge of destruction? Indeed not. They turned to the enemies of their enemies and this is natural. After the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, they once again had no super power patron, and after the Gulf War, even most of the Arab governments were disgusted with them, particularly those that could offer them financial aid. Under these circumstances, I thought the Rabin government was correct in moving as it did, but it erred in its choice of its partner for the process."
ARAFAT?
Yes, the idea of bringing Arafat from Tunis was a mistake.
ISRAEL TRIED TO TALK WITH THE PALESTINIAN LEADERS IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, BUT AT THE MADRID CONFERENCE IT WAS PROVEN THAT THEY HAVE NO LEADER BESIDES HIM.
It's true that according to the resolution of the Arab League, the PLO is the Palestinians' only representative organization. From this distance in time it is hard for me to judge if it would have been better to insist on finding an alternative to it, or perhaps there was no other choice.
IN AN INTERVIEW YOU SAID THAT THE ONES WHO CONDUCTED THE NEGOTIATIONS ON BOTH SIDES WERE COMPLETE AMATEURS. WHAT DID YOU MEAN?
It's clear they were not professional diplomats and they did not have much experience in conducting negotiations.
WHAT WAS THE BIG MISTAKE OF THE NEGOTIATORS AT CAMP DAVID?
They forgot that is not just a matter of negotiations between leaders, but between two differing civilizations. It is easy to slip and interpret your adversary according to your world view. I will give you an example. I think that Israel was right to enter Lebanon, and I well remember how its army was received as an army of liberation, with flowers and music, but from the moment the job was completed, it was necessary to withdraw from there. The late withdrawal, as it was undertaken without agreement, with abandonment of friends and weaponry, was interpreted by the Palestinians and the other Arabs as a sign of weakness. From the experience of Hizbullah they derived that the Israelis are soft, pampered, and if they are hit - they will surrender. These things have been said explicitly by the Palestinians.
DO THE TWO CULTURES INTERPRET DIFFERENTLY THE CONCEPTS OF "FAIR COMPROMISE" AND "VIEWING REALITY OUT OF A CONSIDERATION FOR THE ENEMY'S POINT OF VIEW?
Let me be precise: Muslim culture stands out in the generosity of its victors. The victor does not push the face of the vanquished in the dust, but the result of the struggle has to be clear to both sides. A struggle that ends indecisively is an invitation for trouble. The Ottomans provided us with many examples of this conduct: they crushed rebels with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, but did not humiliate the defeated, they showed generosity toward them and even helped them rehabilitate themselves. If the one with the power does not exhaust his ability to bring about such a victory, his conduct is interpreted as cowardice.
Another example of differing interpretations of conduct is the is significance of manners and customs: I visited Jordan some time after the signing of the peace agreement on which the Jordanians bed much hope, and I found the Jordanians agitated over the conduct of the Israeli tourists which they saw as provocative and humiliating. It was difficult for me to explain to them that Israelis behave that way even to each other. The Israelis, who seem to be the least polite people in the world, are not understood by the Arabs, who have the most well mannered culture in the world. It is not a matter of insignificant etiquette, but of conduct that has a bearing on relations between the peoples. The lack of courtesy of the Israeli solders at the check points has terrible repercussions and something needs to be done about this matter.
DON'T YOU HAVE A TENDENCY TO OVERSTATE THE CLASH OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CULTURES?
There is tremendous importance in these differences. Look, the Christian world and the Muslim world had friction with each other and fought against each other on many fronts during the course of a millennium. At the end of the 18th century the universities in the west had dozens of departments for eastern studies and hundreds of translations of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish works were printed. The western world longed to know its historic adversary, but a share in this curiosity was not given to the Muslim world. There they did not learn the languages of the west, didn't take an interest in western history and thought and did not translate much literature into Arabic. Things changed somewhat when the power of the threat of the west became clear to them, but even now, if you go into a book store in Israel, you will easily find translations from Arabic literature and books about Arab and Muslim history. In contrast, if you go into a book store in an Arab capital and look for books on Israel, on Judaism and even on Christianity, practically all you will find is propaganda. Curiosity about one's fellow is a striking western phenomenon. In all the great cultures, except western culture, the matter of one's fellow arises only in the presence of a threat."
I MUST ASK IF THE THIS SITUATION REGARDING CULTURES IS PERMANENT, OR A RESULT OF CIRCUMSTANCES THAT ARE LIKELY TO CHANGE.
It is definitely not permanent, but it is deeply rooted, more than many people like to think. For example, many point to the fact that only 2 of the 57 Muslim countries have semi democratic governments, but this does not say that Muslims lack the ability to develop their own version of democracy, that will not resemble any western democracy.
WHICH TWO COUNTRIES DO YOU MEAN?
Turkey and Bangladesh. Turkey is a wonderful example, which proves that it is very difficult to establish a liberal democracy in a culture with an ancient autocratic tradition, but it also proves that it is not impossible.
THE OUTBREAK OF THE SECOND INTIFADA HAS BEEN INTERPRETED BY MANY ISRAELIS, PERHAPS A MAJORITY, AS DECISIVE EVIDENCE THAT THE PALESTINIANS ARE NOT INTERESTED IN A COMPROMISE, BUT ARE DRIVING TOWARDS A COMPLETE VICTORY. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE INTIFADA?
I already told you that the withdrawal from Lebanon had a great influence on the decision of the Palestinians to renew the armed struggle. Israel is depicted as a country that resembles America and the Americans, who fled from Vietnam and extracted themselves suddenly from Lebanon and Somalia, proved by this conduct that they are pampered and not adapted to absorb losses. Likewise the Israelis, who became rich and got soft and pampered themselves. America and Israel are close friends and the Palestinians took a page from the conduct of America in analyzing the expected conduct of Israel.
A FEW YEARS AGO YOU PUBLISHED AN ARTICLE WHICH HAD GREAT RESONANCE: "THE ROOTS OF MUSLIM RAGE". WOULD YOU AGREE TO ENCAPSULATE THE BASIC IDEAS IN THE ARTICLE AND UPDATE THEM IN LIGHT OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE IT WAS PUBLISHED.
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In the whole Muslim world in our day a feeling of frustration and crisis prevails. Everything is mixed up. For more than a thousand years the Muslims became accustomed to the belief, justified in its time, that they represented the most advanced part of the world, and that they are the ones who set the standards in politics, economics and science. In the new age the Muslims came to realize that their power had weakened and that even adopting western technology wasn't any help. The western ideas of socialism and capitalism did not halt the economic deterioration, and then the belief arose that redemption was to be found in adopting the western democratic brand of government. Most unfortunately it was proven that the only western brand that succeeded in taking root in the Muslim world was dictatorship, based on a single party. Political independence did not give rise to freedom. The reaction to these disappointments is resistance to any ideas imported from the west and blaming the west for all the unhealthy evils that stemmed from the failed attempt to imitate its culture.
Now there are two options: some feel that the failure stems from abandonment of the earlier traditions, leaving behind the authentic Islamic culture. The two main versions that have stemmed from this feeling are Wahabi Fundamentalism which is disseminated by the Saudis, and the Iranian-Shiite Fundamentalism. The other option, which adherents to the modern hold, says that the failure stems from the Muslims having adopted the shell of western culture and not its deep content, and therefore it is necessary to introduce western values in their full depth. In all of the Muslim world there are people who think that way, but the dictatorships make it difficult for them to express their opinions openly.
IS OSAMA BIN LADEN THE EXTREME EXPRESSION OF THE FIRST OPTION?
Of course. But here one must stress the importance of Arab oil. The tremendous profits that the Saudis accumulated have enabled them to develop a network of schools with many branches that cultivates Wahabi Fundamentalism. It is possible that if not for the oil, this movement would have remained an otherworldly phenomenon in a marginal country. In general, the oil is the Arabs' disaster, because it enabled governments to accumulate enormous wealth which strengthens their political and military power and destroys democracy and freedom in the bud. It is no accident that the only countries in which the beginnings of a civilian society are growing are Morocco and Jordan which have no oil.
IS AMERICA HATED IN THE MUSLIM WORLD BECAUSE IT SUPPORTS ISRAEL, OR IS ISRAEL HATED BECAUSE IT IS PERCEIVED AS A FORWARD STRONGHOLD OF THE WEST IN THE MUSLIM WORLD?
Both. Of course, the bond with Israel does not help America's popularity, but the mideast is not the only place in the world in which they loathe this large wealthy empire. It is hated because it is so successful and local figures exploit the resentment for their special needs. For example, for Bin Laden the main problem is his country, Saudi Arabia, which he wants to rid of the presence of infidels. He mentions Israel, if at all, in the third place on his list of targets. In one of his speeches he called it "a lowly little country", in other words not something substantial or very important and in an interview he gave some years ago he said that if the Americans leave Saudi Arabia he would be prepared to sign a peace agreement. Israel is an easy target for propagandists in the Arab world because attacking it does not endanger them, while in some Arab countries they are looking for trouble if they disseminate attacks against America. The propagandists know that in America and Europe there is a willing ear for anti-Israel propaganda and the reason is that directing an assault against Israel eases the burden of the accusations that are spread on them in the west. This is where the aggression towards Israel in the Sabra and Shatila affair comes from, as compared with the leniency towards the deeds of Hafez Assad in the city of Hama, or towards the chemical weapons attack on the Kurds in Halbaja.
WHAT ARE THE LONG RANGE RESULTS OF THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN?
People in the West are accustomed to ask "why don't they like us" and the simple answer is that you can't be wealthy, strong and successful and be liked, especially considering that for a few hundred years you have won every battle. The correct question is: "why have they stopped respecting you, or at least fearing you?" I mentioned earlier that men like Bin Laden believed that the west was pampered and soft. I hope that the war in Afghanistan changed this perception, because it proves that the idea that America and the other western countries are soft is an invention, and that they are afraid to fight when their civilization is attacked. Now there are two possibilities: either the people in the Muslim world, and particularly the Arabs, decide that in order to establish a better society it is necessary to turn to the path of peace and cooperation with the west, or they will believe that the defeat in Afghanistan was a painful episode but they need to continue in the same path. I hope that the first way will win, but I can't exclude the possibility that the second idea will take hold.
ISRAEL SEES IRAN AS A GREAT MILITARY DANGER. ARE CHANGES HAPPENING IN IT THAT COULD EASE OUR MINDS?
The Iranian politicians who are depicted as moderates, are nothing but makeup whose purpose is to enable the regime to continue acting as it wants, but many signs indicate that the regime has become very unpopular, and will be thrown out if an opportunity presents itself. Here I want to mention a paradox: the masses in countries that declare their opposition to America love America, while the masses in countries whose governments support America, exhibit resentment towards America. It is no accident that the terrorists who attacked the twin towers and the Pentagon indeed came from Egypt and Saudi Arabia while in Tehran there were large spontaneous, authentic demonstrations, in which people expressed sorrow. It is clear that the hatred for America in Egypt and and Saudi Arabia Egypt and Saudi Arabia stems, first and foremost, from the hatred for the corrupt regimes there. The demonstrations for joy in Kabul will seem like funeral processions compared to the demonstrations for joy that will break out in Baghdad, Tehran and perhaps even Damascus, if the west brought about the expulsion of the despotic inefficient regimes that rule in these countries.
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{ Jonathan Silverman is an investigative reporter for Jewsweek.com. This article originally appeared in Hebrew in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot. }
(c) 2002 Jewsweek.com
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That he says it in the question is his real answer. The "Indeed not", is politics. There is an "astonishing instinct", understood in the poetry of Poe, the goth style of some modern young American's, claimed among Formula One drivers, and distilled to cultural essence there in those Arabs who love "self-martyrdom" -- suicide. How wise can the old man be if he continues to ignore it, or rather how attached is he to his intellectual vanities?
Rather than self-indulgence the Koran promoted self-denial, so as to eliminate or reduce the evil ways aforetime popular.
Self-indulgence and self-denial are however -- in some way -- two sides of the same coin, minted of the self.
The Arabs seem to have an acute weakness in that area -- just speaking to the history then, and the modern history.
I think that weakness for extremes of self-indulgence and indulgent self-denial became to be exploited by a historical stream of people bearing a love for death -- assasination, martyrdom, etc. And that those life-rejecting ideas caught a foothold in Mohammed's teachings.
Life is lived for the refinement of the soul, but by fully living one's life one can more fully refine one's soul.
So yes, groups that teach extreme complete avoidance of some things like alcohol, sex (the Shakers), etc. rather than teaching ways to acheive moderate or appropriate use -- those groups will have problems.
Perhaps the common thread is that the masses recognize that their own governments are a disgrace. We are loved/hated in direct proportion to our perceived relationship with the local oppressors.
Solution? Abandon the "realpolitik" based on the European elite's idea of governmental "interests". Replace it with support for what we know is right, and opposition to what we know is wrong. In other words, make sure the masses in the rest of the world know American stands for something good.
BTW: I realize how far from this we are right now. If we support only those countries trying to do the right thing, we will have lots of people supporting us, but very few governments supporting us (especially in the Arab world). However, the way things are today, I suspect we would still be better off.
Now there are two options: some feel that the failure stems from abandonment of the earlier traditions, leaving behind the authentic Islamic culture. The two main versions that have stemmed from this feeling are Wahabi Fundamentalism which is disseminated by the Saudis, and the Iranian-Shiite Fundamentalism. The other option, which adherents to the modern hold, says that the failure stems from the Muslims having adopted the shell of western culture and not its deep content, and therefore it is necessary to introduce western values in their full depth. In all of the Muslim world there are people who think that way, but the dictatorships make it difficult for them to express their opinions openly.
Bernard Lewis, in his excellent book, The Arabs in History, states the problem succinctly(p. 139):
The acceptance of the Greek heritage by Islam gave rise to a struggle between the scientific rationalist tendency of
the new learning on the one hand, and the atomistic and intuituve quality of Islamic thought on the other. During the
period of struggle Muslims of both schools created a rich and varied culture, much of which is of permanent
importance in the history of mankind. The struggle ended in the victory of the more purely Islamic point of view.
Islam, a religiously conditioned society, rejected values that challenged its fundamental postulates, while accepting
their results, and even developing them by experiment and observation. Ismailism - the revolution marquee of
Islam - might have ushered in a full acceptance of Hellenistic values, heralding a humanist renaissance of the
Western type, overcoming the resistance of the Quaran by the device of esoteric interpretation, of the Shari'a by
the unbounded discretion of the infallible Imam. But the forces supporting the Ismaili revolution were not strong
enough, and it failed in the very moment of its greatest success.
Did you actually read this article?
No need. They do it for themselves .
As all Liberals do.
Example - Robert Fisk. LOL....
Sometimes complete avoidance of certain normally engaged things is necessary, by a person, sometimes by a lot of persons together. Nevertheless, such extremism, it ain't without it's cost -- physical, social, spiritual. In an attempt to shore up one failing by abstaining from it, our bodies, minds and lives are set such that other weaknesses, other brittleness, other fragilenesses are excaberated.
Without a bit of drink now and again, people can lose that zest for life and be overwhlemed by it's bitterness. Without the elixer of forgetting they can be swept up in great grudges, pinned down by a chip on their shoulder never washed off by that wonderful elixer.
Gambling has broken many a man or woman, but a card game or a social bet now and then has helped keep people together and appreciative of one another. It can't be scorned completely.
Rosetta stone territory in those two sentences. Thank you for taking the trouble to post this interesting interview.
I noticed that Lewis commits the very error he warns against by projecting his own world-view onto his subject.There is this tendency among "Islamic experts" to ascribe everything that is occuring to the religion of Islam. This is, of course, a projection of the obsessions of post-christian, secular scholars. As with historians of medieval Christendom, these scholars have an unintentionally ironic tendency to inflate the religious content of every worldy political, social, military and economic confrontation.
A perfect of example of this is in the linked article "The Roots of Muslim Rage" in which he casually speaks of the "terrible religious wars" in Europe as though their roots were entirely and specifically theological. This is a fantastic, and easily disproved assertion. These wars were far more complex than triumphant enlightenment analysis would have it.
It seems to me that to pay excessive obeisance to moslem religious scruples as a "root cause" of the ongoing "clash of civilizations" would be to miss the mark as widely as those who pay no heed to them at all.
Also, just as an aside, I noticed in the subtext of this interview how vulnurable "Christendom" is to having its history caricatured and de-natured by post-christian scholarship. Without a political base from which to exert "earthly" power a religious culture really has no chance of defining itself in the face of its enemies--active or passive.
We see this at work every day in the American media and the continual defensive posture of "fundamentalist" christians in the face of definitions of their behavior and beliefs by those who neither know nor care about their beliefs and are often actively hostile to them on the basis of their own prejudice against "fundamentalism".
Perhaps, in some strange way, "backwards" moslems are ahead of Western Christians in their understanding and analysis of who's zoomin' who.
I just finished flipping through a Mid-East travel guide published by Harvard Press. It acknowledged that Israel is important to the "Three Great Monotheistic" religions. It goes to great length to srupulously detail the religious "beliefs" and practices of moslems--with great approval and a sort of condescending contempt for the reader's assumed philistinism in the face of such delightful, spiritually uplifting and healthy practices.
The Jewish religion is presented more as a great, ongoing historical saga.
The Christian religion, on the other hand, is dismissed with a terse reference to the split between the Eastern and Western Church!!
Whenever we hear the theory of "the clash of civilizations" being bandied about--whether from the mouths of government officials, media commetators or as in this Lewis interview--we see a complete unwillingness to countenance a contemporary christian element to the struggle. Christianity is dismissed with terse references to the lingering resentments of the "horrors" of the crusades.
I can't help returning to the image of the two World Trade Towers collapsing onto the tiny Greek Orthodox Church. It seemed an apt metaphor to explain my unease with Bush's famous "You are either with us or you are with the terrorists," dictum. My unease has grown as large as Bush's poll numbers.
>Perhaps, in some strange way, "backwards" moslems are ahead of Western Christians in their understanding and analysis of who's zoomin' who.
Yes. And perhaps in some strange way the terrorists who piloted the planes into the WTC were innocent victims, and the two thousand plus people working in the Towers who are now memories were terrorists.
>Without a political base from which to exert "earthly" power a religious culture really has no chance of defining itself in the face of its enemies--active or passive. We see this at work every day in the American media and the continual defensive posture of "fundamentalist" christians ...
[sigh] A religion that's not driven by the spirit world -- in the case of Christianity, not driven by the Holy Spirit -- isn't a religion at all. It is politics. Or an advertising campaign.
>I just finished flipping through a Mid-East travel guide published by Harvard Press. ...
The American media, even Harvard Press, neither define religion in America, nor "reflect" pop culture. They are more Establishment cattle prods than they are mirrors, even of the fun house variety.
Mark W.
Interesting that you mention this in the same post in which you lament the destruction of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. The Christian Roman empire, and certainly its Byzantine remnant, are a nice example of a political base for an authentically religious culture. Speaking of interpreting history through one's preoccupations, I wonder if you're aware of the late Stephen Runciman's view of the crusades as the last of the barbarian invasions.
In the West, of course, we have the unique polity that is the Holy See, which bids fair to remain influential for the forseeable future. Only today I started reading a diplomatic history of the Vatican in the age of the 20th century dictators. Small as it was, without this political base from which a religious culture works, history would have proceeded very differently.
"I wondered with a secret horror at the fiend-like malice of these fanatical Bedouins, with whom no keeping touch nor truth of honorable life, no performance of good offices, might win the least favour from the dreary, inhuman, and, for our sins, inveterate dotage of their blood-guilty religion. But I had eaten of their cheer, and might sleep among wolves. The fortune of the morrow was as dark as death, all ways were shut before me. There came in a W. Aly sheykh and principal of that tribe’s exiles, he was an hereditary lawyer or arbiter among them, the the custome of the desert: the arbiter sitting by and fixing upon me his implacable eyes, asked the sheykhs of the Moahîb in an under-voice, ‘Why brought they the Nasrâny?’ [Christian (Nazarene)] They said, “Khalîl [the Stranger] was come of himself.’ Then turning to Hamed he whispered a word which I well overheard, ‘Why have you not left him -- thus?’ and he made the sign of the dead lying gasping upright. Hamed asnwered the shrew in a sort of sighing, Istugfir Ullah, ‘Lord I cry thee mercy!’ Târiba (the man’s name) was of a saturnine turning humour; and upon a time afterward, with the same voice, he defended me at Teyma, against the splenetic fanaticism of some considerable villager, threatening me that ‘except I would convert to the religion of Ullah and his Apostle, as I carelessly passed by day and by night in the lanes and paths of the oasis, a God-fearer’s gunshot might end my life.’ Târiba answered him with displeasure, ‘Wellah, [Indeed (by God)] the Beduw be better than ye!’ Târiba’s cavilling was now also for my greeting (as they use) salaam aleyk, ‘peace be with you’. It is ‘the salutation of Islam and not for the mouths of the heathen, with whom is no peace nor fellowship, neither in this world not the next:’ also he would let the people know I was a khawâja. This is the titles of Jews and Christians in the mixed Semitic cities of the Arabian conquest."
One hundred years later, in VS Naipaul's Among the Believers, very little seems to have changed. Yet Doughty's impoverished Bedouin, too backward to grasp the complete otherness of an Englishman, despise kaffirs already, for their unbelief only, not even sensing the existence of a culture to clash with theirs.
The people called "liberal" in the US are usually anything but liberal in the original sense of the word. They tend to be totalitarian. I'd be interested to know when this word was hijacked by the Left.
Hmmmm. This is very interesting. It eerily reminds me of the year I lived on a Maine Island--I won't mention the name here. It is populated largely by families who have lived there and intermarried for 300 years.
Mainland yuppies from Massachusetts and New York--filled with entrepenurial zeal--came, saw, tried to set up espresso bistros, crafts boutiques; tried to enlighten the peasantry--and were swiftly and thoroughly conquered. As they folded their tents and left in a huff on the ferry we often heard them snarling among themselves:
" I wondered with a secret horror at the fiend-like malice of these fanatical Islanders, with whom no keeping touch nor truth of honorable life, no performance of good offices, might win the least favour from the dreary, inhuman, and, for our sins, inveterate dotage of their pathetic, parochial way of life...."
So I'll assert it again--it's not solely the religion. It's the religion grafted onto something far older, tougher and lasting than mere shariahlaw or any other religious conceit. It's the ancient confrontation between the tribe and the revolutionary conscript army--the cosmopolite and the peasant. The latter takes a lickin'--but keeps on tickin'. The former's strengths always turn out to be bakelight and brittle.
It just so happens that in most of the world Islam is the religion practiced by these tribal peoples. Lewis argues that it is Islam which gives them their dignity and strength. I say it's the ancient ways of life that are, in fact, invigorating Islam.
"Experts" are mesmerized by the idea of a "Clash" between Islam and modernism. If that is how the battle will be enjoined then, based upon history, "modernism" will be defeated. Christianity, insofar as it has been reduced to a hobby among some more "backwards" moderns will go down with the bakelight canoe. The "barbarians" who once invigorated christianity--much to the horror of fastidious, "humanitarian" moderns--now battle over state funding for hemorroid removal and anti-smoking crusades......
Have you reached the part where the Japanese tried to sue for peace through the good offices of the Vatican and, in response, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb upon Nagasaki--the seat of Japanese Catholicism? Now that's what I call power.....
So true. One of the great lies of our time, engineered no doubt some by anonymous Gramscian martyr, is the notion that "religion has killed more people than any other cause." Our children barely make it through 2nd grade before they begin spouting this little meme, and even otherwise intelligent and educated adults cling to it.
Preposterous!
I'm actually in the middle of a little experiment. I'm adding up all of the deaths attributable to Secular Materialists (Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Napoleon, among many many others) in order to compare the death toll to that of all of the "religious wars" in world history.
It's early in the process, but the Secularists are already well over 200MM. I'd wager that the Religionists never get close to that mark.
So true. My guess? The bombing of Nagasaki killed more humans than all religious wars in history combined. I don't count the partition of India because that was religion entwined with other, more enlightened, obsessions.
(How will you deal with the calcultions of the medieval chroniclers? I notice scholars dismiss their numbers with contempt UNLESS they are describing the crusaders wading knee-deep in blood in the Holy Land.)
But your posts did make me angry about one last thing that I'm going to comment about, welcome or not.
You write: "...the Japanese tried to sue for peace through the good offices of the Vatican and, in response, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb upon Nagasaki--the seat of Japanese Catholicism? Now that's what I call power..."
Oh for heaven's sake.
How typically modern. How typically Western. A discussion of religion is in progress, and people kneel down to the guy with the biggest bomb. As if the "power" of Patton is comparable to the "power" of Christ.
Even silly pagans have gotten beyond this kind of thinking. Remember:
VADER"Don't be too proud of this
technological terror you've
constructed. The ability to
destroy a planet is insignificant
next to the power of the Force."
In its day, the Roman Empire dominated the known world. They were the only super power there. Yet just ten generations from the Cross (and with no political mechanisms of any kind behind it) Christianity had so threatened that "technological terror" that Constantine had to pretend to convert so that the Empire could at least attempt to get ahead of it and at least manage the Empire's Fall in the face of the real "force" that was sweeping across the world...
[laughs] Remember, at the end of "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" -- the apes had come to worship The Bomb, too...
Okay, I've had my say. I'll shut up now. Lost in a Roman, wilderness of pain, I'll shut up now.
Mark W.
Bernard Lewis, Zbigniew Brzezinski , Muslim Fundamentalist
And The Soviet Union
PROFILE: BERNARD LEWIS
British Svengali Behind Clash Of Civilizations
by Scott Thompson and Jeffrey Steinberg
On Nov. 19, octogenarian British Orientalist spook Bernard Lewis wrote an elaborate apologia for Osama bin Laden, a fervent pitch for the inevitability of the "Clash of Civilizations," in the pages of New Yorker magazine. Under the headline "The Revolt of Islam," Lewis lied that the emergence of "Islamic terrorism" in the recent decades, is completely consistent with mainstream Islam, which is committed to the subjugation of the infidels to Islamic law. He went through 14 pages of a fractured fairy-tale history of Islam, quoting bin Laden's Oct. 7, 2001 videotape, where the Saudi expatriate spoke of Islam's "humiliation and disgrace ... for more than 80 years" - a reference to the crushing of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France in 1918. Lewis invented a tradition of jihad, "bequeathed to Muslims by the Prophet":
"In principle," Lewis explained, "the world was divided into two houses: the House of Islam, in which a Muslim government ruled and Muslim law prevailed, and the House of War, the rest of the world, still inhabited and, more important, ruled by infidels. Between the two, there was to be a perpetual state of war until the entire world either embraced Islam or submitted to the rule of the Muslim state." Among all the different "infidels" ruling the House of War, Lewis asserted, Christianity was singled out as "their primary rival in the struggle for world domination." Lewis cited slogans painted on the walls of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock from the Seventh Century, assailing Christianity.
Lewis then claimed that the evolution of modern Islamic terrorism, specifically the al-Qaeda terrorism, had a long proud history within Islam, dating to the Assassins cult of the 11th-13th Centuries. (Lewis wrote a 1967 book, The Assassins, extolling the virtues of this secret society.) He also identified Saudi Arabia and Egypt as two regimes legitimately singled out by the Islamic jihadists, for their corruption by "modernism." He concluded, ominously: "For Osama bin Laden, 2001 marks the resumption of the war for the religious dominance of the world, that began in the Seventh Century.... If bin Laden can persuade the world of Islam to accept his views and his leadership, then a long and bitter struggle lies ahead, and not only for America. Sooner or later, al-Qaeda and related groups will clash with the other neighbors of Islam - Russia, China, India - who may prove less squeamish than the Americans in using their power against Muslims and their sanctities. If bin Laden is correct in his calculations and succeeds in his war, then a dark future awaits the world, especially the part of it that embraces Islam."
Bernard Lewis Plan, Take II
Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Lewis has, not surprisingly, resurfaced in numerous locations. After all, the 85-year old British Arab Bureau mandarin has been London's point-man in the United States since 1974, when he was posted to H.G. Wells' outpost at Princeton University's Center for Advanced Studies, to secure American compliance with British geopolitical manipulations in the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Caspian Basin, and Central Asia.
To put it bluntly: British intelligence senior operator Lewis is the guiding hand behind the ongoing U.S. neo-conservative drive for a new "Thirty Years War" in Eurasia. This drive is at the heart of the ongoing coup d'état attempt against the George W. Bush Administration, which began with the Sept. 11 irregular warfare attacks on New York City and Washington.
Lewis' arrival at Princeton, after serving on the faculty of the University of London's Middle East and Africa faculty (the repository of the original India House files, long officially referred to as the Colonial Department), coincided with then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger's fomenting of the civil war in Lebanon. That persists to the present day, and served as a laboratory for the later "Islamic revolution" in Iran.
Lewis is no mere British quackademic. After obtaining his doctorate in the history of Islam from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, he joined the university faculty in 1938. From 1940-45, Lewis was, in his own understated words, "otherwise engaged," as a wartime British Military Intelligence officer, later seconded to the British Foreign Office. To this day, Lewis remains mum about his wartime "engagements."
Since arriving at Princeton, Lewis has been demonstrably responsible for every piece of strategic folly and insanity into which the United States has been suckered in Asia Minor. The Wellsian "method to his madness" has been the persistent push to eliminate the nation-state system, and launch murderous wars stretching across the Eurasian region.
* During the Carter Administration, Lewis was the architect of Zbigniew Brzezinski's "Arc of Crisis" policy of fomenting Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalist insurrections all along the southern tier of the Soviet Union. The planned fostering of radical Islamist war provocations was known, at the time, as "the Bernard Lewis Plan." Among the fruits of this Lewis-Brzezinski collusion: the February 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini "Islamic Revolution" in Iran, which overthrew the Shah, and sent the once-proud center of the Islamic Renaissance back into a 20-year dark age; and the 1979-1988 Afghanistan War, provoked by Brzezinski's July 1979 launching of covert support for Afghan mujahideen "Contras" inside Afghanistan - six months prior to the Soviet Red Army's Christmas Eve invasion.
As early as 1960, in a book-length study he prepared for the Royal Institute for International Affairs, under the title The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Lewis polemicized against the modernizing, nation-building legacy of Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He argued instead for the revival of an Ottoman Empire that could be used as a British geopolitical battering ram against Russia and against the Arab states of the Persian Gulf - in alliance with Israel.
* It was Bernard Lewis who launched the hoax of the "Clash of Civilizations" - in a September 1990 Atlantic Monthly article on "The Roots of Muslim Rage," which appeared three years before Brzezinski clone Samuel Huntington's publication of his Foreign Affairs diatribe, "The Clash Of Civilizations." Huntington's article, and his subsequent book-length treatment of the same subject, were caricatures of Lewis' more sophisticated British Orientalist historical fraud, which painted Islam as engaged in a 14-century-long war against Christianity. Huntington acknowledged that Lewis' 1990 piece coined the term "Clash of Civilizations."
* In 1992, in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, Lewis celebrated in the pages of the New York Council on Foreign Relations' Foreign Affairs that the era of the nation-state in the Middle East had come to an inglorious end, and the entire region should expect to go through a prolonged period of "Lebanonization" - i.e., degeneration into fratricidal, parochialist violence and chaos. "The eclipse of pan-Arabism," he wrote, "has left Islamic fundamentalism as the most attractive alternative to all those who feel that there has to be something better, truer, and more hopeful than the inept tyrannies of their rulers and the bankrupt ideologies foisted on them from outside." The Islamists represent "a network outside the control of the state.... The more oppressive the regime, the greater the help it gives to fundamentalists by eliminating competing oppositionists." He concluded the Foreign Affairs piece by forecasting the "Lebanonization" of the entire region, save Israel: "Most of the states of the Middle East ... are of recent and artificial construction and are vulnerable to such a process. If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common national identity or overriding allegiance to the nation-state. The state then disintegrates - as happened in Lebanon - into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions and parties."
* In 1998, it was Lewis who catapulted Osama bin Laden into prominence with a November/December Foreign Affairs article, legitimizing the Saudi black sheep as a serious proponent of mainstream, militant Islam. Lewis' piece, "License To Kill: Osama bin Laden's Declaration Of Jihad," showered praise on bin Laden, pronouncing his "Declaration of Jihad Versus Jews and Crusaders" "a magnificent piece of eloquent, at times even poetic Arabic prose ... which reveals a version of history that most Westerners will find unfamiliar."
Caught In The Act
Osama bin Laden released his 1998 jihad call on Feb. 23, 1998, six months before the truck bombing attacks against the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The very next day, Bernard Lewis' signature appeared on a widely circulated Open Letter To President Bill Clinton, released by a previously unheard-of entity called the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, demanding that the U.S. government throw its full support behind a military campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The Open Letter called for carpet bombing Iraq, and for the United States to aggressively give financial and military support for the Iraqi National Congress, yet another corrupt and inept "Contra" pseudo-gang, created by U.S. and British intelligence elements, and based in London......
This article leaves an impression of Lewis as simply an agent-provocateur, a nihilist with connections, as it were.
After the Cold War, what would be the point of Lebanonizing Central Asia? Far better to cut deals with the feeble governments of the Caucasus, allowing for US oversight and military bases in exchange for cash security guarantees. The ones that don't cooperate [Chechnya, Georgia(?)], we can leave to the Russians.
Well, I was just wondering how dogma is disseminated in this, the Last Remaining Superpower On Earth. How are generally known factsarrived at? How are experts annointed? Who annoints them?
I found this on, of all places, a Che Guevara discussion site. It's interesting to me that the poster did not site the source. I was too lazy to track it down myself. But it seems that it is probably from a "contaminated" source and the comrades might have dismissed it because of its source--as happens on so-called "free wheeling" conservative discussion so often. I confess, when I'm feeling lazy I engage in a bit of "information baby out with the source bathwater" myself.
Who trains us to become such rigorous self-censors I wonder? There are several interesting "facts" presented in this alternative view of the Sage, don't you think?
In this extreme binary-thinking age of "you are either with us or you are with the terrorists" it seems to me that the light spectrum is shrinking ominously--almost down to nothing but powerful, continuous UV rays.
For example, do you remember when you first heard an annointed Sage pronounce that "the global economy is here and we must learn to live with it,"? Do you recall any great debate upon the subject of the global economy--here in the land of freedom?
As to your question:
"...After the Cold War, what would be the point of Lebanonizing Central Asia?...
I'm rather stunned that you don't see the point. It seems obvious to me. What was the point of "Lebenonizing" Yugoslavia?
But we must avoid thinking impure thoughts lest we find ourselves on the side of demons.......
Hey, nothing helps meditation more than smokey air, black turtlenecks and bongoes. I was on stage at the Cafe Heave this morning. Check out my set: The Cult of Gitanes and Pierced Eyebrows
Mark W.
I confess a tendency to think about "foreign affairs" in purely geopolitical, rationalist terms. I often forget about the battleground of human souls and the "usefulness of chaos" in preparing the way for utopia. Here is that tendency of mine popping up again.
When you spoke of Lebanonizing (bwt, I LOVE your mis-spelling of it above and suspect it of being intentional) Central Asia, I interpreted it along the old Cold War/Civilizational lines of the West vs. Mother Russia. In this new era, I see the West and Russia as partners, however tenuous. So rather than fomenting chaos along her southern frontier among the recalcitrant Muslim tribesmen, I simply thought it would be in both country's interests to either occupy (as with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan) or utterly destroy (as with Chechnya).
FWIW, I'm not sure that this is any different from what we're doing in Yugoslavia. Perhaps you and I have a difference in terminology and nothing more. I think that Yugoslavia was "Lebanonizing" on its own before our intervention. Precisely because of that, NATO felt it had no choice but to intervene and impose a superficial order. In the interest of this order, the Russians acceded to it despite the fact that their Orthodox brethren bore the brunt of our assault.
Am I missing something? Would love to hear your thoughts.
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