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Rejecting the view that western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of ]an ], independently of the European imperial expansion.<ref name="EH"/> He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?"<ref>Lewis, Bernard, ''Islam and the West'', Oxford University Press, 1993, p.126</ref> Rejecting the view that western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of ]an ], independently of the European imperial expansion.<ref name="EH"/> He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?"<ref>Lewis, Bernard, ''Islam and the West'', Oxford University Press, 1993, p.126</ref>


===Allegations of denial of the Armenian Genocide=== ===Denial of the allegations of Armenian Genocide===


In a November 1993 '']'' interview, Lewis said that the ]’ killing of up to 1.5 million ] in 1915 was not "genocide", but the "brutal byproduct of war".<ref> by ], ], 2004</ref><!--contains verbatim excerpts from Wall Street Journal, not available elsewhere --> He further suggested in the interview that "the reality of the ] results from nothing more than the imagination of the Armenian people."<ref> by Nathaniel Herzberg, '' Le Monde'', p. 11, ], ]</ref> A ]ian court interpreted his remarks as a denial of the Armenian Genocide and on ], ] fined him one franc. The court ruled that while Lewis has the right to his views, they did damage to a third party and that "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state that there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide."<ref> by Nathaniel Herzberg, '' ]'', p. 11, ], 1995</ref> In a November 1993 '']'' interview, Lewis said that the ]’ killing of up to 1.5 million ] in 1915 was not "genocide", but the "brutal byproduct of war".<ref> by ], ], 2004</ref><!--contains verbatim excerpts from Wall Street Journal, not available elsewhere --> He further suggested in the interview that "the reality of the ] results from nothing more than the imagination of the Armenian people."<ref> by Nathaniel Herzberg, '' Le Monde'', p. 11, ], ]</ref> A ]ian court interpreted his remarks as a denial of the Armenian Genocide and on ], ] fined him one franc. The court ruled that while Lewis has the right to his views, they did damage to a third party and that "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state that there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide."<ref> by Nathaniel Herzberg, '' ]'', p. 11, ], 1995</ref>

Revision as of 22:08, 8 August 2007

For the founder of the River Island retail chain, see Bernard Lewis (entrepreneur).

Bernard Lewis (born May 31, 1916, London) is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West and is especially famous for his works on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Lewis is one of the most widely-read scholars of the Middle East, whose advice is frequently sought by policymakers. In the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing Martin Kramer wrote that, over a 60-year career, he has emerged as "the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East."

Biography

Born to middle-class Jewish parents in Stoke Newington, London, Lewis became attracted to languages and history from an early age. While preparing for his bar mitzvah ceremony at the age of eleven or twelve, the young Bernard, fascinated by a new language, and especially a new script, discovered an interest in Hebrew. He subsequently moved on to studying Aramaic and then Arabic, and later still, Latin, Greek, Persian, and Turkish. As with foreign languages, Lewis's interest in history was stirred thanks to the bar mitzvah ceremony, during which he received as a gift a book on Jewish history.

He graduated in 1936 from the then School of Oriental Studies (SOAS, now School of Oriental and African Studies) at the University of London with a B.A. in History with special reference to the Near and Middle East, and obtaining his Ph.D. three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the History of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a barrister, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History.

During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps in 1940-41, before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS. and in 1949 he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History at the age of 33.

In 1974, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on the previously accumulated materials. In addition, it was in the U.S. that Lewis became a public intellectual. Upon his retirement from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990.

Lewis has been a naturalized citizen of the United States since 1982. He married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm in 1947 with whom he had a daughter and a son before the marriage was dissolved in 1974.

Research

Martin Kramer, whose Ph.D. thesis was directed by Lewis, claims Lewis as "the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East" whose authority extends beyond the academe to the general public. He is the pioneer of the social and economic history of the Middle East and is famous for his extensive research of the Ottoman archives.

Bernard Lewis began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years.

However, after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Arab countries no longer admitted scholars of Jewish origin to conduct archival and field research there. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives, which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of the Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics.

Lewis argues that the Middle East is backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from culture and religion, as opposed to the post colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment stemming from 19th century colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the west and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades. .

Revulsed at the Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was startlingly disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia; and the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian civil war (1992-98), and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).

In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Two of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks) and The Crisis of Islam.

Views and influence on contemporary politics

In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East, and his analysis of Arab-Israeli conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community ..." Lewis's policy advice has particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked: "...in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media."

A harsh critic of the Soviet Union, Lewis continues the liberal tradition in Islamic historical studies. Although his early Marxist views had a bearing on his first book The Origins of Ismailism, Lewis subsequently discarded Marxism. His later works are a reaction against the left-wing current of Third-worldism, which came to be a significant current in Middle Eastern studies.

Lewis advocates closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Modern Turkey holds a special place in Lewis's view of the region due to the country's efforts to become a part of the West.

Lewis views Christendom and Islam as civilizations that have been in perpetual collision ever since the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In a seminal essay The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990), he saw the struggle between the West and Islam gathering strength. It was in that essay that he coined the phrase "clash of civilizations", which received prominence in the eponymous book by Samuel Huntington.

In 1998, Lewis read in a London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden, a person of whom Lewis had never heard before. Recognizing in bin Laden's language the ideology of jihad, Lewis wrote an essay A License to Kill in which he warned about the danger presented by the holy warrior.

In August 2006, in an article about whether the world can rely on the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent in its dealings with Iran, Lewis wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the significance of August 22 in the Islamic calendar. The Iranian president had indicated he would respond by that date to U.S. demands regarding Iran's development of nuclear power; Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad to heaven and back. Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world." The article received significant press coverage.

Criticism and controversies

Debates with Edward Said

Lewis is known for his literary sparrings with Edward Said, the Palestinian-American literary theorist and activist who criticized Orientalist scholarship, claiming Lewis's work to be a prime example of Orientalism, in his 1978 book Orientalism. Said asserted that the field of Orientalism was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination. He further questioned the direct knowledge of many leading Orientalist scholars such as Bernard Lewis on the Arab world. In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Said suggested that Lewis' knowledge of the Middle East was so biased it could not be taken seriously, and claimed "Bernard Lewis hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world."

Said has also alleged that Lewis treats Islam as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its historical complexities, internal dynamics, and plurality, and accused him of "demagogy and downright ignorance."

Lewis' response

Rejecting the view that western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of European humanism, independently of the European imperial expansion. He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?"

Denial of the allegations of Armenian Genocide

In a November 1993 Le Monde interview, Lewis said that the Ottoman Turks’ killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 was not "genocide", but the "brutal byproduct of war". He further suggested in the interview that "the reality of the Armenian genocide results from nothing more than the imagination of the Armenian people." A Parisian court interpreted his remarks as a denial of the Armenian Genocide and on June 21, 1995 fined him one franc. The court ruled that while Lewis has the right to his views, they did damage to a third party and that "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state that there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide."

When Lewis received the prestigious National Humanities Medal from President Bush in November 2006, the Armenian National Committee of America took strong objection. Executive Director Aram Hamparian released a statement of pointed disapproval:

The President's decision to honor the work of a known genocide denier — an academic mercenary whose politically motivated efforts to cover up the truth run counter to the very principles this award was established to honor — represents a true betrayal of the public trust.

The ANCA Press Release further attacked Lewis by suggesting that early in his career Lewis admitted that there was an actual Holocaust of Armenians in his 1961 book, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, where he wrote on page 356, "A desperate struggle between began, a struggle between two nations for the possession of a single homeland, that ended with the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished."

Lewis' response

Lewis argues that:

There is no evidence of a decision to massacre. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence of attempt to prevent it, which were not very successful. Yes there were tremendous massacres, the numbers are very uncertain but a million may well be likely, ... the issue is not whether the massacres happened or not, but rather if these massacres were as a result of a deliberate preconceived decision of the Turkish government... there is no evidence for such a decision.

Lewis thus believes that "to make , a parallel with the Holocaust in Germany" is "rather absurd." In an interview with Haaretz he stated:

The deniers of Holocaust have a purpose: to prolong Nazism and to return to Nazi legislation. Nobody wants the 'Young Turks' back, and nobody wants to have back the Ottoman Law. What do the Armenians want? The Armenians want to benefit from both worlds. On the one hand, they speak with pride of their struggle against the Ottoman despotism, while on the other hand, they compare their tragedy to the Jewish Holocaust. I do not accept this. I do not say that the Armenians did not suffer terribly. But I find enough cause for me to contain their attempts to use the Armenian massacres to diminish the worth of the Jewish Holocaust and to relate to it instead as an ethnic dispute.

Stance on the Iraq War

Most recently Lewis has been criticised as "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq", who urged regime change in Iraq to provide a jolt that — he argued — would "modernize the Middle East". Critics of Lewis have suggested that Lewis' Orientalist theories about "What Went Wrong" in the Middle East, and other important works, formed the intellectual basis of the push towards war in Iraq.

Books

References

  1. ^ Kramer, Martin (1999). "Bernard Lewis". Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing. Vol. Vol. 1. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. pp. pp. 719–720. Retrieved 2006-05-23. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |pages= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help)
  2. Lewis, Bernard (2004). From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting The Middle East (PDF). Oxford University press. pp. pp. 1–2. ISBN 0195173368. Retrieved 2006-05-23. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  3. [http://www.princeton.edu/~nes/faculty_lewis.html "Bernard Lewis Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus"], Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Princeton, retrieved May 26, 2006.
  4. Lewis (2004), pp. 3–4
  5. Lewis (2004), pp. 6–7
  6. ^ Humphreys, R. Stephen (May /June 1990). "Bernard Lewis: An Appreciation". Humanities. vol. 11 (3): pp. 17–20. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. Lewis, Bernard, Muslim Discovery of Europe, Norton Paperback, 2001, p.22
  8. Lewis, Bernard, The Crisis of Islam : Holy War and Unholy Terror, Modern Library, 2003, p.90-91, 108, 110-111
  9. Beinin, Joel. "Review of: Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice by Bernard Lewis, MERIP Middle East Report, No. 147, Egypt's Critical Moment (Jul., 1987), pp. 43-45.
  10. "Remarks by Vice President Cheney at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia Luncheon Honoring Professor Bernard Lewis". May 1, 2006. Retrieved 2007-01-26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ Ajami, Fouad (May 1, 2006). "A Sage in Christendom: A personal tribute to Bernard Lewis". OpinionJournal. Retrieved 2006-05-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. "August 22. Does Iran have something in store?", Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2006.
  13. August 22 coverage:
  14. Said, Edward, Orientalism (Vintage Books: New York, 1979). ISBN 978-0394740676. Pg 12
  15. Keith Windschuttle, "Edward Said's "Orientalism revisited," The New Criterion January 17, 1999, accessed January 19, .
  16. Said, Edward."Resources of hope ," Al-Ahram Weekly April 2, 2003, accessed April 26, .
  17. Said, Edward."The Clash of Ignorance," The Nation October 22, 2001, accessed April 26, .
  18. Lewis, Bernard, Islam and the West, Oxford University Press, 1993, p.126
  19. Dhimmitude and Bernard Lewis revisited by Robert Spencer, February 4, 2004
  20. "Bernard Lewis Condemned For Having Denied The Reality Of The Armenian Genocide" by Nathaniel Herzberg, Le Monde, p. 11, June 23, 1995
  21. "Bernard Lewis Condemned For Having Denied The Reality Of The Armenian Genocide" by Nathaniel Herzberg, Le Monde, p. 11, June 23, 1995
  22. "ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DENIER BERNARD LEWIS AWARDED NATIONAL HUMANITIES MEDAL", ANCA, November 22, 2006. Retrieved April 26, 2007.
  23. Bostom, Andrew. "Dhimmitude and The Doyen", New English Review, November 10, 2006. Retrieved April 26, 2007.
  24. ^ Statement of Professor Bernard Lewis, Princeton University, "Distinguishing Armenian Case from Holocaust", Assembly of Turkish American Associations, April 14, 2002 (PDF)
  25. Getler, Michael. "Documenting and Debating a 'Genocide'", The Ombudsman Column, PBS, April 21, 2006. Retrieved October 9, 2006.
  26. Karpel, Dalia."There Was No Genocide: Interview with Prof.Bernard Lewis ", Haaretz Weegly, January 23, 1998. Retrieved April 26, 2007.
  27. "AEI'S Weird Celebration"
  28. "Bernard Lewis Revisited", Washington Monthly, November 2004. Accessed April 26, 2007.

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