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What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, by Bernard Lewis
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For many centuries, the world of Islam was in the forefront of human achievement--the foremost military and economic power in the world, the leader in the arts and sciences of civilization. Christian Europe, a remote land beyond its northwestern frontier, was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from which there was nothing to learn or to fear. And then everything changed, as the previously despised West won victory after victory, first in the battlefield and the marketplace, then in almost every aspect of public and even private life.
In this intriguing volume, Bernard Lewis examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic world as it tried to understand why things had changed--how they had been overtaken, overshadowed, and to an increasing extent dominated by the West. Lewis provides a fascinating portrait of a culture in turmoil. He shows how the Middle East turned its attention to understanding European weaponry and military tactics, commerce and industry, government and diplomacy, education and culture. Lewis highlights the striking differences between the Western and Middle Eastern cultures from the 18th to the 20th centuries through thought-provoking comparisons of such things as Christianity and Islam, music and the arts, the position of women, secularism and the civil society, the clock and the calendar.
Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," Bernard Lewis is one of the West's foremost authorities on Islamic history and culture. In this striking volume, he offers an incisive look at the historical relationship between the Middle East and Europe.
- Sales Rank: #230344 in Books
- Brand: Oxford University Press
- Published on: 2001-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 5.60" h x .69" w x 8.50" l, .84 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 180 pages
Features
Amazon.com Review
Bernard Lewis is the West's greatest historian and interpreter of the Near East. Books such as The Middle East and The Arabs in History are required reading for anybody who hopes to understand the region and its people. Now Lewis offers What Went Wrong?, a concise and timely survey of how Islamic civilization fell from worldwide leadership in almost every frontier of human knowledge five or six centuries ago to a "poor, weak, and ignorant" backwater that is today dominated by "shabby tyrannies ... modern only in their apparatus of repression and terror." He offers no easy answers, but does provide an engaging chronicle of the Arab encounter with Europe in all its military, economic, and cultural dimensions. The most dramatic reversal, he says, may have occurred in the sciences: "Those who had been disciples now became teachers; those who had been masters became pupils, often reluctant and resentful pupils." Today's Arab governments have blamed their plight on any number of external culprits, from Western imperialism to the Jews. Lewis believes they must instead commit to putting their own houses in order: "If the peoples of Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, [and] poverty and oppression." Anybody who wants to understand the historical backdrop to September 11 would do well to look for it on these pages. --John Miller
From Publishers Weekly
In the fields of Islamic and Middle Eastern history, few people are as prominent and prolific as Lewis, emeritus professor at Princeton. This time around, however, he has written a book with an inconsistent argument and an erratic narrative consisting of recycled themes from his earlier books, a work that sheds no new light on Middle Eastern history or on the events of September 11. His general argument is that Islamic civilization, once flourishing and tolerant, has in modern times become stagnant. This, he contends, has led to considerable soul-searching among Muslims, who ask themselves, "What went wrong?" But while sometimes the author states that there is a critical inquiry into the source of economic weakness in Muslim civilizations, other times he says that, instead of looking into the mirror, Muslims have blamed their problems on Europeans or Jews and thus fed their sense of victimhood. In medieval times, Lewis notes, Muslim civilization transmitted scientific ideas into Europe. But after offering intriguing examples of Muslim physicians and astronomers on the cutting edge in the 13th to 15th centuries, this chapter abruptly ends by stating that in modern times the roles have reversed, leaving the reader baffled over what between the 15th and the 20th centuries may have contributed to this reversal. Thus, the book raises more questions than it answers. Furthermore, Lewis discounts the effects of various decisions made by European and American colonial powers that negatively impacted the development of a democratic political community and a viable economy in the Middle East. Lewis's earlier books, such as The Muslim Discovery of Europe and The Middle East and the West, are much more useful for anyone seeking to understand the historical dynamic between these two parts of the world. First serial to Atlantic Monthly.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Since its inception in the seventh century, Islamic civilization has remained a significant force in the world. In fact, the Muslim world was a leader in the humanities, arts, and sciences while Europe was still in relative darkness and mired in internecine wars and religious zealotry. The Muslim world was also largely responsible for preserving and transmitting Greek and other Western scholarship to Christian Europe. However, Islamic civilization was eventually overshadowed by the achievements of European Christendom, and much of the Muslim world came under the direct or indirect domination of the West. In this highly readable book, eminent historian Lewis (Near Eastern studies, emeritus, Princeton Univ.) explains Islam's encounter with the West and the Middle East's varied responses to the West's sociocultural and political hegemony in the Muslim world. Like many of Lewis's previous writings on this subject (e.g., The Arabs in History), this book will undoubtedly generate significant debate and disagreement among scholars regarding the author's analysis of Islamic responses to modernity and Westernization. Recommended for academic and large public libraries. Nader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, AL
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
like Islamic warfare
By Billie Pritchett
Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong? begins with the question "Why did Western countries advance in science, technology, trade, and other areas of social and economic life and Middle Eastern countries, especially those considered part of the Muslim world, did not?" Lewis then proceeds, throughout the bulk of the book, to address topics unrelated to the book's central question. The reader is treated to excursuses on warfare in the Muslim world, for example, and issues related to the Muslim world's reluctance to accept Westernization and technology and ideas and attitudes association with modernization, but not much in the way of a connection to pushing some thesis or other answering the question. Then, finally, in the conclusion of the book, Lewis returns to the central question, and feigns an answer. Lewis writes:
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. But the road to democracy, as the Western experience amply demonstrates, is long and hard, full of pitfalls and obstacles.
I don't even necessarily disagree with the conclusion, but what is there in the way of argument that this is the correct position to assume? And is this Lewis's position? If so, why not have established it upfront as the thesis and then made the remainder of the book an argument and provided support for this thesis? Probably because this book was originally a series of lectures he had given that begin with some kind of topic, like Islamic warfare, for instance, and then each meander for 20 or so pages without a thesis.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Inconvenient Truths
By Jack Rice
If you are a cultural relativist, who arrogantly places yourself "above it all" in refusing to judge the values which inform the way people behave collectively, or if you buy into the big lie that "Islam means peace," and that anyone who questions this must be a bigot, then Bernard Lewis is of course your nemesis.
On the other hand, if you believe it's not a coincidence that most of the terrorism and barbarity occuring in the world today is committed by Muslims, then you will naturally wonder why. Something indeed went wrong, something happened, in the relationship of Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims, with the rest of the world.
Bernard Lewis is a scholar, not a polemicist. In What Went Wrong he clearly and with historical rigor illuminates the ebbing of Muslim conquest and the subsequent self-imposed isolation of Muslim cultural and intellectual life from the rest of the world. Their aggression turned inward, Muslims were left to seethe for centuries, the inevitable result's being the psychopathic, atavistic mindset, bursting forth in its ugly, murderous manifestations we see almost daily.
If you actually read Lewis rather than just react to an unflattering thesis, you will find his conclusions, if you are intellectually honest, to be powerful and compelling. Lewis's scholarly style doesn't make for a gripping narrative, but the book is short, and the effort to stay with it is rewarded by Lewis's insights.
I notice that those who attack Lewis don't attack his scholarship, only the conclusions he reaches. Historical obtuseness and intellectual dishonesty are hallmarks of these critics. As another reviewer has said, they are part of the problem.
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Useful summary of wide sweep of history
By A Customer
Lewis does an intellectually honest job in this book of clearly identifying that which is presented as historical fact, i.e. quotes from original documents, dates of battles, trade and income figures, from the conclusions he draws from the facts. I have not read a review which faults his presentation of historical fact.
His conclusions are far from dogmatic. Lewis considers a number of factors that might account for the decline of the Islamic world, in each case, he discusses the strengths and weaknessese of each possible explanation.
Given that Lewis has been studying the Islamic world for longer than most of his readers have been alive, it is difficult to conclude that he is not qualified to draw historical conclusions. I find it interesting that only the Islamic world asserts that it cannot be understood by outsiders. The French don't claim that Americans cannot understand French history. The Chinese don't claim that only native Chinese speakers can understand Chinese history. If Lewis doesn't understand Islamic history then no one outside of Islam can or does.
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