Bernard Lewis

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

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Prof. Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis (born May 31, 1916 in London, England) is a British-American historian, Orientalist, and political commentator. He 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 in academic circles for his works on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Lewis is a widely-read expert on the Middle East, and has been described as one of the West’s leading specialists on that region. His advice has been frequently sought by policymakers, including the current Bush administration. In the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing Martin Kramer, whose Ph.D. thesis was directed by Lewis, considered 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, some Latin, Greek, Persian, and Turkish. As with Semitic 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 the orientalist 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 – as he was one of the very rare specialists – 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.

Lewis is a founding member of ASMEA (The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa). Formed October 24, 2007, the organization is an academic society dedicated to promoting the highest standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies, and related fields. Lewis is Chairman of its academic council.[2]

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 creation of the State of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in the Arab countries where they were suspected of espionage. 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 Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics.

Lewis argues that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th century European 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. .

Revolted by 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, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian civil war (1992–98), and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88).

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 the Israeli-Palestinian 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 as 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 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, despite his terrorist attacks in Africa and the Middle East. Recognizing in bin Laden's language what he considered as the "ideology of jihad", Lewis wrote an essay A License to Kill in which he warned about the danger presented by the holy warrior. But this was actually long after the Clinton administration and the US intelligence community had begun its hunt, first in Sudan and then in Afghanistan.

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 from Jerusalem 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 "deconstructed" Orientalist scholarship. Professor Edward W. Said (Columbia University) defined Lewis's work as 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 scientific neutrality of some leading Orientalist scholars such as Bernard Lewis or Daniel Pipes 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."

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

Lewis' response

Rejecting the view that western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, despite its 18th century origins in European imperialist policies, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed since then as a facet of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion. He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but 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 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, and the publication of this verdict at Lewis' cost in Le Monde[3]. 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 noticed that early in his career Lewis asserted the holocaust of Armenians in his 1961 book, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (p. 356): "A desperate struggle between [the Turks and Armenians] 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' views on Armenian Genocide were largely criticized by well-known historians and genocide scholars including Alain Finkelkraut, Yves Ternon, Richard G. Hovannisian, Albert Memmi, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, he was considered as a "notorious genocide-denier". According to historian Yair Auron, "Lewis’ stature provided a lofty cover for the Turkish national agenda of obfuscating academic research on the Armenian Genocide". Jewish scolar Israel Charny wrote about the Lewis' views, that "the seemingly scholarly concern with putting the historical facts in the context of Armenians constituting a threat to the Turks as a rebellious force who together with the Russians threatened the Ottoman Empire, and the insistence that only a policy of deportations was executed, barely conceal the fact that the organized deportations constituted systematic mass murder".

Lewis' response

Lewis argues that:

There is no evidence of a decision to massacre. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence of attempts 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, ...[and] 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 [Armenian Genocide], 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.

Lewis' Princeton Alumni Weekly account

On June 15, 1996, a letter by Lewis appeared in the Princeton Alumni Magazine, in which he gave his account of the ruling[4]. His account may be compared with the following excerpts from the actual ruling.

Excerpt from Lewis' letter[5]:

The court ruled that while it was "in no way established" that I had "pursued a purpose alien" to my "mission as a historian," I was at fault in not having cited, in the course of the interview, "elements contrary to my thesis" and had thus "revived the pain of the Armenian community." For this I was ordered to pay one franc in damages to each of the two plaintiff parties as well as a contribution to their costs.

Excerpts from actual ruling[6]:

Whereas, even if it is in no way established that he pursued a purpose alien to his mission as a historian, and even if it is not disputable that he may maintain an opinion on this question different from those of the petitioning associations, the fact remains that it was by concealing elements contrary to his thesis that the defendant was able to assert that there was no "serious proof" of the Armenian genocide; consequently, he failed in his duties of objectivity and prudence by expressing himself without qualification on such a sensitive subject; and his remarks, which could unfairly revive the pain of the Armenian community, are tortious and justify compensation under the terms set forth hereafter;

The historian is bound by his responsibility toward the persons concerned when, by distortion [dénaturation] or falsification, he credits the veracity of manifestly erroneous allegations or, through serious negligence, omits events or opinions subscribed to by persons qualified and enlightened enough so that the concern for accuracy prevents him from keeping silent about them.

The Court...orders the publication of excerpts of this judgment in the next issue of the newspaper Le Monde to appear after the date on which this judgment shall be made final, the cost of this insertion, to be borne by the defendant, not to exceed twenty thousand (20,000) francs.

Noam Chomsky

In a 2002 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "Hot Talk" program, Noam Chomsky detailed what he claimed was a series of comments from a declassified Eisenhower Administration memo:

President Eisenhower, in an internal discussion, observed to his staff, and I'm quoting now, "There's a campaign of hatred against us in the Middle East, not by governments, but by the people." The National Security Council discussed that question and said, "Yes, and the reason is, there's a perception in that region that the United States supports status quo governments, which prevent democracy and development and that we do it because of our interests in Middle East oil. Furthermore, it's difficult to counter that perception because it's correct. It ought to be correct. We ought to be supporting brutal and corrupt governments which prevent democracy and development because we want to control Middle East oil, and it's true that leads to a campaign of hatred against us."

Chomsky claimed that Bernard Lewis, in his writings on the Middle East, omitted this and other evidence of Western culpability for failures in the region. Chomsky claimed:

Now, until Bernard Lewis tells us that, and that's only one piece of a long story, we know that he's just a vulgar propagandist and not a scholar."

Lewis' response

On the same program the next month, Lewis responded:

Well, Mr. Chomsky's views on Middle Eastern history are about as reliable as my views on linguistics, but I'll let that pass. Obviously imperialist powers are not blameless in this respect. They did contribute, but they are not the cause of what went wrong. What went wrong is what enabled them to come and conquer these places. And the record of the Imperialist powers is by no means uniformly bad. They did some bad things, they also did some good things. They introduced infrastructure, they introduced modern education, they established a network of high schools and universities that previously did not exist, and many other things. They even tried to introduce constitutional government, parliamentary and constitutional government. It didn't take in the Islamic lands, but it worked quite well in India.

The other point he raises, I am in agreement with him, much to my surprise. That is the, how shall I put it, the offense of propping and maintaining repressive governments. I don't think the Shah is a good example of that. The Shah's government was certainly not democratic, but it was a Scandinavian democracy compared to what has happened since in Iran.

It's not our business what goes on inside these countries. Let them have tyrants as long as they're friendly tyrants rather than hostile tyrants. This is the familiar method that's been used in Central America, Southeast Asia and other places.

Stance on the Iraq War

Most recently Lewis has been called "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' allegedly '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

• The Origins of Ismailism (1940)
• A Handbook of Diplomatic and Political Arabic (1947)
• The Arabs in History (1950)
• The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961)
• Istanbul and the Civilizations of the Ottoman Empire (1963)
• The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (1967)
• The Cambridge History of Islam (2 vols. 1970, revised 4 vols. 1978, editor with Peter Malcolm Holt and Ann K.S. Lambton)
• Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the capture of Constantinople (1974, editor)
• History — Remembered, Recovered, Invented (1975)
• Race and Color in Islam (1979)
• Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society (1982, editor with Benjamin Braude)
• The Muslim Discovery of Europe (1982)
• The Jews of Islam (1984)
• Semites and Anti-Semites (1986)
• Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople (1987)
• The Political Language of Islam (1988)
• Race and Slavery in the Middle East: an Historical Enquiry (1990)
• Islam and the West (1993)
• Islam in History (1993)
• The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (1994)
• Cultures in Conflict (1994)
• The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (1995)
• The Future of the Middle East (1997)
• The Multiple Identities of the Middle East (1998)
• A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of Life, Letters and History (2000)
• Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew Poems (2001)
• The Muslim Discovery of Europe (2001)
• What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (2002)
• The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (2003)
• From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East (2004)

External links

• Lewis's Princeton University homepage
• The ASMEA Website
• Atlantic Monthly: The Roots of Muslim Rage
• Links to online articles by Bernard Lewis at zionist.org
• The Bernard Lewis trial
• BookTV interview with Bernard Lewis
• Booknotes interview with Bernard Lewis What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response
• Bernard Lewis and MESA's Shame by Martin Kramer
• The Washington Monthly: Bernard Lewis Revisited by Michael Hirsh
• CounterPunch: CounterPunch: Scholarship or Sophistry? Bernard Lewis and the New Orientalism
• Bernard Lewis featured in Slate Magazine's "AEI'S Weird Celebration"