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Islam and the West by Bernard Lewis Book review by Ross Mullin
In this collection of essays, problems start with its title, Islam and the West: "Islam" doesn't pair logically with "the West", but rather with "Christendom"-a medieval concept, gradually weakened since 1776 by the de-Christianizing of Western nations and cultures. Muslims may easily understand the Pope's patriarchal and prudish preachments, in rhetoric resembling the Old Testament, yet be utterly baffled by scientific environmentalists and evolutionists. Compounding confusion, Lewis concentrates on just one part of Islam-those peoples speaking Arabic, Persian, and Turkish-while almost ignoring the millions of Muslims living in south and southeast Asia (Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.). The non-specialist may well be content to read only the opening forty pages (summarizing fourteen sad centuries of mutual disdain and misunderstanding), plus the final brief essay on "religious coexistence and secularism." (Western ignorance of Islam can be symbolized by the English gold dinar coin, minted at Canterbury in the 700s. Copied from an Arabic die, the design included Arabic script, which the English apparently considered merely decorative. As Winston Churchill noted, Christians would have been shocked to learn its meaning: "There is no God but One, and Muhammad is His Prophet.") Lewis notes that within Islam, "secularism" means separation of religion and government, as in Turkey. Like the Turkish Latin alphabet, secularism was imported from Europe, and still seems foreign to most Muslims. Lewis' review of Islamic history informs us that in early Islam, for many centuries, the head of state was also the head of religion. Islam lacked priests controlling access to sacramental rites; it was also without spiritual bureaucracies blessing orthodox theologians and persecuting heretics. There were judges of religious law, but these could agreeably disagree, somewhat as in rabbinical Judaism, without fear of being burnt at the stake for "religiously incorrect" opinions. But later, in Ottoman times, writes Lewis, "an organization of Muslim religious dignitaries" was developed, probably influenced by Christian example. The Iranian ayatollahs were an "even more recent innovation". One could compare mullahs to Protestant Christian preachers, and ayatollahs to bishops. As the Imam, Khomeini was unique-a "political prelate", without precedent in Islamic history. Like many reactionaries, who claim to be restoring a better past, he innovated radically. Lewis views secularism as, "in a profound sense, Christian". Jesus taught separation of his variety of Judaism from the Roman state (Matthew 22:21), and his wisdom was confirmed by bloody centuries of conflict within Christendom, especially the Protestant-Catholic wars (still on display in Ulster, our mad "Medieval Park"). Hence John Locke's visionary proposal that "neither Pagan nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion" (Letter Concerning Toleration, 1689). However, Islam had not experienced major wars based on the religious variations within Islam itself, not even between Sunni and Shia, so Muslims escaped such self-inflicted pain, and failed to learn its harsh lesson. While examining secularism and "modernization" (Westernization) in Muslim countries, Lewis chose to ignore ijtihad-the native Islamic tradition of independent individual reasoning (see B.G. Weiss' article in The Encyclopedia of Religion, 1987). That is regrettable, as ijtihad might be capable of inspiring Muslim resistance to mullah-fascism. For a fuller view of Arabs, see the new revised edition of the Arabs in History, also by Bernard Lewis, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Islam and the West, published by Oxford University Press, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016. ©1993, 217 pages, $25.00 hardcover.
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