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Islam and the West Reissue Edition

by Bernard Lewis (Author)

4.1 51 ratings

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Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," Bernard Lewis has been for half a century one of the West's foremost scholars of Islamic history and culture, the author of over two dozen books, most notably The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, The Political Language of Islam, and The Muslim Discovery of Europe. Eminent French historian Robert Mantran has written of Lewis's work: "How could one resist being attracted to the books of an author who opens for you the doors of an unknown or misunderstood universe, who leads you within to its innermost domains: religion, ways of thinking, conceptions of power, culture--an author who upsets notions too often fixed, fallacious, or partisan."
In Islam and the West, Bernard Lewis brings together in one volume eleven essays that indeed open doors to the innermost domains of Islam. Lewis ranges far and wide in these essays. He includes long pieces, such as his capsule history of the interaction--in war and peace, in commerce and culture--between Europe and its Islamic neighbors, and shorter ones, such as his deft study of the Arabic word watan and what its linguistic history reveals about the introduction of the idea of patriotism from the West. Lewis offers a revealing look at Edward Gibbon's portrait of Muhammad in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unlike previous writers, Gibbon saw the rise of Islam not as something separate and isolated, nor as a regrettable aberration from the onward march of the church, but simply as a part of human history); he offers a devastating critique of Edward Said's controversial book, Orientalism; and he gives an account of the impediments to translating from classic Arabic to other languages (the old dictionaries, for one, are packed with scribal errors, misreadings, false analogies, and etymological deductions that pay little attention to the evolution of the language). And he concludes with an astute commentary on the Islamic world today, examining revivalism, fundamentalism, the role of the Shi'a, and the larger question of religious co-existence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
A matchless guide to the background of Middle East conflicts today, Islam and the West presents the seasoned reflections of an eminent authority on one of the most intriguing and little understood regions in the world.

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ISBN-10

0195090616
ISBN-13

978-0195090611
Edition

Reissue
Publisher

Oxford University Press
Publication date

October 27, 1994
Language

English
Dimensions

9.21 x 6.15 x 0.62 inches
Print length

240 pages
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Islam and the West is a well-written and erudite book, affording many important insights on the history of cultural interaction between Europe and the Middle East."--Diplomatic History

"Demonstrate[s] breadth and depth of scholarship and an ability to communicate with both specialists and nonspecialists."--Journal of Ecumenical Studies

"A valuable collection of essays and topics for introductory graduate seminars on Middle East politics."--Sandra Halperin, University of Pittsburgh

"Lewis's scholarship is prodigious...He avoids dogmatic positions himself and sees dogma as something to be analyzed. It is this sense of nuance, of historical setting, of honesty to texts, that informs the essays in Islam and the West."--The New York Review of Books

"Lewis speaks with authority, in prose marked by lucidity, elegance, wit and force...A challenging book that deserves a wide audience...Lewis writes with great force and clarity."--New York Newsday

"Brilliant...weaves a seamless web between past and present. In collection of remarkable learning and range Mr. Lewis takes us, as he alone among today's historians and interpreters of Islam can, from the early encoutners of Christendom and Islam to today's Islamic dilemmas. To read Mr. Lewis on Europe's obsession with the Ottoman Turks, the raging battle between secularism and fundamentalism in the Muslim world, or the difficulty of studying other peoples' histories is to be taken through a treacherous terrain by the coolest and most reassuring of guides. You are in the hands of the Islamic world's foremost living historian. Of that world's ordeal he writes with the greatest care and authority and no small measure of sympathy."--Fouad Ajami, The Wall Street Journal

"Mr. Lewis contrasts the Christian and Islamic civilizations and explains their interaction in war and peace, commerce and culture...Islam and the West is a primer for greater understanding of the countries engaged in cold and hot wars that, directly or indirectly, are rooted in religion."--The New York Times

"A leading Islamicist, though sometimes a controversial one, Lewis here gathers some 11 essays that seek to 'open doors to the innermost domains of Islam.' There are long pieces on Gibbon, Edward Said's Orientalism, the trickiness of translating Arabic, and on the 'shi'a in Islamic history,' among other subjects. As the title suggests, the book's main thrust is one the encounter--all too grequently the clash--between Europe and the Middle East."--Washington Post

"Provocative"--Chicago Tribune

"Even when one disagrees with Lewis, he is well worth reading for the experience and erudition of his writing, and the refreshing lucidity of his style."--San Francisco Chronicle

"A scholar who through industry and intellectual brilliance has achieved pre-eminence in his field."--Washington Times

"Eleven superb essays on the culture clash between the Islamic nations of the Middle East and the more secularized West...Scholarly but not pedantic, writing without fear or favor, Lewis makes an ideal guide through the political, religious, and cultural thickets of Islam...A learned, forceful analysis that treats Islam with respect, not condescension."--Kirkus Reviews

"Erudite...powerful and revealing. Everywhere in this book Mr. Lewis's commanding achievement is evident--his great learning, his deep knowledge of Arabic philology, his masterly acquaintance with the history and culture of the Middle East, and his intimate familiarity with the relations of East and West."--The New York Times Book Review

"A very learned and thoughtful work. Lewis' comparative and synthetic approaches to the issues discussed are highly informative and worthy of careful reading by both specialists in the field(s) and lay readers."--Andrej Kreutz, Arab Studies Quarterly

Book Description

A collection of insightful essays by one of the leading authorities on the Middle East

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Reissue edition (October 27, 1994)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195090616
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195090611
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1460L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.21 x 6.15 x 0.62 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,630,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #173 in Islam (Books)
- #715 in Islamic Social Studies
- #7,241 in History of Christianity (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.1 51 ratings

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Bernard Lewis

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Bernard Lewis, FBA (born 31 May 1916) is a British-American historian specializing in oriental studies. He is also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis' expertise is in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. He is also noted in academic circles for his works on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History.

Lewis is a widely read expert on the Middle East and is regarded as one of the West's leading scholars of that region. His advice has been frequently sought by policymakers, including the Bush administration. In the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Martin Kramer, whose PhD thesis was directed by Lewis, considered that over a 60-year career Lewis has emerged as "the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East."

Lewis' views on the Armenian Genocide have attracted attention. He acknowledges that massacres against the Armenians occurred but does not believe it meets the definition of genocide. He is also notable for his public debates with the late Edward Said concerning the latter's book Orientalism (1978), which criticized Lewis and other European Orientalists.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Photo credit: Office of Communications, Princeton University. (1 English Wikipedia) [Attribution, GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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All Americans and Europeans Need to Read This Book

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2015

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This is a classic work on the subject of the centuries-old war between Islam and the West. According to Dr. Lewis, who has spent his career thinking and writing about the subject, what we all are living through now is just the latest phase of the conflict. As Dr. Lewis, a Professor at Princeton, is nearing the age of 100, he is no longer able to appear on TV and radio, a great loss to those of us who get their information from talking heads.

After reading this short book, you will understand that the military and cultural power of Islam reached its peak sometime around the 14th century and has since been in decline. Militarily, the Christian countries have dominated the Islamic countries (culminating with the defeat of the Turkish empire in WWI). Culturally, Islam has fallen centuries behind the West as measured by scientific and technical achievements. Zionism, which is a relatively new phenomenon, has played a small part in the conflict when placed in the perspective of history.

I read this book about 25 years ago and find it no less compelling as I re-read it today. It should be a textbook in every liberal arts curriculum and read by anyone who cannot for the life of them understand what drives the irrationalism, ideological chaos, and mass murder in the Islamic world.

4 people found this helpful

Walter C Morgan

I was looking for the source of the Smithsonian series ...

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2014

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I was looking for the source of the Smithsonian series that aired several years ago!
Apparently there was no 'single' source; however what I've read so for is intriguing.
I've found it educational as well as interesting.

Too much obscure material

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2012

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The first chapter of the book discusses the geopolitical relations between Islam and Europe, including an interesting treatment of Islamic law. However, the middle sections of the book are dedicated to very technical criticisms of other authors, some of whom wrote centuries ago, for their ignorance of arabic vocabulary, as well as reviews of earlier European books, some of which date back centuries, about Islam. The author is free with his criticisms of other writers whose knowledge of Arabic and Turkish clearly does not match his own. There is a chapter attacking the theory of "Orientalism" as propounded by the late Edward Said. Lewis and Said were free with their criticism of each other, and Lewis gives a full treatment of his side of the argument.
All of this material is fairly remote from what I expected from the title and summary, especially from a well-known expert on Middle Eastern history and culture.

5 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2022

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Good book with tons of details. She has good knowledge about Islam.

Professor Lewis in top form as usual. Professor Lewis ...

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2018

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Professor Lewis in top form as usual. Professor Lewis identifies the reality of the Middle East vs Edward Said's delusions and victimology. Professor Lewis, RIP.

One person found this helpful

Ruth E. Bergeron

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2017

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excellent background reference material

Islam's threat to the West

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2018

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Bernard Lewis explains why Western thought is incompatible with Islam, and why 'radical Islam' is a threat to a more secularized Western civilization.

3 people found this helpful

Mature and readable scholarship.

Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2002

Overall, I enjoyed this book. Lewis knows his stuff, and how to teach it. In that regard, the contrast between him and Said seems to me like the contrast between a craftsman who does his job, and the office politician. Lewis understands Middle Eastern cultures thoroughly, he expresses his ideas clearly, and (it seems to me) is commmitted to telling the truth, honestly and fairly.
Islam and the West is, of course, a broad topic, and the book is only 200 pages, with some repetition from other works, I think, so I was sometimes disappointed in Lewis' choice of topics. The book is primarily a history of intellectual understandings, and secondarily a reply to Said's attacks. It is not a political history of the two civilizations, though it gives a bit of that history. (Paul Fregosi's Jihad is the most enlightening book I've read on the military aspect of the relationship.) Lewis shows how the West became interested in Islam from the Middle Ages, and how Islam much later developed an interest in the other direction. He discusses Gibbon, colonialism, Islamic factions, and how Christians, Jews, and Muslims have seen one another. He also offers an eloquent appeal for honest and free historical study of other cultures. As a student of Asian cultures, I appreciated the way he emphasizes the need to understand other worldviews as they understand themselves, rather than projecting our categories onto them. His tone is sometimes ironic, but not, in my opinion, indulgently so. Said mostly deserves the drubbing (verbal smart bombs) he takes, though Lewis may be a touch thorough. (But with less collatoral damage than Said's sweeping invective.)
Lewis asks why Westerners have studied other cultures, and gives several answers (beyond the power grab Said suggests): spiritual links to the Middle East, fear of jihad, the prestige of Arab science.
I would add another. It seems to me Dr. Lewis is weakest when he talks about Christianity. He assumes that Christianity claims exclusive truth in the same sense as Islam. But a further reason that the West studied Islam I think derives from differences between the two faiths. Missionaries like Matteo Ricci and James Legge were often at the forefront of Western understanding of Asian cultures, and even today Christian missionaries translate the Bible into thousands of remote languages. I think this has to do with the Christian idea of the "word become flesh." In Christianity, God affirmed other cultures and languages by the incarnation, and underlined it with the miracle of Pentacost. This is quite different from the Muslim idea of the Koran writen in heaven in "pure Arabic," which can never be translated, and made a huge difference in the thought of people like Justin, Origin, Augustine, and Ricci.
Lewis misunderstands why Christians reject Mohammed, I think. The difference between the two faiths, and the reason Christians mistrust Mohammed, is not just that one is earlier and one is later. Rather, we feel that Mohammed conforms to a type familiar in our scriptures, the "false prophet" or "anti-Christ:" the union of unscrupulous power with pretensions to divine authority. Lewis does Islam and Christianity the courtesy of taking both seriously, however, and that is enormously refreshing.

21 people found this helpful

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Oliver Dearlove

Bernard Lewis started life as a pointy-headed intellectual and wrote books like this. He tired of academe and became a ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 2, 2018

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This is required reading for anyone following Trump politics. Bernard Lewis started life as a pointy-headed intellectual and wrote books like this. He tired of academe and became a 'thinker' advising a few of the last presidents, and became far more populist and richer as a result. So HIS views can account for the mess America is making of the Middle East over twenty years. Hence the required reading bit.
His pen is now still and according to his obituary in the Times his early works such as this - are far more readable and make more sense than the later works.

The Arabists in the British Foreign Office ( 'the Camel Corps') have lost influence over foreign policy in the last decade or so - they were excluded from discussions over the mess Bush and Blair made of Iraq and their counsel was replaced with stuff like this. This book is a must-read for 2018.

One person found this helpful

Boumediene Benyahia

Mauvais

Reviewed in France on October 23, 2013

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Livre écrit dans une langue anglaise claire mais l'on remarque un contenu assez pauvre à cause des approximations doctrinaires de l'auteur, ici et là mélangées et parfois contradictoires.

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j.bartholomeus

about this book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 5, 2013

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I am content with this book. I knew the writer and his work. The quality is high.
The looked good and was cheap.
Till next time,
Jan bartholomeus

One person found this helpful

Miles

Erudite if flawed collection of writings

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2019

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This book constitutes a selection of writings by the first earnest student of the middle East, Bernard Lewis. Lewis has been maligned as an orientalist and has been the subject of much controversy largely due to his influence over the Bush administration with regards to the Iraq war.
This book includes some of his best scholarly pieces including his study of Gibbon and Muhammad. Undoubtedly, Lewis is at his best when he is dealing with history. Also included are articles Lewis authored to defend himself from criticism levelled against him by his perennial opponent and literary critic, Edward Said whose book Orientalism is a good read if one wants to understand the debate Lewis was participating in. In these journalistic chapters Lewis descends often into hyperbole and doesn't engage honestly with his opponents criticism.
Moreover contrary to what one reviewer has said Lewis paints a fair and accurate image of the Islamic world in general and the late Ottoman Empire in particular. Lewis compelling argues, displaying his tremendous erudition, that the Muslim world was more tolerant of religious minorities than Christendom demonstrated by ,for example, the Ottoman Millet system. Lewis shows that the Muslim world before the treaty of Carlowitz was far ahead of the Christendom in terms of military force and learning.
In some areas his work suffers from a lack of rigorous scholarship. For example some claims are lacking footnotes and one source of evidence for his claim is that a young man informed him of it in shop.
Overall, a great collection of writings that illuminate the contemporary problems plaguing the Islamic world and certainly will provided arguments to engage with and critique.

cath edwards

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 22, 2016

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