Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald, who wrote this superb critical essay on Bernard Lewis some time ago, adds some new observations here:
Bernard Lewis is busy chipping away at his own monument, so that posterity will be left with far less than if he had been silent these past few years, or at least had owned up to a few mistakes -- including his scandalous refusal to admit not only to the mistake of supporting the Oslo Accords, but to own up to the fact that his enthusiasm for those "Accords" made no sense if he took seriously the principles of Islamic law and the model of Al-Hudaibiyya. Years ago he wrote about the incompatibility of Islam and Democracy.But lately, in his initial enthusiasm (no doubt by now much diminished) for the fantasy-land plan of Iraq the Light Unto the Muslim Nations, he assured us (and no doubt others took heart from this assurance) that a kind of democracy (oh, not the "Western" kind, perhaps, with all those universal-declaration-of-human-rights notions, or at least with some theoretical possiblity of locating a state's legitimacy in "the people," which is not possible in Islam, but something) was always to be found in the Islamic tradition. He assured us that in the Islamic world there has even been great "social mobility" (meaning that the rulers could come from the lowest classes, even from the slaves -- and so they could, because anyone who had risen through the ranks even as a slave-soldier might seize power), greater than anywhere, in Lewis' formulation, other than possibly late nineteenth-century America. He has, with James Woolsey, promoted the idea of putting his (unnamed but clearly meant) friend, Prince Hassan, on the throne of Iraq as a Hashemite monarch supposedly acceptable to all sides, as if there were ever a chance that the Shi'a would have accepted a Sunni monarch after all that happened to them in the history of Sunni-ruled, modern Iraq.
As with the great enthusiasm for the transparently-awful Oslo Accords, Lewis apparently does not feel, at a time of great and growing peril, that anything should nothing extenuate about Islam. Why? Perhaps out of a desire to keep old friends or patrons, or out of jealousies of others and what they went off and managed to study on their own, or out of an unwillingness to declare a mea-culpa or two. How about an article on the folly from the get-go of the idea of Iraq the Model, and the series of assumptions, all proven to be false, from which that idea, like Topsy, just grew?
Lewis has never yet acknowledged his behind-the-scenes belittling of Bat Ye'or and his own refusal to recognize that the history of dhimmitude -- a word he likes to mock as "dhimmi-tude," as if it is a preposterous, rather than useful, addition to the lexicon -- matters, is relevant, is center-stage. Instead we are supposed to believe the word itself is illegitimate. No one, apparently, can add to the wordhoard's store, even when the word turns out to be most apt and most useful. He has never engaged sympathetically with what is presented in The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam. He has never reviewed the book, never written about it. Instead he just goes around, ignoring or denigrating in various sly ways (that "dhimmi-tude") the work of Bat Ye'or.
This blind spot has led him to focus almost entirely on what happened to Jews under Islam. He cannot get out of his head the matter of comparative mistreatment (i.e. the greater mistreatment of Jews in Western Christendom than in the world of Islam) and exhibits an unwillingness to treat deeply, or treat at all, the mistreatment of others -- including Christians and Zoroastrians in the Middle East. And since he carefully circumscribes his work geographically and stays within that Middle East, never wishing to find out just what happened to all those Hindus over 250 years of Muslim rule, he has never written about the remarkable similarities in the mistreatment of those Hindus under Muslim rule to that treatment meted out by Muslims to Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians in the Middle East itself. And he doesn't stop, despite so many failures (Oslo, Iraq), so many self-contradictions (about "democracy and Islam," about so much else) that his devoted friends, as well as his enemies, could have a field day. For one more example, see the latest "American Scholar."Yet even as Lewis foresees (in a German newspaper) the "Islamization of Europe" by the end of the century, he does not tell us what he thinks should, could, or ought to be done about it. Instead, he contents himself with simply and calmly predicting it, as if it were something merely to be noted, not to be horrified by. This guarded, careful, solicitous-at-every-point-of-Muslim sensibilities public figure (as he now is), with those-home-truths-always-confided-sotto-voce manner, should do a bit more to warn about what lies ahead for Europe, and a bit less ignoring of Bat Ye'or and others who have, in some ways, shown the lacunae in his own scholarship.
There are many who continue to soothe Muslim sensibilities by constant reference to this exaggerated "convivencia" and supposed cultural greatness -- yet the more you study it, the less there seems to be of it. Lewis's comparisons between Europe in the Middle Ages with a supposedly superior "Islamic" civilization are simply insensate. Lewis does not let readers know that high Islamic civilization existed for a few hundred years, at most, on what remained, or had been left, materially and spiritually, by the conquered Jews and Christians. It was those conquered peoples who continued to fructify what is now misleadingly called "Islamic" civilization, after the name of the conquerors. Many of the outstanding figures of that "high Islamic civilization" were either non-Muslims (as the translators) or recent converts, or the children of converts, and still still just a generation away from non-Islamic influences and other, freer ways of thought.
Does anyone think that if Europeans lose control of their own civilization, and through Da'wa and demographic conquest become subject to Muslim rule, that all non-Islamic influences will suddenly end? They will live on, for a while, just as they must have in the Middle East and North Africa, ever-dwindling, but still twitching, still alive, for a while. Lewis doesn't mention any of that. He doesn't see it.
Lewis, in fact, gave all this matter of the treatment of non-Muslims under Muslim rule just three short paragraphs, two of them exculpatory, out of 400 pages in his popular survey, "The Middle East." He continues to ignore the subject of what happened to all those non-Muslims -- all those Jews, those Christians, those Zoroastrians, conquered by Islam. Under what conditions did they live? What led some to convert, slowly, over time? What were the effects, for example, of the jizyah? How onerous was it? See, on this, the remarkable admission of S. D. Goitein, in his late-in-life introduction to "A Mediterranean Society," that he had completely re-thought his view of the jizya, and had come to understand its full effect as he never had before, after a lifetime of work, some of it devoted to "Arab-and-Jew-convivencia" studies.
Lewis never forgets to pay formulaic treatment to the greatness of Islamic civilization, particularly in his lectures. He compares that civilization to that which existed at the time in Europe, and has the Europeans suffer by his comparison. But his "Middle Ages" are always the Dark Ages, and a caricature to boot. Lewis appears not to have kept up with Western scholarship on that period, and all the things that have led to a reevaluation upward of those formerly deprecated times. For the last half-century at least, there have been many important studies of the Middle Ages, yet the popular imagination continues to believe in those "myths that will not die." Yet those myths have been vivaciously dissected for the mass audience in Regine Pernoud's Those Terrible Middle Ages! Bernard Lewis appears to be one of those in whom what he learned in the 1930s as a schoolboy about those European Middle Ages remains fixed forever in amber. But "Forever Amber" should be no historian's motto.
In a world of espositos and armstrongs, Lewis stands out. But that should not be the point of comparison. Snouck Hurgronje, Joseph Schacht (on Schacht's death Lewis wrote an elegant tribute), and many of the scholars of Islam presented in Bostom’s The Legacy of Jihad have done superior, more courageous work. And above all there is Bat Ye'or, who has had the means to work as an independent scholar outside the university system, and thus has never felt the need, as Lewis so obviously has, to placate or soothe the ruffled feelings (very easily ruffled feelings) of Muslim colleagues. She is free to follow the evidence and be critical, while Lewis has always carefully left his colleagues the out of a glorious past, and to stay away from subjects -- the treatment of non-Muslims -- that would perhaps have required from him a different conclusion.
Lewis may think he has been sufficiently judicious. He is wrong. He has been wrong before. He has admitted privately that he has been wrong before. What he cannot seem to do is to write something, publicly, showing his own remarkable twists and turns, and perhaps even, at this late date, paying tribute, by name, to Bat Ye'or. He just can't do it. He won't do it. And posterity will judge him by what, at this point, he has to tell us of value that will help to prevent, rather than merely to predict, the Islamization of Europe. His great learning, his linguistic gifts and training, his fluent style, could help that shared, imperilled posterity -- his own, and ours.
Perhaps it comes down to something as simple as the strong human need for approval. If Bernard Lewis acknowledged his academic shortsightedness and the truthfulness of Bat Ye'or's work on dhmmitude, he simply would not be popular on the academically correct lecture circuit. The phone would stop ringing for Dr. Lewis if he acknowledged Bat Ye'or's contributions and agreed with them. Remember what happened to Bat Ye'or at Georgetown?
Hugh, indeed, my own experience with Dr. Lewis was one very much resembling an encounter with a Muslim. Mention anything about Islam, and he became quite emotional. When I said, the argument of the radicals is that democracy is idolatrous, he became fiercely indignant and cried, "No! No! No! There is nothing in Islam to support this! Islam has a long history of rejecting tyranny!"
Because history and theology are inextricably intertwined in Islam, often, when we ask Muslims a theological question, we receive a historically based answer and visa versa. But I never expected that kind of thing from the great Dr. Bernard Lewis. I had read several of his books and assumed he would be open-minded to criticism of Islam. That performance was a revelation for me.
And no, Maryrose, I don't know what happened to Bat Ye'or at Georgetown. Could you enlighten me, please?
Rebecca,
The following web page addresses the issue of Bat Ye'or's appearance at Georgetown:
http://www.israelaustin.com/israelnow/news/3november2002a.asp
In the current issue of The American Scholar (which, incidentally has a delightful article about how Newfoundlanders perceive time) Prof. Lewis refers to "dhimmitude" as "a myth." He also writes the following re: the historical treatment of Jews by Christians and Muslims, and of Christians by Muslims:
"Prejudices existed in the Islamic world, as did occasional hostility, but not what could be called anti-Semitism, for there was no attribution of cosmic evil. And on the whole, Jews fared better under Muslim rule than Christians did. This is the reverse of what one might expect. In the canonical history, in the Qur'an and the biography of the Prophet, Jews come out badly. The Prophet had more encounters with Jews than with Christians. The biography of the Prophet records armed clashes with Jews, and in those encounters it was the Jews who were killed. Muslims could therefore afford a more relaxed attitude toward Jews in the ensuing generation."
First off, if Jews were indeed the beneficiaries of this so-called "more relaxed attitude" (which scholars such as Bat Ye-Or, Robert Spencer and others dispute) it was likely because the Jews were weak and did not represent any threat. Second, it is precisely these "armed clashes with Jews" that give present day Jihad their reasons for wanting to destroy the state of Israel--the Jews being bumped up to powerful adversary instead of servile dhimmis. And finally, isn't it interesting that Lewis describes these unpleasant encounters as "armed clashes" instead of what they really were--i.e. "massacres"? I guess he's trying to protect his readers' tender sensibilities as well, of course, as his sinking reputation.
Lewis was not treated well by the British Foreign Office; antisemitism then, as now, explains a good deal in certain circles. The majority of his graduate students have been Arabs. He is fond of mentioning that his books are translated into Turkish, Arabic, Farsi -- the same books he writes for Infidel audiences. Knowing that he wishes to retain both of thsoe audiences requires, at times, a certain aesopian language, writing for whoever gets his particular drift, and this limits what can be said to the unwary Infidels. He also has never dealt with the problem of dhimmis. It doesn't much interest him. He makes all kinds of claims about Arab antisemtism, attributing it entirely to the European model, and being a recent construct, and fails to see anything in Qur'an and Hadith that might reasonably explain the readiness of Arabs and Muslims to find in the Nazi version of antisemitism something not unwelcome, something that they took to with alacrity (from King Fahd handing out copies of the "Protocols" to the version now selling like hotcakes in Turkey, to the television series in Egypt based on those same "Protocols"). Lewis appears unable to pluralize "antisemitism" and to admit that in Islam, the division of the world between Believer and Infidel, though in the main directed historically at Christians, hardly exempted Jews. It is a question of willingness to treat the subject of treatment of non-Muslims, according to Muslim tenets, head on, instead of hyper-cautiously, obliquely, almost unwillingly. And that is what Lewis does, too often for it to have been simply the result of a slip, here and there.
In the end, when judgments are made, Bat Ye'or's "The Dhimmi" and "Islam and Dhimmitude" and "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam" will transcend their time, and be seen to have opened up an entirely new field of study -- the vast largely unknown subject of what happened to those millions of the conquered, over 1350 years. Were they treated the same, or differently? Where they were treated differently, what accounts for those differences? Where the treatment meted out to non-Muslims was less harsh than the norm, to what should this be attributed? To changes in doctrine, over time or through space, or because of some local enlightened despot, either Akbar, or Ataturk? And if it was only because of that Akbar or Ataturk that conditions were better at times, then what does that tell us?
OT:Festival of Muslim cultures refuses to allow gay event
now, i really wouldnt care about this if it was entirely privately funded. But the British government is actually partly funding it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,1692804,00.html?gusrc=rss
A national festival to promote Muslim culture which is being partly funded by the government has refused to stage an event designed to highlight the lives and experiences of gays and lesbians.
Prince Charles will open the Festival of Muslim Cultures in Sheffield tomorrow and over the next 18 months events will take place across the country to promote understanding of the Islamic faith. Promotional publicity states that the festival will feature the "diversity and plurality" of Muslim cultures, but gay Muslims say they have been refused permission to present an event.
And if it was only because of that Akbar or Ataturk that conditions were better at times, then what does that tell us?
I realize that most Indian textbooks, in their dhimmitude, try to extol Akbar as a compassionate and enlightened muslim ruler, but the reality is far from that. While he may have been a slightly less barbarian than his predecessors, he was by no means enlightened. He was just as tyrannical as all the other Mughal rulers. Have a look at:
http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/akbar_ppg.html
This site also lists some good references.
more here:
http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/2006jan/2302.htm
Organisers Claim Gay Muslims “Give Offence”
to jihadwatchers : there's a BIG difference from disagreeing with someone's lifestyle and "giving offense".
they are just expressing viseral hatred for a segment of the Muslim community.
are we are supposed to be "tolerant" of this?
someone - give that Dutch Somali MP , Hirsi Ali a call.. she'll tell them whats what.
From the article in The American Scholar:
"An interesting difference in hostile stereotypes can be found in annecdotes, jokes and the like. The main negative quality attributed to Jews in Turkish and Arab folklore was that they were cowardly and unmilitary--very contemptible qualities in a martial society. A late Ottoman joke may serve to illustrate this. The story is that in 1912, at the time of the Balkan war, when there was an acute threat to the Ottoman Empire in its final stages, the Jews, full of patriotic ardor, decided that they, too, wanted to serve in the defense of their country, so they asked permission to form a special volunteer brigade. Permission was given, and officers and NCOs were sent to train and equip them. Once the Jewish volunteer brigade was armed, equipped, and trained, ready to leave for the front, they sent a message asking if they could have a police escort, because there were reports of bandits on the road.
This is a very interesting human document. Is it hostile? Not really. It shows a sort of amused tolerance, at once good humored and contemptuous, that may help us to understand the bewilderment and horror at the Israeli victories in 1948 and after..."
Oh, you mean the jihad had nothing to do with it?
On a positive note, Lewis, unlike Albert Brooks, seems to have located humour in the Muslim world.
... he became fiercely indignant and cried, "No! No! No! There is nothing in Islam to support this! Islam has a long history of rejecting tyranny!"
In other words, Bernard Lewis is a liar.
I have been sent a copy of an interview with Bernard Lewis that appeared in 2002 in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot and in which -- rather begrudgingly -- he makes the admission that he was "wrong about Oslo":
He then goes on to explain that it was merely a matter of inexperienced diplomats, betting on the wrong horse, Arafat. There is no indication that something deeper might be involved, that the Arab Muslims will neverreconcile themselves to the existence of Israel, no matter what its borders, and all negotiations, and all treaties, with Infidel states, are merely temporary measures designed to buy time for the Muslim side. Yet Lewis manages never to discuss this matter, as if the consequences of such a discussion, by showing how silly has been the Western world's mania for getting the Israelis to enter into these farcical and damaging "peace processes" one after the other, would be too grim.
See what you think. The whole interview is below repays study. Note the astonishing tossed-off remark about the great "generosity" of Islamic victors, and ask yourself what Lewis could conceivably be thinking of. Note at the very end, as well, back in 2002, the dreamy prediction about how people in a "liberated-from-local-tyrant Baghdad (not to mention two other Muslim capital cities), would be full of joy, and a natural implication would be that they would also be bursting with gratitude toward their liberators:
"The demonstrations for joy in
Kabul will seem like funeral processions compared to the demonstrations for
joy that will break out in Baghdad, Tehran and perhaps even Damascus, if the west brought about the expulsion of the despotic inefficient regimes that rule in these countries."
Was this what Harold Rhode, Lewis's former student and book dedicatee, came to believe because of his reverence for Lewis? Was this what Feith, who listened to Rhode, came to believe, or what so impressed Cheney when he, apparently, listened to Lewis? Did they come to believe that that "joy in Kabul" when the Taliban was overthrown would be "like a funeral procession" compared to what would happen if, in Baghdad, or in "Tehran and perhaps even Damascus" would be the result if those "despotic inefficient regimes that rule" were overthrown, by the Americans? Who could not be enthusiastic about getting rid of Saddam Hussein if what would follow would be a "joy" that would make what happened in Kabul seem like "a funeral procession"? But Lewis was not only wrong, yet again (as with the Oslo Accords) in what he predicted, but what he predicted was so false in what it implied, for what it implied was joyous Baghdaders, grateful to their liberators, when soon enough, almost overnight, those liberators were seen, as they are, not as liberators but as "Infidels." To be exploited for their money and other aid, to be exploited insofar as they would take care of one's enemies for one, but not of course ever to be regarded with real, as opposed to feign, affection or gratitude. That would be left only to those who were either non0-Muslim, or if officially Muslim, of the "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" variety.
And of course we now know what happened in Baghdad. After $350 billion, and many lives sacrificed, and not only removing a dictatore but building thousands of schoolrooms, equipping a hundred hospitals, providing potable water to 4.5 million people in Iraq, and ushered them through one election, a Constitutional referendum, another election, and tried our best to keep them from being at each others' throats, oh we've liberated them all right. Was there ever a moment when you felt that they made, those people in Iraq, the "joy in Kabul" look like a "funeral procession"? Have they proven themselves to be, at any point, full of genuine gratitudekto the Americans, or would it be fairer to say that when Al-Jaafari oilily tried to inveigle the Americans, on his trip here, into a "Marshall Plan for Iraq -- I think it should be called the Bush Plan" -- that all the greed, the whining, the expectation that America would "turn Baghdad into New York" over night, that the "wake-me-when-it's-over" attitude of the Iraqis, was fully on display, and was nothing like what Bernard Lewis expected -- but what J. B. Kelly, who took a drier view of the Arabs, based on a more revealing experience with them, than Lewis ever has, and even warned some of the same people that the Iraq venture would end in tears.
Here's the Interview from 2002 with Lewis, in "Ha'aretz":
YOU PEGGED YOUR HOPE ON THE OSLO PROCESS.
That would be correct.
WERE YOU PROVED WRONG?
To my great regret, I must confess I made a mistake.
WHAT DID THE ERROR IN YOUR ASSESSMENT STEM FROM?
Historically, the Palestinian leaders have consistently made the wrong choice. It started with their refusing the terms of the Peel Commission and their rejection of the UN Partition Plan. They made mistakes in their choice of friends: during the Second World War they chose the Nazis, during the Cold War they chose the Soviet Bloc and in the Gulf War they joined with Saddam Hussein. Do they have an astonishing instinct that pushes them to the verge of destruction? Indeed not. They turned to the enemies of their enemies and this is natural. After the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, they once again had no super power patron, and after the Gulf War, even most of
the Arab governments were disgusted with them, particularly those that could offer them financial aid. Under these circumstances, I thought the Rabin government was correct in moving as it did, but it erred in its choice of its partner for the process."
ARAFAT?
Yes, the idea of bringing Arafat from Tunis was a mistake.
ISRAEL TRIED TO TALK WITH THE PALESTINIAN LEADERS IN THE OCCUPIED
TERRITORIES, BUT AT THE MADRID CONFERENCE IT WAS PROVEN THAT THEY HAVE NO
LEADER BESIDES HIM.
It's true that according to the resolution of the Arab League, the PLO is the Palestinians' only representative organization. From this distance in time it is hard for me to judge if it would have been better to insist on finding an alternative to it, or perhaps there was no other choice.
IN AN INTERVIEW YOU SAID THAT THE ONES WHO CONDUCTED THE NEGOTIATIONS ON BOTH SIDES WERE COMPLETE AMATEURS. WHAT DID YOU MEAN?
It's clear they were not professional diplomats and they did not have much experience in conducting negotiations.
WHAT WAS THE BIG MISTAKE OF THE NEGOTIATORS AT CAMP DAVID?
They forgot that is not just a matter of negotiations between leaders, but between two differing civilizations. It is easy to slip and interpret your adversary according to your worldview. I will give you an example. I think that Israel was right to enter Lebanon, and I well remember how its army was received as an army of liberation, with flowers and music, but from the moment the job was completed, it was necessary to withdraw from there. The late withdrawal, as it was undertaken without agreement, with abandonment of friends and weaponry, was interpreted by the Palestinians and the other Arabs as a sign of weakness. From the experience of Hizbullah they derived that the Israelis are soft, pampered, and if they are hit -- they will surrender. These things have been said explicitly by the Palestinians.
DO THE TWO CULTURES INTERPRET DIFFERENTLY THE CONCEPTS OF "FAIR COMPROMISE" AND "VIEWING REALITY OUT OF A CONSIDERATION FOR THE ENEMY'S POINT OF VIEW?
Let me be precise: Muslim culture stands out in the generosity of its
victors. The victor does not push the face of the vanquished in the dust, but the result of the struggle has to be clear to both sides. A struggle that ends indecisively is an invitation for trouble. The Ottomans provided us with many examples of this conduct: they crushed rebels with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, but did not humiliate the defeated, they showed generosity toward them and even helped them rehabilitate themselves. If the one with the power does not exhaust his ability to bring about such a victory, his conduct is interpreted as cowardice.
Another example of differing interpretations of conduct is the is
significance of manners and customs: I visited Jordan some time after the signing of the peace agreement on which the Jordanians bed much hope, and I found the Jordanians agitated over the conduct of the Israeli tourists which they saw as provocative and humiliating. It was difficult for me to explain to them that Israelis behave that way even to each other. The Israelis, who seem to be the least polite people in the world, are not understood by the
Arabs, who have the most well-mannered culture in the world. It is not a matter of insignificant etiquette, but of conduct that has a bearing on relations between the peoples. The lack of courtesy of the Israeli solders at the checkpoints has terrible repercussions and something needs to be done about this matter.
DON'T YOU HAVE A TENDENCY TO OVERSTATE THE CLASH OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
CULTURES?
There is tremendous importance in these differences. Look, the Christian world and the Muslim world had friction with each other and fought against each other on many fronts during the course of a millennium. At the end of the 18th century the universities in the west had dozens of departments for eastern studies and hundreds of translations of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish works were printed. The western world longed to know its historic adversary, but a share in this curiosity was not given to the Muslim world. There they
did not learn the languages of the West, didn't take an interest in western history and thought and did not translate much literature into Arabic. Things changed somewhat when the power of the threat of the west became clear to them, but even now, if you go into a book store in Israel, you will easily find translations from Arabic literature and books about Arab andMuslim history. In contrast, if you go into a bookstore in an Arab capital and look for books on Israel, on Judaism and even on Christianity,practically all you will find is propaganda. Curiosity about one's fellow is a striking western phenomenon. In all the great cultures, except western
culture, the matter of one's fellow arises only in the presence of a
threat."
IS THIS SITUATION REGARDING CULTURES PERMANENT, OR A RESULT OF CIRCUMSTANCES THAT ARE LIKELY TO CHANGE?
It is definitely not permanent, but it is deeply rooted, more than manypeople like to think. For example, many point to the fact that only 2 of the 57 Muslim countries have semi democratic governments, but this does not say that Muslims lack the ability to develop their own version of democracy,that will not resemble any western democracy.
WHICH TWO COUNTRIES DO YOU MEAN?
Turkey and Bangladesh. Turkey is a wonderful example, which proves that it is very difficult to establish a liberal democracy in a culture with an ancient autocratic tradition, but it also proves that it is not impossible.
THE OUTBREAK OF THE SECOND INTIFADA HAS BEEN INTERPRETED BY MANY ISRAELIS, PERHAPS A MAJORITY, AS DECISIVE EVIDENCE THAT THE PALESTINIANS ARE NOT INTERESTED IN A COMPROMISE, BUT ARE DRIVING TOWARDS A COMPLETE VICTORY. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE INTIFADA?
I already told you that the withdrawal from Lebanon had a great influence on the decision of the Palestinians to renew the armed struggle. Israel is depicted as a country that resembles America and the Americans, who fled from Vietnam and extracted themselves suddenly from Lebanon and Somalia, proved by this conduct that they are pampered and not adapted to absorb losses. Likewise the Israelis, who became rich and got soft and pampered
themselves. America and Israel are close friends and the Palestinians took apage from the conduct of America in analyzing the expected conduct of Israel.
A FEW YEARS AGO YOU PUBLISHED AN ARTICLE WHICH HAD GREAT RESONANCE: "THE ROOTS OF MUSLIM RAGE". WOULD YOU AGREE TO ENCAPSULATE THE BASIC IDEAS IN THE ARTICLE AND UPDATE THEM IN LIGHT OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE IT WAS
PUBLISHED.
In the whole Muslim world in our day a feeling of frustration and crisis prevails. Everything is mixed up. For more than a thousand years the Muslims became accustomed to the belief, justified in its time, that they represented the most advanced part of the world, and that they are the ones who set the standards in politics, economics and science. In the new age the Muslims came to realize that their power had weakened and that even adopting western technology wasn't any help. The western ideas of socialism and capitalism did not halt the economic deterioration, and then the belief arose that redemption was to be found in adopting the western democratic
brand of government. Most unfortunately it was proven that the only western brand that succeeded in taking root in the Muslim world was dictatorship, based on a single party. Political independence did not give rise to freedom. The reaction to these disappointments is resistance to any ideas imported from the west and blaming the west for all the unhealthy evils that stemmed from the failed attempt to imitate its culture.
Now there are two options: some feel that the failure stems from abandonment of the earlier traditions, leaving behind the authentic Islamic culture. The two main versions that have stemmed from this feeling are Wahabi Fundamentalism which is disseminated by the Saudis, and the Iranian-Shiite Fundamentalism. The other option, which adherents to the modern hold, says that the failure stems from the Muslims having adopted the shell of western culture and not its deep content, and therefore it is necessary to introduce western values in their full depth. In all of the Muslim world there are
people who think that way, but the dictatorships make it difficult for them to express their opinions openly.
IS OSAMA BIN LADEN THE EXTREME EXPRESSION OF THE FIRST OPTION?
Of course. But here one must stress the importance of Arab oil. The
tremendous profits that the Saudis accumulated have enabled them to develop a network of schools with many branches that cultivates WahabiFundamentalism. It is possible that if not for the oil, this movement would have remained an otherworldly phenomenon in a marginal country. In general, the oil is the Arabs' disaster, because it enabled governments to accumulate enormous wealth which strengthens their political and military power and destroys democracy and freedom in the bud. It is no accident that the only
countries in which the beginnings of a civilian society are growing are Morocco and Jordan which have no oil.
IS AMERICA HATED IN THE MUSLIM WORLD BECAUSE IT SUPPORTS ISRAEL, OR IS ISRAEL HATED BECAUSE IT IS PERCEIVED AS A FORWARD STRONGHOLD OF THE WEST IN THE MUSLIM WORLD?
Both. Of course, the bond with Israel does not help America's popularity,but the Mideast is not the only place in the world in which they loathe this large wealthy empire. It is hated because it is so successful and local figures exploit the resentment for their special needs. For example, for Bin Laden the main problem is his country, Saudi Arabia, which he wants to rid of the presence of infidels. He mentions Israel, if at all, in the third place on his list of targets. In one of his speeches he called it "a lowly
little country", in other words not something substantial or very important and in an interview he gave some years ago he said that if the Americansleave Saudi Arabia he would be prepared to sign a peace agreement. Israel isan easy target for propagandists in the Arab world because attacking it does not endanger them, while in some Arab countries they are looking for trouble if they disseminate attacks against America. The propagandists know that in America and Europe there is a willing ear for anti-Israel propaganda and the
reason is that directing an assault against Israel eases the burden of the accusations that are spread on them in the west. This is where the aggression towards Israel in the Sabra and Shatila affair comes from, as compared with the leniency towards the deeds of Hafez Assad in the city of Hama, or towards the chemical weapons attack on the Kurds in Halbaja.
WHAT ARE THE LONG RANGE RESULTS OF THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN?
People in the West are accustomed to ask "why don't they like us" and the simple answer is that you can't be wealthy, strong and successful and be liked, especially considering that for a few hundred years you have won every battle. The correct question is: "why have they stopped respecting you, or at least fearing you?" I mentioned earlier that men like Bin Laden believed that the west was pampered and soft. I hope that the war in Afghanistan changed this perception, because it proves that the idea that America and the other western countries are soft is an invention, and that
they are afraid to fight when their civilization is attacked. Now there are two possibilities: either the people in the Muslim world, and particularly the Arabs, decide that in order to establish a better society it is necessary to turn to the path of peace and cooperation with the west, or they will believe that the defeat in Afghanistan was a painful episode but they need to continue in the same path. I hope that the first way will win, but I can't exclude the possibility that the second idea will take hold.
ISRAEL SEES IRAN AS A GREAT MILITARY DANGER. ARE CHANGES HAPPENING IN IT THAT COULD EASE OUR MINDS?
The Iranian politicians who are depicted as moderates, are nothing but makeup whose purpose is to enable the regime to continue acting as it wants, but many signs indicate that the regime has become very unpopular, and will be thrown out if an opportunity presents itself. Here I want to mention a paradox: the masses in countries that declare their opposition to America love America, while the masses in countries whose governments support America, exhibit resentment towards America. It is no accident that the terrorists who attacked the twin towers and the Pentagon indeed came from Egypt and Saudi Arabia while in Tehran there were large spontaneous, authentic demonstrations, in which people expressed sorrow. It is clear that
the hatred for America in Egypt and Saudi Arabia stems, first and foremost, from the hatred for the corrupt regimes there. The demonstrations for joy in Kabul will seem like funeral processions compared to the demonstrations for joy that will break out in Baghdad, Tehran and perhaps even Damascus, if the west brought about the expulsion of the despotic inefficient regimes that rule in these countries.
(This article originally appeared in Hebrew in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot and was translated by Jonathan Silverman)
Read the interview through, and see what you think.
"The Israelis, who seem to be the least polite people in the world, are not understood by the
Arabs, who have the most well-mannered culture in the world."
Their suicide bombers are especially polite, saying "excuse me while I blow you all to oblivion (and myself to Paradise)" prior to detonating their dynamite vests.
In my field, if I lied and denied or distorted pertinent facts, I'd be discredited and my career would be over. At the very least, errors require a retraction or correction. Lewis denies that Islam (esp. Koran) itself contains anti-Semitism, and he gets promoted and receives awards. Pleasant to say, pleasant to hear. There are worse apologists of Islam than Lewis, but this so-called authority on Islam has apparently not even read the Koran. If he hasn't got the basics right, how can he talk about the complexities? His basic premises are flawed.
Bernard Lewis, and others like him, are partly and to some significant degree responsible for the western public's ignorance about the problems and indeed the dangers of Islam. In societies that depend on expert knowledge, as we do, we need the experts to be first and foremost honest about important but unpleasant facts.
Bernard Lewis: I will not see, hear, read, or know of any anti-Semitism approved by Islam:
9:29 Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.
9:30 And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old. Allah (Himself) fighteth against them. How perverse are they!
9:31 They have taken as lords beside Allah their rabbis and their monks and the Messiah son of Mary, when they were bidden to worship only One God. There is no God save Him. Be He Glorified from all that they ascribe as partner (unto Him)!
9:32 Fain would they put out the light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah disdaineth (aught) save that He shall perfect His light, however much the disbelievers are averse.
9:33 He it is Who hath sent His messenger with the guidance and the Religion of Truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religion, however much the idolaters may be averse.
9:34 O ye who believe! Lo! many of the (Jewish) rabbis and the (Christian) monks devour the wealth of mankind wantonly and debar (men) from the way of Allah. They who hoard up gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah, unto them give tidings (O Muhammad) of a painful doom,
9:35 On the day when it will (all) be heated in the fire of hell, and their foreheads and their flanks and their backs will be branded therewith (and it will be said unto them): Here is that which ye hoarded for yourselves. Now taste of what ye used to hoard.
5:51 O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.
5:64 The Jews say: Allah's hand is fettered. Their hands are fettered and they are accursed for saying so. Nay, but both His hands are spread out wide in bounty. He bestoweth as He will. That which hath been revealed unto thee from thy Lord is certain to increase the contumacy and disbelief of many of them, and We have cast among them enmity and hatred till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, Allah extinguisheth it. Their effort is for corruption in the land, and Allah loveth not corrupters.
I generally agree with the point about Bernard Lewis being soft on Islam, in particular re the dhimma and its meaning. On the other hand, he did write a book with a title something like: Race and Slavery in Islam, which is softer than we might want, but does make the point and present useful info. [This book was preceded by a much shorter version]
I would immodestly like to claim some credit for his writing the book. I heard him lecture about 1969 in the US at an Ivy League university. He may have on that occasion denied or minimized any racism in Islam. In my question, I asked if he were not aware that Avicenna had written in Healing Metaphysics, book X: "The same applies to people not very capable of acquiring virtue. For these are slaves by nature as, for example, the Turks and the Zinjis [East Africans]. . ." [Marmura trans. in Lerner and Mahdi, eds., Medieval Political Philosophy, p 108]. I suggested that this was an instance of racism. Maybe I [immodestly] started him off with the idea to write that later book. However, back to the topic, he definitely soft-peddles the issue of dhimmitude.
[before anyone points out that Avicenna's statement here is a paraphrase of something that Aristotle said, probably about barbarians, OK, so it is.]
That comment about the excruciatingly polite Arab manners, sticks in one's craw, and is one more example of how carefully Lewis listens to his inner Muslim audience, always careful to say something, wherever he is, to assure one and all that he wishes always to give Muslims and Arabs their due, and more than their due (his comments about Islamic civilization being, in its day, unrivalled, should cause a bitter laugh from the ghost of Joseph Needham, not to mention some scholars revealing new things every day about the pre-Columbian civilizations -- and, as far as Europe goes, from all sorts of people, beginning with one of the two confusible Chadwicks, and the confusible Peters (Green and Brown), and many others.
Such a remark sticks in the craw of anyone capable of distinguishing the oleaginous from the upright. Manners Maketh Man alright. But they have to be real manners, not the oily Middle-Eastern variety, of the kind that the late King Hussein specialized in, or his brother plummy-voiced Prince Hassan, the one who could be the voice on those Metropolitan audioguides if Philippe de Montebello ever gets laryngitis, specialize in.
How do Newfoundlanders perceive time?
Bernard Lewis's take on the Middle East today is laughable and almost Friedmanesque.
"They made mistakes in their choice of friends: during the Second World War they chose the Nazis, during the Cold War they chose the Soviet Bloc and in the Gulf War they joined with Saddam Hussein. Do they have an astonishing instinct that pushes them to the verge of destruction? Indeed not. They turned to the enemies of their enemies and this is natural."
They don't have an instinct that pushes them to the verge of destruction but siding with their enemy's enemies is natural? Lewis fails to mention that in each case, the group that the Palestinians sided with was against the Great Satan (whether it was Britain or America at the time). He also fails to mention that in each case, their ally was openly antisemitic.
"It's true that according to the resolution of the Arab League, the PLO is the Palestinians' only representative organization. From this distance in time it is hard for me to judge if it would have been better to insist on finding an alternative to it, or perhaps there was no other choice."
Who would have Lewis preferred? Hamas? The PFLP? He's acting like there was a Palestinian party at the time that recognized Israel's right to exist when there clearly wasn't.
"Another example of differing interpretations of conduct is the is
significance of manners and customs: I visited Jordan some time after the signing of the peace agreement on which the Jordanians bed much hope, and I found the Jordanians agitated over the conduct of the Israeli tourists which they saw as provocative and humiliating. It was difficult for me to explain to them that Israelis behave that way even to each other. The Israelis, who seem to be the least polite people in the world, are not understood by the
Arabs, who have the most well-mannered culture in the world."
Complete dogshit. I really doubt that the Jordanians were so offended at the Israelis because they were "rude". It probably had more to do with the HUMILIATION of Jews walking around Jordan as wealthy tourists who didn't have to act like dhimmis to their Muslim masters. Well, that and there was probably UNLAWFUL mixing of the sexes and PROVOCATIVE clothing being worn by the women. American tourists the Jordanians can tolerate to a certain degree, but the Jews, the worst enemy of the Muslims and the warmongerers who are oppressing the poor Palestinians, cannot be tolerated.
"The western world longed to know its historic adversary, but a share in this curiosity was not given to the Muslim world. There they
did not learn the languages of the West, didn't take an interest in western history and thought and did not translate much literature into Arabic."
Lewis fails to mention that Islam has no interest in secular knowledge. Only religious knowledge is important. You only learn about the infidels if the books will reveal their plans, and that is the main reason why the "Protocols" are so popular in the Arab world.
"Turkey and Bangladesh. Turkey is a wonderful example, which proves that it is very difficult to establish a liberal democracy in a culture with an ancient autocratic tradition, but it also proves that it is not impossible."
Oh it's possible alright, if you enforce it with a military that is more loyal to the Ataturk cult than to Islam and having a secret police always helps. I notice Lewis doesn't mention Bangladesh as a good example. Could it be because as its non-Muslim population declined, so did its democracy? Things that make you go hmmmmm.
"For more than a thousand years the Muslims became accustomed to the belief, justified in its time, that they represented the most advanced part of the world, and that they are the ones who set the standards in politics, economics and science. In the new age the Muslims came to realize that their power had weakened and that even adopting western technology wasn't any help....The reaction to these disappointments is resistance to any ideas imported from the west and blaming the west for all the unhealthy evils that stemmed from the failed attempt to imitate its culture."
Lewis should just call a spade a spade. The root of Islamic rage is Islamic arrogance and supremacism. They see that the infidels are the most prosperous and the most cultured around when they rightfully believe that they should be, not on account of how hard they work, but on account of being Muslim. So they get angry about the West, deriding their culture and their lack of morals, but when they make a full return to Islam like Iran and Saudi Arabia, it doesn't occur to them that Islam isn't building their nuclear reactors or staffing their elite hospitals. No, that's the infidels.
"Here I want to mention a paradox: the masses in countries that declare their opposition to America love America, while the masses in countries whose governments support America, exhibit resentment towards America."
Iran is a special case but this paradox is not universal. Take a look at the other countries that are not friendly with America such as Sudan, Libya, and Syria. They don't love them and its because they are infidels. Even Iran is not that reliable, many anti-mullah Iranians still hate America because they blame America for the fall of Mossadegh. There is no Muslim populace that can be described in the Muslim world as being pro-American despite the foreign aid America gives to them.
Bernard Lewis has a real problem with applying the ideology of Islam to the current political situation in the Middle East. It's distressing to think that he has so much influence even among the more tolerable academics in MESA Nostra.
This part, at least--and the celebration if only applicable to Shiites--sounds similar to some of things Hugh/Robert have written regarding Iraq: "I think
that Israel was right to enter Lebanon, and I well remember how its army was
received as an army of liberation, with flowers and music, but from the
moment the job was completed, it was necessary to withdraw from there."
For what it's worth--hey, I'm hungry--Lewis's comment about Arab vs. Israeli manners certainly applies when it comes to restaurants.
If you go to an falafel/shishlik joint in Israel and get a warm welcome and friendly smiles from the staff, you can be quite sure that you've just eaten at an Arab-owned restaurant.
Get the crabby "what do you want" from the waiter--not to mention the anemically bland falafel--well that there is a Jewish restaurant.
Say what you will about more important issues, but Arabs have certainly produced some of the best tasting food in the world... How did that come about?
Re: Newfoundlander's perception of time. The piece in The American Scholar is about how people in small Newfoundland fishing communities, known as outports, don't look at time in chronological terms--such and such event happened on a certain date in a certain year--but perceive it as being what the author of the article, Robert Finch, refers to as "flat time." That is, notable events in a community's life are all thought of as having taken place at some indeterminate time in the past. Whether recent or remote, it matters not, as these stories (like the time some fishmen were lost at sea, or the time when a pirate ship tried to evade a British ship that had been chasing it in a local harbour) become part of folklore, to be recounted and cherished like legends. From the article:
"What is common to all these stories, ancient or recent, is a lack of specification of time. the rich memory bank of the people of Squid Tickle seems to exist in a single, fluid layer called the past, out of which stories and events can be withdrawn at will, in great detail, and with a freshness that makes a conflagration that occurred almost 90 years ago seem as recent as last year's fishing season. Part of the immediacy of the local past stems, as it does in other oral cultures, from the fact that important or memorable events were almost always fashioned into poems, songs or ballands. Most common were the numerous ballads recounting some disaster at sea or some other loss of life. The effect of such ballads was not only to preserve these events in the communal memory, but to mythologize them, the way docudramas and films 'based on a true story' do in our electronic media culture, and thus to place them outside the mundane rubric of real, linear time."
In a way, Newfoundlanders are as devoted to the "epic" stories of their past as jihadis--and if there's any people who deserve to be pissed off at the crappy hand they seem to have been dealt (awful weather, poverty, a raw deal from the Mainland), it's the people of Newfoundland. Yet, they have a culture in which kvetching and whining has absolutely no place; one in which complaints and grievences are turned into song. They also have the most biting--and at the same time, arguably the sweetest--sense of humour of any people in the Western hemisphere.
Then again, they don't have a sense of themselves as being God's gift, supreme among men, and responsible for transforming the planet into a Dar al Newfie.
How do Newfoundlanders perceive time?
Through the mists of the scudding fog. It's all that single malt going down up there.
More Churchillian resolve from Blair
FIRST LIVINGSTONE-NOW THE PRIME MINISTER
Prime Minister Tony Blair led tributes to the influential Muslim cleric Dr Zaki Badawi, who died on Monday.
Mr Blair said the religious leader was a "wonderful mixture of the spiritual and the practical" who dedicated his life to the service of his faith.
http://uppompeii.blogspot.com/
This Badawi is the same who cautioned Prince Charles from taking sides on wether apostates of islam should be executed.
Rally against Islamofacism - Feb.1 nationwide - Group demands Muslim Nazism be documented by Holocaust museum
January 24, 2006
Efforts Against Islamo-Fascism and Muslim Anti-Semitism
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/1575
I really shouldn't, but what the hey...
Having lived among Newfies, I won't answer how they perceive time.
For all Lewis' failings, I still recommend his The Political Language of Islam, written in the early 1980s. It is very clean and dry, and dreadfully thorough. What it lacks is imagination, because he clearly spells out, for example, the land of war, the land of Islam, the land of Truce, and all the laws relating to, including those of wars among muslims,etc. Everything to alarm you is there, but it's treated like a theoretical law experiment, and utterly divorced from history. You could read it as a companion to A Guide for the Traveler (sic), and they would never contradict each other.
For some, Lewis' clinical explanations are exactly what are needed--devoid of any hint of extremism, reactionary rhetoric, etc. I've seen it raise hair on more than a few readers.
Hugh, Lewis is on my list as well after hearing that quote about those rude, abrasive Israelis, trampeling all over those Muslim places in Jordan . . . sheesh, sounds like Bin Laden. As opposed to those wonderful manners found in the Islamic world. Kind of like Lawrence of Arabia, right Professor? Oh sure, there's those pesky beheadings now and then, but aside from that, impecable manners.
Ah, to be the tenured orientalist. To enjoy the refined company of Jordanian brass and, of course, those fine Turkish scholars. I used to ride to middle school to a middle school in Chicago from the burbs. It was a long hour-long ride. My brother and I were the only non armenians on the bus. One of the armenians told me, "you Jews think you had it bad, we also had it bad . . . . every heard about the Turks." I was 12 and didn't know what in gods name he was talking about. Nothing in the world book . . . no internet back in the 70's . . . no Barnes and Nobles. My dad also was clueless. Only now do I see the full magnitude of what happened to the Armenians . . . 1.5 million out of 2.0 million beheaded, raped and killed. Our moderate Turks like to kill the young boys in particular. The worlds lack of response to the slaughter of Christian Armenians certainly inspired Mr. Hitler. Ah the refined company of the Turks . . . who can't even admit what happened. There was a debate on Jihad Watch recently vis-a-vis Germany. But they, The Germans, never went in for denial. Many felt horrible, some indifferent . . . but this unique Turkish issue of denial or taboo of a topic so long afterwards? Is this shades of the destruction of ancient buildings in Mecca? or the Taliban taking down an ancient statue? Almost a perverse denial of a pre-Islamic history or culture. To admit the massacare this deadly would damage Islam, better to deny, deny and deny some more. These are the kinds of people that Mr. Lewis admires? Wow.
ps. I'd like to slip Adam Bagdasarian's book The Forgotten Fire under Lewis' door when he's not looking. This is a beautiful accounting of a personal view of the armenian genocide based on tape recordings of Bagdasarian's relative before he died. I recomend this book without reservation to anyone wishing more information on the events of Armenia in the second decade of the twentieth century. Getting back to Mr. Lewis, hit motives for not coming clean are not economic . . . ie losing grant . . . but losing face, prestige. He would be discredited by all of those who had sung his praises in the past. Sad but true. The whole crew of folks who praised the Oslo process are increasingly looking like microcephalic dimwits . . . or should I say dhimmwits. I wonder if Mr. Lewis ever heard of the word dhimmwit.
But they have to be real manners, not the oily Middle-Eastern variety.
Whenever I'm in a crowd of smiling Moslems, I keep grabbing my ass to make sure my wallet is still there. Of course they smile when trying to take your money. What kind of courtesy is that? Give the Jews credit for their brutal honesty. WYSIWYG.
MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE!!
My ideal of courtesy would be the English. Especially back in the day when they had that stout character, before they went all Oprah and whatnot.
WELL Has anyone thought about Lewis being a convert??
I saw him once on Cspan and this is what I thought he Riped a woman who had come to hesr him who had read the qu-ran and treated her like a dimmi??
Was a few years back but when I saw him attack her and tell her she didn't know what she had read and shoould just shut-up and sit down I SAID TO MYSELF YEP CONVERT!!
Just a thought but some collage teachers are just as-holes like that too but I have never read any of his books nor would I??
As for Gorgetown remember they got 20million for being good little dimmis just last year??
Peterwardein, Battle of
Fought 7 August 1716, after an Ottoman Turkish invasion of Austria, when Eugene of Savoy inflicted a major defeat on a much larger Turkish invading army.
http://members.aol.com/balkandave/eugen.htm
Prince Eugene in Eastern Europe
Introduction
Prince Eugene of Savoy is best known to British readers as the erstwhile ally of Marlborough during the wars against Louis XIV. However, it was in Eastern Europe fighting against the Ottoman Empire that he both learnt the art of war and won some of his greatest victories.
Eugene was was born in France and brought up in the court circles of Louis XIV. It was only after being refused entry to the French army that he fled France and took service with the Hapsburg Emperor Leopold I. This was 1683 and Leopold needed all the help he could get with the Grand Vezier, Kara Mustapha besieging Vienna.
The War of the Holy League
Eugene joined the command of his cousin Louis of Baden, which formed part of the Lorraine’s Imperial army. Allied with Sobieski’s Poles they drove the Turks from Vienna. This was Eugene’s first action and he was presented with golden spurs in recognition of his bravery. He was given the Colonelcy of the Dragoon Regiment Kufstein and spearheaded the armies advance into Hungary.
For the next three years his regiment was in the thick of the action. At the battle of Szent Endre 1684 the charge of his regiment broke the Turks leading the allies to Buda where Eugene is again mentioned in dispatches in the defeat of the relief army. His success lead to promotion as Major-General in 1685 and he was twice wounded in the eventual capture of Buda in the following year.
The Ottoman army responded in 1687 and battle was joined at Berg Harsan (near Mohacs). Ottoman troops replused by Imperial firepower were counterattacked by Eugene’s cavalry brigade and driven from the field. Eugene was selected to convey the good news to the Emperor and was promoted to divisional command as Feldmarschall-Lieutenant. He was only 24 years of age.
The following year Eugene was at the siege of Belgrade which fell more easily than Buda. Eugene was not present at the fall of the citadel due to a serious wound that forced him to return to Vienna. Eugene did not return to the eastern front as his talents both military and diplomatic were needed in Savoy against the French.
Zenta
Whilst Eugene was in Italy the campaign dragged on in the East. In 1690 the Ottomans recaptured Serbia including Belgrade although the following year Louis of Baden captured all of Transylvania. The war ground to a stalemate for the next six years.
Eugene was given command of the army in Hungary in 1697. He joined his force of 30,000 men at Peterwardein with orders to stand on the defensive. The Ottoman Sultan Mustapha personally lead his army north from Belgrade along the River Tisza. Eugene also went North linking up with reinforcements which strengthened his army to 50,000 men. Mustapha moved on Szeged and Eugene followed with his Hussars limiting Mustapha’s intelligence due to their shortage of cavalry. The Sultan lost his nerve and ordered his army to cross the Tisza at Zenta on a pontoon bridge.
On 11 September a captured Pasha disclosed that whilst the Sultan and his artillery had crossed the river the bulk of the infantry with the Grand Vizier had not. Eugene rushed his army to the high ground above Zenta. His left wing infantry used a sandbank to get behind the Turkish defences and cut off access to the bridge. Some 20,000 Turks including the Grand Vizier were slaughtered and a further 10,000 drowned. Eugene’s army lost about 300 men.
This victory was decisive and lead to the Treaty of Karlowitz 1699 in which the Hapsburgs gained all of Hungary and Transylvania except the Banat of Temesvar. Eugene’s reputation was made across Europe.
The Armies
Whilst Eugene’s command achievements were considerable the superiority of the army he lead owed more to the work of Raymond Montecuccoli. He improved mobility with smaller battalions and increased firepower by reducing the proportion of pikes. This work was continued after his death with the introduction of flintlocks with plug, ring and socket bayonet before most other western armies including the French. The Imperial forces in the Balkans also relied more heavily on light field artillery and up to a third of the army was cavalry. Dragoons (including Eugene’s early command) providing firepower (often on foot) with cuirassiers for shock action. The hussars who were mainly Croats as Hungary was in revolt for most of this period were used for raiding and scouting. A vital counter to the Ottoman Tartar horsemen.
The Ottoman armies of this period were not radically different tactically from the highpoint of Ottoman expansion. Light troops sought to goad the Imperial troops from their defensive position onto the Janissaries and the heavy artillery. However, the quality of the army had declined. The Janissaries were no longer the disciplined force of the previous century and economic pressures had undermined the Timar system and with it the Sipahis. The provincial Seratculi infantry were excellent skirmishers well suited for the endemic border warfare, but of limited value on the battlefield. The main problem was simply that the army had not adopted the advances in fire discipline which gave the Imperial army its vital cutting edge.
YES AND WE HAVE HELPED THEM THROUGH TRESON AND EUROPE THROUGH APPESSMENT
NOW INSTEAD OF THEM CALLING THEMSELFS TURKS THEY ARE CALLING THEMSELVES ISLAMIC AND IRANI AND OTHERS??
YES THIS FIGHT WILL BE HARD BUT WE WILL WIN!!!
http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/iran.htm
January 16, 1997
Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base
Suppression of Enemies
As might be expected, one manifestation of the radical Islamic orientation of the Izetbegovic government is increasing curtailment of the freedoms of the remaining non-Muslims (Croats and Serbs) in the Muslim-held zone. While there are similar pressures on minorities in the Serb- and Croat-held parts of Bosnia, in the Muslim zone they have a distinct Islamic flavor. For example, during the 1996-1997 Christmas and New Year holiday season, Muslim militants attempted to intimidate not only Muslims but Christians from engaging in what had become common holiday practices, such as gift-giving, putting up Christmas or New Year's trees, and playing the local Santa Claus figure, Grandfather Frost (Deda Mraz). ["The Holiday, All Wrapped Up; Bosnian Muslims Take Sides Over Santa," Washington Post, 12/26/96] In general:
"Even in Sarajevo itself, always portrayed as the most prominent multi-national community in Bosnia, pressure, both psychological and real, is impelling non-Bosniaks [i.e., non-Muslims] to leave. Some measures are indirect, such as attempts to ban the sale of pork and the growing predominance of [Bosniak] street names. Other measures are deliberate efforts to apply pressure. Examples include various means to make non-Bosniaks leave the city. Similar pressures, often with more violent expression and occasionally with overt official participation, are being used throughout Bosnia." ["Bosnia's Security and U.S. Policy in the Next Phase: A Policy Paper, International Research and Exchanges Board, November 1996]
In addition, President Izetbegovic's party, the SDA, has launched politically-motivated attacks on moderate Muslims both within the SDA and in rival parties. For example, in the summer of 1996 former Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic, (a Muslim, and son of the former imam at the main Sarajevo mosque) was set upon and beaten by SDA militants. Silajdzic claimed Izetbegovic himself was behind the attacks. [NYT, 9/2/96] Irfan Mustafic, a Muslim who co-founded the SDA, is a member of the Bosnian parliament and was president of the SDA's executive council in Srebrenica when it fell to Bosnian Serb forces; he was taken prisoner but later released. Because of several policy disagreements with Izetbegovic and his close associates, Mustafic was shot and seriously wounded in Srebrenica by Izetbegovic loyalists. [(Sarajevo) Slobodna Bosna, 7/14/96] Finally, one incident sums up both the ruthlessness of the Sarajevo establishment in dealing with their enemies as well as their international radical links:
"A special Bosnian army unit headed by Bakir Izetbegovic, the Bosnian president's son, murdered a Bosnian general found shot to death in Belgium last week, a Croatian newspaper reported . . . citing well-informed sources. The Vjesnik newspaper, controlled by the government, said the assassination of Yusuf Prazina was carried out by five members of a commando unit called 'Delta' and headed by Ismet Bajramovic also known as Celo. The paper said that three members of the Syrian-backed Palestinian movement Saika had Prazina under surveillance for three weeks before one of them, acting as an arms dealer, lured him into a trap in a car park along the main highway between Liege in eastern Belgium and the German border town of Aachen. Prazina, 30, nicknamed Yuka, went missing early last month. He was found Saturday with two bullet holes to the head. 'The necessary logistical means to carry out the operation were provided by Bakir Izetbegovic, son of Alija Izetbegovic, who left Sarajevo more than six months ago,' Vjesnik said. It added that Bakir Izetbegovic 'often travels between Brussels, Paris, Frankfurt, Baghdad, Tehran and Ankara, by using Iraqi and Pakistani passports,' and was in Belgium at the time of the assassination. Hasan Cengic, head of logistics for the army in Bosnia-Hercegovina, was 'personally involved in the assassination of Yuka Prazina,' the paper said." [Agence France Presse, 1/5/94]
Conclusion
The Clinton Administration's blunder in giving the green light to the Iranian arms pipeline was based, among other errors, on a gross misreading of the true nature and goals of the Izetbegovic regime in Sarajevo. It calls to mind the similar mistake of the Carter Administration, which in 1979 began lavish aid to the new Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the hopes that (if the United States were friendly enough) the nine comandantes would turn out to be democrats, not communists, despite abundant evidence to the contrary.
READ the whole thing will open your eyes and reads like WW2 history and we now can see even back to the 1600 all which the people like Lewis are a DANGER TO THE PEOPLE!
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
GOD BLESS THE USA AND HER FIGHTING FORCES AND ALL WHO FIGHT WITH HER GIVE THEM STRENGTH, WISDOM, SIGHT, AND COURAGE TO DESTROY ALL ISLAMIC TERRORIST AND ALL WHO SUPPORT THEM LET NOT THE WORLD BE DECEIVED BY THEM AMEN
PS
REMEMBER YOU CAN'T CHANGE THESE MISTAKE BUT LIKE FROM WW2 PRESS ON LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES BUT DON'T KILL YOURSELF OVER THEM.
IF STAND AND FIGHT IS WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO THAN DO IT!!
GOD BLESS THE USA AND HER FIGHTING FORCES AND ALL WHO FIGHT WITH HER... IF STAND AND FIGHT IS WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO THAN DO IT!!
Damn, girl. You're making me trigger happy with that kinda talk. I keep walking back and forth in front of my dresser eyeing that Walther thinking that maybe soon the forces will be joined.
WELL I did hear tonight that the Mexican goverment was handing out Maps on how to get across the border and where all the water holes were and the # of maps were 70,000
Now why do you think they would go and do something like that??
Hope someone goes and pokes some holes in those water cans??
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
GOD BLESS THE USA AND HER FIGHTING FORCES AND ALL WHO FIGHT WITH HER GIVE THEM STRENGTH, WISDOM, SIGHT, AND COURAGE TO STAY THE COURSE TO DESTROY ALL ISLAMIC TERRORIIST AND ALL WHO SUPPORT THEM
PS
I can't think about the Nazis and the Mexicans working together REMEMBER THE Verona Papers??
I must object to the characterization by both Bernard Lewis [and here he surprises me] and by Kamala that the Israelis are the rudest and the Arabs the most polite people. I ride buses often here in Jerusalem and I often see young people get up to offer seats to older people and pregnant women. They'll do it for anybody who has gray hair and seems old, even me, and I do not consider myself old. I usually say, Thank you but I'd rather stand. On the other hand, the old left in Israel were impolite because politeness and manners were considered bourgeois, and this has passed on to some of their offspring. But I believe these people are a minority among us. If Lewis' judgement was ever correct, then it applied when the Old Left were more dominant in our population.
As for the Arabs, they can be polite, excessively [saponaceously] so. But when they want to be rude, which is often enough, they turn their heads and do not look at the person speaking to them or trying to deal with them. And they often sneer at people who are not Arabs or who are somehow different. When they want your business of course, they hang on and can be annoying. They can also be very arrogant, even the kids who run after tourists offering to help them find their way. After the tourist has been led to a destination, even if close to where the kid began his assistance, the kid usually demands money for his services. I recall seeing an Arab kid [speaking English] demand a dollar each from a group of five tourists in the Old City of Jerusalem. I came up to the tourists and asked what had happened. I was told that the kid had led them only for a distance of about 20 or 30 meters, albeit around a corner that they might have missed until other people had come by.
On the other hand, about Lewis. I recall that he was one of Eddy Said's favorite targets or whipping boys, and reviewed Said's Orientalism rather unfavorably in the New York Rev of Books.
DP111 et all:
Should we be making Feb. 1 "official blue scarf day"?
Calling Edward Said comical and deplorable is acceptable; calling him "Eddy Said" as in the posting above is not. The same poster may not have seen, or may have choosen to think he can ignore, the comment after his calling a famous scholar "Pat Crone" at another thread a week or so ago. Patricia Crone, who is neither comical nor deplorable (as was Edward Said) can fitly be referred to only as Dr. Crone, or asProfessor Crone, or as Patricia Crone. Bernard Lewis is Bernard Lewis, not "Bernie" Lewis.
The poster in question may have thought such nicknames perfectly appropriate because, I gather, he comes from a country where at every level, there seems to be a penchant for calling leaders by nicknames -- Bibi and Mookie and Arik and Zvika. This may be reflect the smallness and coziness of the political establishment, and the deliberately-cultivated informality of the sabra who is supposed to ignore the stuffed-shirt Geheimrat mentalities of the too-Teutonic "Jekke" (German Jewish refugee, with his comical German ways and German-accented Hebrew), in some versions practically clicking his heels in some Erich-von-Stroheim film. Perhaps it reflects the need to domesticate authority.
In the United States, there was no "Frankie" Roosevelt. Jimmy Carter seems to have started it the fake-folksy practice in a big way, and "Bill" Clinton continued it, both of them laughing all the way to their respective banks of counterfiet prestige, and real money. The deplorable practice appears to have extended to England -- with "Tony" Blair.
One more bit of phony equality, the kind that we see in all the wrong places, and not in addition to, but instead of, the kind of equality, or lessening of inequality, in the right places.
No one called Edward Said "Eddy." No one calls Patricia Crone "Pat." The practice does not add; it detracts -- and distracts.
I think one province where diminutive nicknaming (among other things) is permissible is in the discussion forums and chat rooms of the Internet. Of course, a Director of such is free to outlaw "Eddy Said" in his neck of the woods; just as a Board Vice-President of such is free to complain about the practice in the absence of it being outlawed.
Use of the hypocoristic diminutive, fitting among family and close friends, when employed for reasons hardly hypocoristic, can make a point less rather than more effective. And if one is on the side of the poster in question, one cares.
That was my intent. Though the mild reproof may, in these delicate days, seem to have been accomplished in a schoolmarmish rapping-of-the-knuckles fashion, it was not meant to be, and the comment on the use of "Eddy Said" and on "Pat Crone" became enrolled in a larger comment on the Israeli custom of recent decades (not the kind of thing that was done, incidentally, in the pre-Mandate period, or even in the first two decades of Israel's existence), of referring to every Israeli public figure by a nickname. No harm, you say? Just a matter of affection or the expression of a close-knit society? Perhaps. But I sense something else going on. Israel is a country that many others, including its allies, seem to think can be pushed around. At this very moment the American government thinks it can interfere in what are clearly matters of moment to Israeli security, and dictate what the Israelis should do. They are entirely too willing to mute their justified outrage about this. A little aloofness, a little formality, a little reserve, is called for. Not a lot, but some. Un po' di dignita, starting with full names, and not this Mookie-Arik-Bibi stuff -- would be nice, and might have delicate but detectable effects, in how Israelis are treated by their interlocutors. Words matter. And Today We Have Naming of Parts.
That first posting, which some might find unnecessarily harsh, should not be misunderstood.
Message: I care.
The deplorable practice appears to have extended to England -- with "Tony" Blair.
Nonsense. It's a good old English tradition. "Maggie Thatcher", anyone? "Bertie"? And what about Winnie Churchill?
"Un po' di dignita" by all means, but let's not be po-faced. "Sir Iqbal" is a name with gravitas, but, at bottom, he will always be Icky to me.
That's "Sir" Iqbal Sacranie, if you please.
"The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language." - Emerson
Semantics are important. We are witnessing an increasing drive to homogenize our culture into something without form, something with no differences between people, no rank, no gender, no age, no you, no me - just a formless mass, with no hierarchy or differentiation.
The ummah by other means.
Emerson got the order wrong. Cart before horse. Hysteron-proteron.