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Lewis apparently confuses the practice of rulers consulting with advisers with democratic government. In fact, authoritarian governments were always the rule in the Islamic world, and there was no remotely democratic government until the establishment of modern secular Turkey in the 1920s -- and that society may not be long for this world.
This is now the second time Bernard Lewis has attributed a feature of modern Islamic culture to European influence. He did it at the beginning of the year with antisemitism, and now with authoritarianism. In the case of antisemitism, he never dealt with the virulent antisemitism of the Qur'an (see, for example, this IslamOnline article) or Islamic tradition. In this present case, he likewises glosses over centuries of Islamic history -- history that he more than anyone else has opened for modern Westerners -- to make an ahistorical and inaccurate claim.
Whenever we have run material critical of Bernard Lewis in the past, people have written in saying, "How dare you criticize Bernard Lewis? Your scholarship will never amount to a hundredth of what he has done," and the like. And to that I say: Granted. Bernard Lewis is hundreds of times greater than I am. He is a world-class historian and scholar. His achievements are undeniable. But with all respect, he is not infallible, and one need not have any more credentials than the facts of the case in order to question his conclusions. And here, as with Islamic antisemitism, the facts of the case are not with Bernard Lewis, and all his lifetime achievement does not change that.
Here, Andrew Bostom points us toward some earlier scholars who are well aware of those facts, and whose conclusions differed sharply from that of Lewis. "Another 'Just So' Story?," by Andrew G. Bostom in The American Thinker:
Speaking at a December 10-11, 2007 Rome Conference entitled, "Fighting for Democracy in the Islamic World," renowned historian Bernard Lewis intoned,"The authoritarianism present in the Middle East region is not part of the Arab and Muslim tradition, but it has been imported from Europe...."Lewis, according to the account of his lecture in Adnkronos International, then offered as putatively convincing support for his thesis the non-sequitur observation that during the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan (presumably, in the course of making decisions) consulted all the dignitaries, and when he ascended the throne he would greet the crowds, uttering "Allah is greater than you are."
This ahistorical contention, accompanied by an equally vacuous example of Ottoman era "proof," seems like a desynchronized "Spy Versus Spy" Mad Magazine segment with Lewis playing the role of both "Department of Joke and Dagger" agents, simultaneously, when juxtaposed to Lewis' own entry on hurriyya-Arabic for freedom-which appears in the venerable Encyclopedia of Islam.
Hurriyya and the uniquely Western concept of freedom are completely at odds. Hurriyya "freedom" - as Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) the lionized "Greatest Sufi Master", expressed it - "being perfect slavery." And this conception is not merely confined to the Sufis' perhaps metaphorical understanding of the relationship between Allah the "master" and his human "slaves."
The late American scholar of Islam, Franz Rosenthal (d. 2003), who wrote the first part of the Encyclopedia of Islam entry on hurriyya, analyzed its larger context in Muslim society. He notes the historical absence of hurriyya as "...a fundamental political concept that could have served as a rallying cry for great causes."
An individual Muslim, "...was expected to consider subordination of his own freedom to the beliefs, morality and customs of the group as the only proper course of behavior..."
Thus politically, Rosenthal concludes,
"...the individual was not expected to exercise any free choice as to how he wished to be governed...In general, ...governmental authority admitted of no participation of the individual as such, who therefore did not possess any real freedom vis a vis it."[...]
A decade later (in 1950), G.H. Bousquet (d. 1978), one of the most widely acclaimed 20th century scholars of Islamic Law, confirmed Pribichevich's conclusions, unfettered by our current mind numbing, politically correct cultural relativism, which appears to have afflicted even Mr. Lewis:
"Islam first came before the world as a doubly totalitarian system. It claimed to impose itself on the whole world and it claimed also, by the divinely appointed Muhammadan law, by the principles of fiqh [jurisprudence], to regulate down to the smallest details the whole life of the Islamic community and of every individual believer... the study of Muhammadan Law (dry and forbidding though it may appear)... is of great importance to the world of today."And Ibn Warraq, in a brilliant, dispassionate contemporary analysis, has described 14 characteristics of "Ur Fascism" as enumerated by Umberto Eco, analyzing their potential relationship to the major determinants of Islamic governance and aspirations, through the present. He adduces salient examples which reflect the key attributes discussed by Eco: the unique institution of jihad war; the establishment of a Caliphate under "Allah's vicegerent on earth," the Caliph-ruled by Islamic Law, i.e., Shari'a, a rigid system of subservience and sacralized discrimination against non-Muslims and Muslim women, devoid of basic freedoms of conscience, and expression.
Read it all.
Posted by Robert at December 17, 2007 10:35 AM
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I hope I die before I start babbling and drooling in public.
Posted by: GrennBeck![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 17, 2007 11:35 AM
It's all the West's fault. Oy vey. I don't care how distinguished Bernard Lewis is seen, this babble just goes to show just how ignorant so called scholars can be. It almost seems that many apologists think that history in the ME only started when the ME was "colonized" by the Europeans.
Posted by: Kevin at December 17, 2007 11:48 AM
Gaddammit! I am not a "scholar" of the same order as Bernard Lewis and I DON'T HAVE TO BE! Having read several of Robert Spencer's books as well as Nonie Darwish, Brigitte Gabriel, Ibn Warraq, etc. I then purchased a Koran so no one could accuse me of "taking someone else's word for it."
Yep, it's all in there. Kill the infidel dogs! Be a slave to Allah, and of course, his robber baron, pedophile, wife beating, sex obsessed "messenger" Prophet.
What is it with our cultural and political elites that they stumble all over themselves to out-dhimmi each other? They have all LOST THEIR MINDS!
at December 17, 2007 11:51 AM
Other than government, media, and academia being dhimmified and infiltrated, there's all sorts of good news, right? Right?!
Posted by: Beagle at December 17, 2007 12:21 PM
Robert writes:
"one need not have any more credentials than the facts of the case in order to question his conclusions."
The irony is that Lewis, in a period when he was on top of his game, himself provided many of these facts.
In his 1988 'The Political Language of Islam' Lewis discusses freedom specifically on pp.65-66 and pp.108-112, also by and large in stunning contradiction to his recent 'Just So' fantasies.
For example Lewis writes:
"Neither the term 'free' or 'slave' was used in a political context, and the familiar Western use of the terms 'freedom' and 'slavery' as metaphors for citizen's rights and oppressive rule is unknown to the language of classical Islamic political discourse." (p.65)
Further, he acutely notes the difficulty facing the Ottoman dragoman in finding appropriate words for the Turkish text of the 1774 Treaty with the Russians for the terms 'political freedom' and 'independence'. Classic Lewis at his best.
Sad.
at December 17, 2007 12:35 PM
Anyone who reads a Koran can see easily how naturally authoritarian it is. Now how could that theme be European when its founding document was written long before Europe as we know it even came about? Or are we to believe that Mo himself was actually from Europe?
These revisionists are quite a piece of work, I'll say that much for them.
Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at December 17, 2007 1:23 PM
Robert said
Bernard Lewis is hundreds of times greater than I am. He is a world-class historian and scholar.
Your pen is not yet out of ink, young whippersnapper.
Posted by: special_guest at December 17, 2007 1:25 PM
The Islamic ideology is anti-democratic at its core. Muhammad himself was anti-democratic. Muhammad was an autocratic dictator who wielded absolute power over his domain that was assembled by warring conquest.
Democracy is not about elections or consultation. It is about the source of law. In a democratic society that source is the people. In a democracy the sovereignty of the people is absolute.
Islamic society has for its entire history been autocratic. The source of law in Islamic society is, always has been, and always will be, the immutable Islamic canon: Koran, haditha and Sira. There is no legislation in Islamic government, there is only judicial interpretation of the existing canon. That is why the Islamic political model consists of only two branches of government: judges ("scholars") who interpret the law, and autocratic rulers who execute the law and its interpretations. The legislative function does not exist in Islam. It never has and it never will. Europe did not invent autocracy but it did invent democracy.
Posted by: DrMack at December 17, 2007 1:36 PM
Well, I don't know which European country Mohammed got the idea of beheading 900 men and boys of the Banu Qurayza tribe from in 628 AD. It sure is a mystery to me.
*/sarc*
Posted by: Spirit Of 1683 at December 17, 2007 3:03 PM
Bernard Lewis's confused scholarship and opinions have outlived their usefulness.
Posted by: US_infidel at December 17, 2007 4:03 PM
It's hard to believe that administration and pundits lack intellectual capacity when misjudging Islam. The problem seems much more serious. To put it bluntly they are bought by oil moneys either directly or promised lucrative jobs by Saudis. Remember that after 9/11 the only plane that was allowed to depart was one with Saudis close to Bin Laden. Instead of attacking Saudis, wiping out Mecca and Medina and taking over oil wells, US attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead of finishing with Iraq in couple weeks, Bush sends soldiers from house to house. This long war is only to advantage of military complex to fill their pockets and government elite.
I wonder how parents who lost their sons in this senseless ruinous for US war can tolerate this betrayal. Only grass roots rebellion can save this country. And unfortunately it may be very ugly.
at December 17, 2007 5:09 PM
Currently, there appears to be a major attempt underway to exculpate Islam of all responsibility for its fascist-style politics or its virulent antisemitism, by representing these as somehow having come into Islam from the outside, from the Wicked West.
In one scenario the 'poor Muslims' have no choice, somehow these evil alien things deceive and contaminate them in the wake of colonialism or are seized upon by colonised people in their desperation; in the other, there seems to be the view that, yes, the Muslims have eagerly embraced some ugly things (Mein Kampf, The Protocols) but it's ALL OUR FAULT that those ugly things were there in the first place, if they hadn't been there, Muslims couldn't have take them up, everything bad in 'modern' Islam is the result of non-Muslim ideas or actions.
Bostom's work is exposing an unpleasant truth: Muslim despotism and antisemitism are not owed by Islam to anything else. They were hard-wired into it from the beginning: in the Quran, the Hadith, the life and example of Muhammad. Muslim tyrants were tyrannising, mass-murdering and enslaving people, and Muslim lynch mobs were howling 'Kill the Jews!' 'the Jews are our dogs!' centuries before Mein Kampf and the Protocols ever saw the light of day.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at December 17, 2007 5:22 PM
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