"Mr. Lewis, who has been a key advisor to President George W. Bush"

That explains a lot

Posted by: Elric66 at March 19, 2008 11:17 AM

What was the date of the last crusade? and What was the date of the last jihad activity?

Lets see, 1095 vs. yesterday.

Posted by: Sounder at March 19, 2008 11:29 AM

By "common belief" Lewis meant, I presume, only that both are monotheistic faiths that make universalist claims. That is, unlike Hinduism and Judaism which, though both welcome converts are linked to specific peoples and make no claims to covering the globe -- both Islam and Christianity are faiths that make world-covering claims. However, in other respects they are completely different. Islam is a faith that is not merely a religion as we understand that word but a politics and a geopolitics, and offers a complete regulation of life. It is a Total Belief-System, and prompted by that Total Belief-System, its adherents have conquered lands and then, within those lands, established Muslim rule that makes it unpleasant and difficult for non-Muslims to practice their non-Muslim faiths, so that over time a great many of those non-Muslims, those of the Ahl al-kitab (Christians and Jews) -for non-People of the Book suffered other fates 00 submitted to Islam to escape from having to endure the humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity that the status of dhimmi signified. Christians are interested in saving individual souls for Christ; Muslims are interested in swelling the ranks of the army of Islam. One is individualist; the other collectivist. One tries to make the doctrine clear to those it wishes to convert, wants them to understand; the other is indifferent to their understanding and indeed, often withholds a full knowledge of Islam for fear that it will put off would-be “reverts” (this withholding of knowledge about Islam is discussed openly at Muslim websites dealing with how to handle potential “reverts”). They are very different, despite these “common beliefs” that Lewis so carelessly alludes to.

As for the phrase "a long succession of jihad and crusade, jihad and crusade" -- Lewis was careless in his phrasing, and he knows, or should, that his phrases have a way of being picked up, and used, and if they can be used in defense of Islam, they certainly will be. Lewis knows that "Jihad" and "the Crusades" are very different things, with the former unlimited in time and in space, and the latter limited in both.

But being treated as an oracle and World's Greatest Authority, with former students who are not merely admirers but become acolytes who will defend his every word, has not been good for him, as it is not good for anyone. Carelessness with words, and how those words will be received, is a bad sign.

Jacques Barzun is now 100. His students, too, regard him with affection, admiration, even awe. But he has never let any of this diminish his vigilance with words. A model to emulate.

Posted by: Hugh at March 19, 2008 11:38 AM

Bernard, what went wrong?

With your ability to think clearly?

With your intellectual honesty and historical accuracy?

Posted by: profitsbeard at March 19, 2008 11:46 AM

I suppose one could characterize the western habit of echoing islamist apologetics as saido-masochism.

Posted by: joeblough at March 19, 2008 11:47 AM

That Lewis is perfectly aware of how different "Jihad" and "Crusade" are. In fact, soon after 9/11/2001 he published a piece in The Wall Street Journal that discussed, and distinguished, the two words.

Part of that piece is given below:

Jihad vs. Crusade
A historian's guide to the new war.
by BERNARD LEWIS

Thursday, September 27, 2001

"President Bush's use of the term "crusade" in calling for a powerful joint effort against terrorism was unfortunate, but excusable. In Western usage, this word has long since lost its original meaning of "a war for the cross," and many are probably unaware that this is the derivation of the name. At present, "crusade" almost always means simply a vigorous campaign for a good cause. This cause may be political or military, though this is rare; more commonly, it is social, moral or environmental. In modern Western usage it is rarely if ever religious.

Yet "crusade" still touches a raw nerve in the Middle East, where the Crusades are seen and presented as early medieval precursors of European imperialism--aggressive, expansionist and predatory. I have no wish to defend or excuse the often atrocious behavior of the crusaders, both in their countries of origin and in the countries they invaded, but the imperialist parallel is highly misleading. The Crusades could more accurately be described as a limited, belated and, in the last analysis, ineffectual response to the jihad--a failed attempt to recover by a Christian holy war what had been lost to a Muslim holy war.

At the time of the Crusades, when the Holy Land and some adjoining regions in Syria were conquered and for a while ruled by invaders from Europe, there seems to have been little awareness among Muslims of the nature of the movement that had brought the Europeans to the region. The crusaders established principalities in the Levant, which soon fitted into the pattern of Levantine regional politics. Even the crusader capture of Jerusalem aroused little attention at the time, and appeals for help to various Muslim capitals brought no response.

The real counter-crusade began when the crusaders--very foolishly--began to harry and attack the Muslim holy lands, namely the Hijaz in Arabia, containing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina where Mohammed was born, carried out his mission, and died. In the vast Arabic historiography of the Crusades period, there is frequent reference to these invaders, who are always called "Franks" or "infidels." The words "Crusade" and "crusader" simply do not occur.

They begin to occur with increasing frequency in the 19th century, among modernized Arabic writers, as they became aware of Western historiography in Western languages. By now they are in common use. It is surely significant that Osama bin Laden, in his declaration of jihad against the United States, refers to the Americans as "crusaders" and lists their presence in Arabia as their first and primary offense. Their second offense is their use of Arabia as a base for their attack on Iraq. The issue of Jerusalem and support for "the petty state of the Jews" come third.

The literal meaning of the Arabic word "jihad" is striving, and its common use derives from the Koranic phrase "striving in the path of God." Some Muslims, particularly in modern times, have interpreted the duty of jihad in a spiritual and moral sense. The more common interpretation, and that of the overwhelming majority of the classical jurists and commentators, presents jihad as armed struggle for Islam against infidels and apostates. Unlike "crusade," it has retained its religious and military connotation into modern times.

Being a religious obligation, jihad is elaborately regulated in sharia law, which discusses in minute detail such matters as the opening, conduct, interruption and cessation of hostilities, the treatment of prisoners and non-combatants, the use of weapons, etc. In an offensive war, jihad is a collective obligation of the entire community, and may therefore be discharged by volunteers and professionals. In a defensive war, it is an individual obligation of every able-bodied Muslim.

In his declaration of 1998, Osama bin Laden specifically invokes this rule: "For more than seven years the United States is occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of its territories, Arabia, plundering its riches, overwhelming its rulers, humiliating its people, threatening its neighbors, and using its bases in the peninsula as a spearhead to fight against the neighboring Islamic peoples." In view of this, "to kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who can, in any country where this is possible, until the Aqsa mosque and the Haram mosque are freed from their grip, and until their armies, shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the lands of Islam, incapable of threatening any Muslim.

Mohammed himself led the first jihad, in the wars of the Muslims against the pagans in Arabia. The jihad continued under his successors, with a series of wars that brought the Middle East, including the Holy Land, under Arab Muslim rule and then continued eastward into Asia, westward into Africa, and three times into Europe--the Moors in Spain, the Tatars in Russia, the Turks in the Balkans. The Crusade was part of the European counterattack. The Christian re-conquest succeeded in Spain, Russia and eventually the Balkans; it failed to recover the Holy Land of Christendom."

In Islamic usage the term martyrdom is normally interpreted to mean death in a jihad, and the reward is eternal bliss, described in some detail in early religious texts. Suicide is another matter.

Classical Islam in all its different forms and versions has never permitted suicide. This is seen as a mortal sin, and brings eternal punishment in the form of the unending repetition of the act by which the suicide killed himself. The classical jurists, in discussing the laws of war, distinguish clearly between a soldier who faces certain death at the hands of the enemy, and one who kills himself by his own hand. The first goes to heaven, the other to hell. In recent years, some jurists and scholars have blurred this distinction, and promised the joys of paradise to the suicide bomber. Others retain the more traditional view that suicide in any form is totally forbidden.

Similarly, the laws of jihad categorically preclude wanton and indiscriminate slaughter. The warriors in the holy war are urged not to harm non-combatants, women and children, "unless they attack you first." Even such questions as missile and chemical warfare are addressed, the first in relation to mangonels and catapults, the other to the use of poison-tipped arrows and poisoning enemy water supplies. Here the jurists differ--some permit, some restrict, some forbid these forms of warfare. A point on which they insist is the need for a clear declaration of war before beginning hostilities, and for proper warning before resuming hostilities after a truce.
What the classical jurists of Islam never remotely considered is the kind of unprovoked, unannounced mass slaughter of uninvolved civil populations that we saw in New York two weeks ago. For this there is no precedent and no authority in Islam. Indeed it is difficult to find precedents even in the rich annals of human wickedness."

One can take issue with some of Lewis's comments at the end. For example, in my own article on Lewis, to which Robert Spencer provides a link above, I have discussed Lewis' seeming inability -- or is it a delibereate refusal -- to understand how Muslim theologians have managed to get around the Islamic prohibtion on suicide by describing what we call "suicide-bombers" as essentially the modren equivalent of a Muslim warrior, charging sword in hand, against a much larger group of Infidels, knowing that he will almost certainly be killed, but determined to slaughter as many of those Infidels as possible. And since Muslims know that everything is determined by Allah then who knows? Possiby even the one we Infidels call a "suicide-bomber" may, inshallah, escape unscathed from his death-deying act of mass-murder.

But the main point is this: Lewis set out, in this piece, to clearly distinguish "Jihad" from "Crusade." And now, with this careless remark about this "long succession ofjihad and crusade, jihad and crusade" he undoes what he did back on September 27, 2001 -- as if heedless of how such a phrase, with all of its implied, even if not meant, equivalences, there for all to see, and for Muslims and such Muslim apologists as Esposito and Armstrong, to grab onto, if they so wish.

Posted by: Hugh at March 19, 2008 11:56 AM

A small point towards understanding Lewis.

It is arguable that parallel development leads to conflict and confrontation.

Those who believe that war with Japan was due to parallel economic development and resulting conflict from competition over common interests, stand as examples.

It is possible he meant "common beliefs" as "common interests."

Then again, maybe not.

Posted by: emet-veritas at March 19, 2008 12:40 PM

"One tries to make the doctrine clear to those it wishes to convert, wants them to understand; the other is indifferent to their understanding and indeed, often withholds a full knowledge of Islam for fear that it will put off would-be 'reverts'(this withholding of knowledge about Islam is discussed openly at Muslim websites dealing with how to handle potential 'reverts')."

A person can walk into any mosque at any time (well, I guess unless you are a woman and you try to enter a mosque which is for men only) and take the shahada and they are considered to be a Muslim. You can even take the shahada on certain websites! Contrast that with mainstream Christian denominations (I don't know about conversion requirements for other religions, so I can't comment on them), in which you are required to attend classes and religious services for a set period of time! At any rate, converts are nothing more than tokens to Muslims: nothing more than names and faces to trot out on websites or at the occasional public event, and numbers to add to their total.

I have come across disturbing examples of people that had converted to Islam, and apparently knew absolutely nothing of the faith-such as an American woman who was shocked when her husband (also an American convert) took a second wife-she had not known that it was permitted under Islamic law! (It goes without saying that if people had actually spent time studying Islam and the Koran, the ahadith, the life of Mohammed and how sharia is applied rather than reading the apologist rubbish published on some of those websites that no one would convert.)

I think that even those converts who are aware of all of the absurd rules and restrictions imagine that they are probably treated like some of the obscure rules and punishments in the Old Testament (like not wearing cloth made from cotton and synthetic materials) and are not followed by the majority. By the time that they realise that the rules and commands (from the inane to the violent) are still meant to be followed, they have already converted.

Posted by: margheri at March 19, 2008 12:41 PM

"Mr. Lewis said most Americans overlook what Muslims' deem the main grievances with the U.S. He explained three main complaints are the American military presence in Saudi Arabia, which most find profoundly offensive, the military presence in Iraq and the "statelet" of the dues."

We aren't in Saudi Arabia, I can understand Iraq but what the heck does he mean in " "statelet" of the dues."" Does that mean we aren't paying them jizyra?

Posted by: Dumbo at March 19, 2008 1:19 PM

Common beliefs?

..............................for the live of me, I don't think you can kill unbelievers in Christianity. You can convert them, but it kinda stops there.........

Posted by: tanstaafl at March 19, 2008 1:52 PM

"Mr. Lewis said most Americans overlook what Muslims' deem the main grievances with the U.S. He explained three main complaints are the American military presence in Saudi Arabia, which most find profoundly offensive, the military presence in Iraq and the "statelet" of the dues."

Robert explains, poster above, that the word "dues" must be a rhyming aural mistake for "Jews." The "statelet" - scarcely visible on a map of the world -- is Israel.

The comment, however, attributed to Lewis is absurd and dangerous. I find it hard to believe he actually said this; somehow I wonder if the reporter is not a Muslim or apologist for Islam and has misreported his remarks. For if Lewis did indeed say such a foolish thing, he merely reinforces the idea that Muslims have a discrete set of "grievances" and that these "grievances" can, some will think, therefore be met and all manner of things shall be well.

If he did indeed say this as reported, then Lewis, as usual, ignores many things, but among the things he, as usual, ignores, is the entire rest of the world outside the Middle East. Suppose the Americans end their "military presence in Iraq" (they should, indeed they should have done so at the beginning of 2004, after Saddam Hussein was captured and scouring the country for weapons was completed). Suppose the Americans end their "military presence" in Saudi Arabia (they should, and should tell the Al-Saud that if they want protection -- a guarantee of American support in case of dire need -- they will have to put the American military on a retainer, something like $100 billion a year, otherwise no guarantee, no rescue, no nothing). And suppose, finally, that Israel is reduced to a helpless state, a dhimmi condition, and either continues in that state, or is put out of its misery by the Muslims within and without that "statelet."

Then what? Is it Lewis's position that Muslims in southern Thailand will see their grievances have been met and stop beheading Thai Buddhist monks, farmers, teachers? Does he think the Pakistanis, both terrorist groups and the government of Pakistan, will cease to make demands for Indian-held Kashmir to be turned over to rule by Muslims? Will they end their claims to India, and stop setting off bombs in Mumbai, or even Delhi? Will Muslims in Western Europe, now that Israel is gone, and the Americans have pulled out of Iraq and out of Saudi Arabia, cease to make demands for an end to the exercise of Western individual liberties? Will they cease to claim that they will inherit, and should inherit, Great Britain? Will they stop campaigns of Da'wa, and of intimidation that may not necessarily include, at this point, terrorism (which hurts the "image" of Islam)? Will Muslim behavior anywhere change?

Of course not. Because the texts, the tenets, the attitudes, the atmospherics of Islam, in states and societies suffused with this Total System, will not have changed.

Bat Ye'or has exasperatedly come to the conclusion, after long experience with Lewis and his machinations behind the scene, that he is simply someone who, despite his immense learnign, and despite -- or possibly because - of his Muslim friends and acquiantances, and because, not despite, his great interest in modern Turkey and his assumption that Kemalism was forever, does not quite grasp the subject that matters most: the subject of Islam, and how it effects the minds of the vast masses of primitive Believers. Lewis has himself described, without realizing it, his susceptibility to flattery by Muslims. He has been lionized in Istanbul. And those dedcriptions of his witticisms evoking appreciative laughter round the table in Amman, where his patron and friend Prince Hassan, of the plummy philippe-de-montebello voice, offers him hospitality, are embarrassing, and also alarming.

Make of it what you will. Others have, and will continue to do so, as they compare Lewis at his best -- as in "The Political Language of Islam" and "The Multiple Identities of the Middle East" with Lewis at his dangerously confusing worst.

Posted by: Hugh at March 19, 2008 2:05 PM

I'm just so puzzled by Lewis. His knowledge is immense, yet he seems utterly unable to connect the dots properly.

Have three of his books on my bookshelf, unread. Think I'll leave them there, get something else.

Posted by: Henrik at March 19, 2008 2:17 PM

"Mr. Lewis said most Americans overlook what Muslims' deem the main grievances with the U.S. He explained three main complaints are the American military presence in Saudi Arabia, which most find profoundly offensive, the military presence in Iraq and the "statelet" of the dues."

It sounds like whoever wrote the article didn't understand what Bernard Lewis was talking about. Writing "dues" instead of "Jews" isn't a case of someone hitting the wrong key on the keyboard. Near the end of the article, the other speaker is quoted as saying, "The Arab world is the least blessed country..."

Posted by: margheri at March 19, 2008 2:26 PM

Yes, the charitable explanation is that the newspaper account is wildly inaccurate. It may well have been.

Posted by: Hugh at March 19, 2008 2:50 PM

Bernard Lewis isn't aging gracefully---he should have quit while he was at the top of his game. Sad.

Posted by: US_infidel at March 19, 2008 3:26 PM

It's sad hear this about Bernard Lewis. I have read several of his books and have found them helpful over the years.

Posted by: AfghanJohn at March 19, 2008 7:52 PM

I guess anyone can have a bad day once in a while...

Posted by: duh_swami at March 19, 2008 8:48 PM

Common beliefs? Ha! Sure, we both believe in having food and shelter, but that's about it.

Posted by: champ at March 19, 2008 8:49 PM

Lewis is engaging in navel gazing. The world is no more complex than it has ever been. We are still on the Serengeti Plains, throwing satellite guided spears and beating each other over the head with thermonuclear clubs.

If the Iranian nut job has his way, this may very well be the final Jihad, at least for a few centuries, but not for the reason nut job thinks.

Take for example the elaborate calls for fight'n, smite'n, and subdue'n in the Koran, like:

"Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." -- Qur'an 9:29

If the Muslim people living under Islamic domination aren't able to reign in this beast, the tried and true cure for extremism will eventually reappear as an attractive option in American policy. It was summed up in a single short, but eloquent sentence by our own real Doctor Strangelove; the extreme USAF Gen. Curtis (Bombs Away) Lemay:

"If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting."

Kinda says it all, doesn't it?

Posted by: RalphInfidel at March 19, 2008 8:54 PM

"USAF Gen. Curtis (Bombs Away) Lemay"

Curtis Lemay is often identified with the George C. Scott character in "Dr. Strangelove" but long before there was a Cold War, Lemay played an important role. In World War II, he was an intrepid pilot, and took part in major bombing raids designed to shake German morale, and led waves of B-29s over, for example, Regensburg (of recent homiletic fame).

And whle Rev. Jeremiah Wright thinks Hiroshima and Nagasaki were uniquely devastating, he overlooks the fire-bombing of Tokyo on March 9-10 of the same year, for which Curtis Lemay took both responsiblity and credit, and which, like those later atomic bombings, helped to shorten the war and saved a million lives, by shaking the resolve -- it took a lot of shaking -- of the Japanese High Command, consisting as it did of the most fanatical believers in Kodo.

Posted by: Hugh at March 19, 2008 11:17 PM

Hugh,
Your point about the overall net saving in lives from the shock of those two attacks is almost always overlooked by those who believe peace at any price is a noble idea. There were members of the Japanese High Command who, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, still did not want to surrender.

The Good Rev Jeremiah Wright might want to consider the fate of black U.S. citizens had the U.S. not used every means possible to win the war. He seems more interested though; in embracing Ward Churchill's hate filled view of the U.S.

The best way to keep wars from starting and reaching the point of a Hiroshima, is to let potential enemies know that we have no problem acting on Lemay's viewpoint should the need arise.

Posted by: RalphInfidel at March 20, 2008 6:34 AM

He [The Good Rev Jeremiah Wright] seems more interested though; in embracing Ward Churchill's hate filled view of the U.S.

No, not necessarily the plagiarist Ward Churchill . . .according to Daniel Pipes:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, and Barack Obama's pastor since 1988, told his congregation in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001 that U.S. terrorism had precipitated Al-Qaeda's attack. "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards." Wright concluded that "America's chickens are coming home to roost."

That last phrase has a history.

On Dec. 1, 1963, immediately after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X responded to that event with the comment that, "Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad," prompting the audience, according to a newspaper account, "to loud applause and laughter." When, shortly after, Malcolm X explained his comment in an interview with Louis Lomax, his views closely anticipated Wright's:

I meant that the death of Kennedy was the result of a long line of violent acts, the culmination of hate and suspicion and doubt in this country. You see, Lomax, this country has allowed white people to kill and brutalize those they don't like. The assassination of Kennedy is a result of that way of life and thinking. The chickens came home to roost; that's all there is to it. America—at the death of the President—just reaped what it had been sowing

Malcolm X's remark featured the next day in the New York Times ("MALCOLM X SCORES U.S. AND KENNEDY; Likens Slaying to ‘Chickens Coming Home to Roost'") and led not just to his being silenced by Elijah Muhammad, head of the Nation of Islam, but it contributed to Malcolm X being thrown out of the Nation of Islam altogether, and then to his becoming a normative Muslim. Through the decades, "chickens coming home to roost" became one of his most famous remarks; it featured prominently, for example, in the 1992 Spike Lee movie, Malcolm X.

Comments: (1) There can be no doubt that Wright knows of the Malcolm X statement and, conscious or not, forty-five years later, chose to echo, repeat, and confirm it in the context of another new American tragedy. (2) In 1963, Malcolm X denigrated the president; in 2008, Jeremiah Wright is closely tied to a presidential candidate – not a sign of progress. (March 13, 2008)

Mar. 15, 2008 update: A reader points out that the "chickens came home to roost" phrase has been celebrated by leftists in the title of books, including ones by Harry Elmer Barnes (1973) and Ward Churchill (2003).

Posted by: miira at March 20, 2008 9:02 AM

gave rise to this long succession of jihad and crusade, jihad and crusade....

At least he got the order right.

Posted by: Concerned Citizen at March 20, 2008 9:25 AM

Thanks, Miira! More pieces of historical puzzle that I wasn't aware of.

Posted by: RalphInfidel at March 20, 2008 6:13 PM

"A reader points out that the "chickens came home to roost" phrase has been celebrated by leftists in the title of books, including ones by Harry Elmer Barnes (1973)..."
-- from a posting above

The book by Harry Elmer Barnes bears the full title was "The Chickens of the Interventionist Liberals Are Coming Home To Roost." Not exactly, it would seem, the case here of a phrase that "has been celebrated by leftists." He was a strange man, certainly in many ways to be described as on the left, but also someone whose views on World War II were those of the kind of right-wing America-Firster fixed in amber for the public in John Roy Carlson's "Under Cover."

The phrase is available to one and all, right left and in the middle.

Posted by: Hugh at March 20, 2008 11:28 PM

From Hugh:
The phrase is available to one and all, right left and in the middle.

All this must be confusing for poultry farmers.

Posted by: RalphInfidel at March 21, 2008 1:50 PM