Islam scholar Bernard Lewis' legacy of disdain for Muslims

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

This blindness can be seen in his later academic work, which commonly conflated Muslims with Arabs, and religion with politics. The book that made Lewis’ popular reputation, “What Went Wrong?,” was originally subtitled “Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response.” This was later changed, significantly, to “The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East.” Suddenly a book about geopolitics became a book about a religion. Lewis treated the two interchangeably, as if the Middle East were synonymous with Islam, and vice versa.

To read more:

https://religionnews.com/2018/05/29/islam-scholar-bernard-lewis-left-unfair-legacy-of-disdain-for-muslims/

The late Edward Said wrote about Orientalism. In my opinion, that description fits Mr. Lewis very well.

[samir.g]

1. he's a vile, bigoted fraud

[guillaumeb]

4. Saying, as he did, that there is a clash between Islam

and modernity heavily implies that Islam is inconsistent with modern values.

Such a simplistic view basically puts all Muslims in one category.

[trotsky]

2. Additional info:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/obituaries/bernard-lewis-islam-scholar-dies.html

...In his article, Mr. Lewis wrote: “Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world.

“But Islam,” he continued, “like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that part, though by no means all or even most, of the Muslim world is now going through such a period, and that much, though again not all, of that hatred is directed against us.”

In his view Islamic fundamentalism was at war with both secularism and modernism, as embodied by the West. Fundamentalists, he wrote, had “given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the forces that have devalued their traditional values and loyalties and, in the final analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an increasing extent even their livelihood.”

[guillaumeb]

3. Interesting example of how a person can hold very inconsistent views. eom