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ISLAM AND THE WEST This page intentionally left blank ISLAM AND THE WEST BERNARD LEWIS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New York Oxford Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1993 by Oxford University Press, Inc. First published in 1993 by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1994 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lewis, Bernard. Islam and the West / Bernard Lewis. p. cm. ISBN 0-19-507619-2 ISBN 0-19-509061-6 (Pbk.) 1. Middle East—Relations—Europe. 2. Europe—Relations—Middle East. 3. Islam—Relations—Christianity. 4. Christianity and other religions—Islam. I. Title. DS63.2.E8L47 1993 303.48'25604—dc20 92-26938 8 1097 Printed in the United States of America For Ophira, Feridey, Zachary, Jacob, and Rachel This page intentionally left blank Preface For more than 1,400 years, since the advent of Islam in Arabia and the incorporation into the Islamic empire and civilization of the formerly Christian eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, Islam and Christendom have lived side by side—always as neighbors, often as rivals, sometimes as enemies. In a sense, each is defined and delimited by the other. "God is one, alone, and eternal," says the Qur'an. "He begetteth not neither is He begotten and He hath no peer." In this and other explicit rejections of Christian positions, Islam clearly distances itself from its predecessor and asserts its own universal message and mission. Yet, at the same time, the scripture and traditions of Islam, and the entire civilization created under their aegis, demonstrate in a thousand ways the profound affinities that link Islam with Christianity and with their common Judaic, Hellenistic, and Middle Eastern antecedents. Compared with the remoter cults and cultures of Asia and Africa, Islam and Christianity are sister religions, with an immense shared heritage and with a shared—or more often disputed—domain. Each saw itself as the bearer of God's final revelation to humankind, with the duty of bring- ing that revelation to the rest of the world. Each recognized the other as its principal, indeed, its only, rival in this claim and in this task. The result was a long series of conflicts, beginning with the early holy wars—jihad and Crusade, conquest and reconquest—and continuing with the ebb and flow of Muslim empire in Europe and of European empires in the lands of Islam. In this long and—alas—unfinished struggle, the two civilizations have been divided by their resemblances far more than by their differences. Except by historians, the term "Christendom" is rarely used: the civ- ilization formerly designated by that name has undergone a process of reform and secularization and has come to be known, in various contexts, as Europe, as the free world, and, nowadays, principally as the West. The Islamic world, or as Muslims call it, "the House of Islam," is still known, both at home and abroad, by that name, albeit with regional, national, and—rarely—sectarian subdivisions. viii Preface The studies in this volume are concerned with the relations between these two civilizations: the one defined as Islamic, the other at different times as Christian or European or Western. They are grouped according to three main topics: encounters, perceptions, and responses. The first section begins with an historical survey of the interaction—in war and peace, in commerce and culture—between Europe and its Islamic neigh- bors to the east and to the south. It continues with a discussion of a specific and new issue: the emergence, mainly through immigration, of large Mus- lim minorities in Western countries. Much has been written in recent years on the latter topic, seen principally as a problem for the majority host societies. In this study I have tried to look at the issue not in a Western but rather in an Islamic context, against the background of Islamic history and law. The second section is concerned not so much with the encounters between the two civilizations as with the perceptions arising from these encounters. I have dealt elsewhere at some length with Muslim views of Europe. The five studies in this section are principally concerned with Western views of Islam. They deal with the problems of translation from Arabic into a Western language, with the impact on European thought and letters of the centuries-long threat of the Turks, and with Western scholarship on Islamic culture and history. This last theme is discussed in three chapters, looking at the topic from three different perspectives. The first is a case study of Gibbon's chapter on the Prophet Muhammad in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the second, an examination of the origins, growth, and purposes of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Western world, with some consideration of recent and current contro- versies about "Orientalism"; the third, a more general discussion of the legitimacy of studying "other people's" history—whether this may be done at all, and, if so, for what purpose and subject to what rules and constraints. The third and final section is concerned with Islamic responses and reactions in both earlier and more recent times. Four topics are discussed: Islamic religious revival and what is sometimes called fundamentalism; the place in Islamic history of the ShI'a, whose importance was dramatic- ally brought to world attention by the Islamic revolution in Iran; the introduction and development of the Western idea of patriotism; and, finally, the possibilities of religious coexistence. This last includes some consideration of the rather short history of secularism in the Muslim world. All the essays contained in this volume have been to some extent revised since their original publication, to correct errors, to avoid overlaps to establish linkages, and, of course, to take account of more recent lit- erature and developments. Three of them—"The Question of Oriental- ism," "The Return of Islam," and "The Shf a in Islamic History"—have been extensively revised and recast. There remains the pleasant task of expressing my appreciation and thanks to those who have helped in various ways in the preparation and Preface ix publication of this volume: to the publishers and editors of the books and journals in which earlier versions of parts of this book were published, who gave perrmission to reproduce them here (the details are set forth in the bibliographical appendix); to Professors Michael Curtis, Halil Inalcik, Charles Issawi, and Hossein Modarressi, for reading parts of my typescript and giving me the benefit of their comments; to Nancy Lane and Irene Pavitt of Oxford University Press, for help and advice in the production of the book; and to my assistant Jane Baun, whose skill, care, and scholarly acumen have both speeded the production and improved the quality of this book. To all of them I offer my thanks for those of their many suggestions which I accepted and my apologies for those that I resisted. From this it will be clear that whatever faults remain are entirely my own. Princeton, NJ. B. L. September 1992
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