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Il Illustrissimo
The single most undeserved reputation of anyone today is that of Bernard Lewis, the Great, the Celebrated, the Distinguished, the Most Distinguished, the Most Illustrious Islam scholar in the whole universe. The simple fact is that Lewis has been spectacularly wrong, over and over, on all of the important issues relating to Islam, from his approval of the Oslo “peace process,” to his assurances concerning the easy prospects for Muslim democratization (which played a key role in the development of benighted Bush doctrine), to his assertions of the beneficent nature of Islam in the Middle Ages as a wonderful, culturally rich, pluralistic religion, to his theory on the sources of Islamic radicalism (a wonderful, culturally rich, pluralistic religion got “left behind” by the West and turned bitter and violent), to his putting down Bat Ye’or’s work on dhimmitude, to his denial of the Armenian genocide, to his ignoring the catastrophic impact of Islam on Zoroastrians and Hindus, to his Judeo-centric evaluation of Islam (Islam was nicer to the Jews than Christendom was, therefore Islam is nicer than Christianity, period—see Andrew Bostom’s deconstruction of this false argument, which has been advanced by Daniel Pipes as well as Lewis).
I was at a luncheon yesterday where I was pushing my idea that Islam cannot be reformed, and that all we can do is contain and isolate it. A lady who was present, who has lived in and written a book about Afghanistan, asked me, “Have you lived in the Muslim world?” I said no, and she made a gesture as if to say, what right did I have to state such forceful opinions about Islam? I answered, “Bernard Lewis is the greatest expert on Islam in the universe, and he’s been repeatedly, totally wrong. Being an expert doesn’t assure that one knows what one is talking about.” Email entry |