Notes on a Century: Reflections of A Middle East Historian

by Bernard Lewis

  In Córdoba, with my Turkish colleagues, I visited the famous cathedral which in earlier times had been a mosque, the Mesquita. One of the Turks who was moderately religious said, “When I come into this ancient shrine, this former mosque, I feel that I should recite the afternoon prayer.” His friends were horrified, and tried to persuade him not to do it. “Don’t make a scandal,” they said. “That’s the last thing we need.” But the more they pressed him not to, the more eager he became to do just that. “We must be proud, not afraid, of our heritage,” he insisted. Suddenly one of them had an idea and said, “If some Greek were to come into Hagia Sofia [a former Greek church, then a Turkish mosque, then a museum in Istanbul] and start celebrating Mass, how would you feel?” He immediately saw the point, and desisted.

  I had in the course of my travels come to appreciate a subtle distinction in Muslim countries in the relationship between identity and group affiliation. In most Western countries, when you drink with somebody, you drink to their health. In Turkey you drink to someone’s honor. This raises interesting reflections regarding the general position and meaning of honor in different societies. Western society is sometimes called a duty/guilt society, in which you are impelled by duty and feel guilt if you fail in that duty. In contrast, Islamic society has been described as an honor/shame society. What really matters is honor, and if your honor is violated the result is shame. Duty/guilt is obviously personal. Honor/shame affects one’s family and one’s group. One might distinguish it this way: duty/guilt is subjective and personal, in other words it is internal; honor/shame reflects how you are perceived by others, your reputation, your standing in the society to which you belong or of which you are a part. It is external. So-called “honor killings” are part of the Middle Eastern tradition. Far from being approved by Islam, they are condemned and forbidden by Islamic law, but with limited effect.

  Three years after my article appeared in Commentary, Americans and Europeans in general would find themselves suddenly far more keenly interested in the subject of political Islam.

  The Iranian Revolution

  In 1979 a major change took place in the Middle East, the Revolution in Iran. The terms “revolution” and “revolutionary” have been much used in the modern Middle East. Indeed, revolution nowadays is the only generally accepted title to legitimacy and has been claimed and used by a variety of personal, sectional, regional and tribal ruling cliques. But the Iranian Revolution was a genuine revolution in the sense in which we use that word when we speak of the French and Russian revolutions. It signaled a major shift of power, with a major ideological basis and argument. Like the French and Russian revolutions, it had an immense impact in the whole region with which Iran shared a common universe of discourse, namely, the world of Islam. I was on a lecture tour in Indonesia not long after the Iranian Revolution and was surprised to find portraits of Khomeini proudly posted in student dormitories. I am told that there were similar responses as far away as Morocco and Central Asia.

  The rise and spread of anti-Americanism, which was such an important feature of the Iranian Revolution, were not the result of specific American policies or actions. They derived from Soviet propaganda and followed from the perception that America was now the leading power of the Western world, or more specifically, of Christendom—the historic rival and adversary of Islam.

  One of the more striking features of the fallout from the Iranian Revolution was what has been called the “meek” American response to the seizure of the American Embassy. For a long time, no attempt was made to rescue the beleaguered American diplomats who were held hostage in the embassy for over a year. When finally an attempt was made, it was a ludicrous failure.

  The Iranian hostage crisis and the reactions of the various parties to that crisis provide an instructive lesson on the different attitudes of different societies to problems. It seems clear from what we know now from Iranian memoirs and other sources that when the American Embassy was first seized there was no intention of keeping the hostages for any length of time, and apparently the seizure of the embassy did not even have the approval of the Supreme Chief Khomeini. But the meek response of Washington rapidly convinced Khomeini and the hostage takers that they were onto a good thing and that they could do very much better by continuing to keep the hostages, as indeed they did.

  President Jimmy Carter’s letter appealing to Khomeini as one believer to another, the American rejection of the Shah, and the unwillingness to help a former friend, all helped to convince people in Iran, and elsewhere in the Middle East, that it was safer and more profitable to be an enemy rather than a friend of the United States. It had already become known during the Cold War that if you said or did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment, but there might even be some reward, as a procession of diplomats, congressmen, journalists, and alas I must add professors came with the anxious inquiry, “Oh, what have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?”

  The Iranian crisis had further consequences. It convinced the Russians that they could proceed with the invasion of Afghanistan and not worry about any Muslim or American reaction. In this they were right, but they underrated the Afghan reaction. The ending of the Tehran crisis was also instructive. It followed the election of Ronald Reagan, about whom the Iranians knew nothing, but whom they perceived as a cowboy who would come out of his corner with his six-shooters drawn, and was ready to use them. They immediately released the hostages and ended the crisis on his Inauguration Day.

  The Iranian Revolution made Washington pay attention to political Islam and that attention grew during the 1980s and 1990s. My historical studies suddenly became relevant and I was called to Washington more frequently to participate in conferences and speak at think tanks. Over the course of my life I have watched the world of Islam shift from the realm of musty archives and academic conferences to the evening news.

  At Castel Gandolfo with Pope John Paul II

  When the Polish Cardinal Vojtyla was elected Pope John Paul II in 1978, this marked a major event not only in the Roman Catholic Church but more broadly in Europe and indeed, in a sense, in the whole world. Cardinal Vojtyla was the first non-Italian to be elected to the papacy in many centuries. More importantly, he was the first ever to be elected from that profoundly and strongly Catholic country Poland, and this at a time when Poland, along with most of the rest of Eastern Europe, was subject to a Communist dictatorship, imposed and maintained by a superpower, the Soviet Union. The election of a Pole to probably the most important position in all Christendom seems to have caused some concern to the Communist authorities. It also brought a wave of hope to the Polish people.

  From the beginning of his tenure, Pope John Paul II was determined to do something to help his fellow countrymen and other victims of the Communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe. But this was not easy. The trade union strikes led by Lech Walesa in Gdańsk had already shown both the possibilities and the difficulties of such action. After careful consideration and consultation, Pope John Paul decided that even the Communist masters of Poland could hardly object to his inviting several of his compatriots to spend a few days as his guests in the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, in the hills not far from Rome. In the 1980s he began, tentatively, to invite small groups of Polish friends and colleagues to spend a little while, during the summer, as his houseguests. Polish authorities kept this under careful supervision but did not forbid or obstruct it. At the same time he invited groups of other guests from the West—carefully chosen people with shared professions, interests and concerns with the Polish guests, who were thereby given the chance to have free, unobstructed conversations with their Western colleagues.

  In choosing his Western guests, the Pope sought the advice and help of his compatriot Krysztof Michalski, a Polish social scientist who had lived for some time in Vienna, and who was the founder and director of the Institute f
or the Human Sciences in that city. The institute granted fellowships of varying duration, arranged conferences, and sponsored publications. It was particularly concerned with promoting dialogue between East and West. I had for some time been a fairly frequent visitor at the institute, where, as guest of Krysztof Michalski, I was able to play some small part in this dialogue.

  It was to Michalski that the Pope went for advice on whom to invite from the Western world, and it was, I must assume, on Michalski’s advice that I was invited. From 1987 to 1998 he convened a series of meetings, in most of which I participated. The meetings were held at two- or three-year intervals, each devoted to one overarching theme with participants from both sides. Papers were submitted for discussion, and these were published in a series of volumes, both in Polish and in German. Papers of mine were published in five of these volumes.

  Apart from, and perhaps more important than, the formal meetings were the informal contacts and associations between the Pope’s two groups of guests, a unique and invaluable experience for both groups. We were guests of the Pope and he was at all times a gracious and interesting host.

  He used to give three dinner parties arranged by language. On one occasion there were simply not enough French speakers or Italian speakers to justify an evening to themselves. They were forced to fit in with the English or German speakers. The Pope spoke English very well but he didn’t understand it as well as he spoke. I’ve been a teacher all my life and I know when people understand me and when they don’t. They say, “Oh yes. Really. Is that so?” but I am not deceived. Sometimes the difficulties in understanding created a little awkwardness. At one dinner the question of Islam came up and he remarked that the theology of Islam is very simple. I responded that it was to start with but then the theologians came and they complicated it. The others at the table, the British and Americans, laughed, a small, polite laugh. The Pope did not understand and he asked that I repeat the silly little quip three or four times by which time I just wished I could disappear under the table.

  On my last visit the Pope was obviously in deteriorating health and his English wasn’t as good as it had been. That doesn’t surprise me because I need help myself, too, as I grow older and become less inclined, and also less able, to speak foreign languages. Perhaps it’s laziness but it is a disinclination to make the extra effort that is needed to talk in a foreign language. I still recall a few of his remarks, which I feel free to repeat. In 1998, it will be recalled, the Pope, to everyone’s surprise, went at the invitation of Fidel Castro on a visit to Cuba. At the dinner table after his return one of his American guests asked him whether this meant that Castro was preparing to rejoin the church. The Pope hesitated a moment and then said, “I wouldn’t put it that way. I think that Señor Castro is looking for what I believe you call in English ‘a soft landing.’ ” On another occasion he was asked by one of his Jewish guests what his attitude was, as Pope, to Jews and Judaism. His reply was truly memorable, “As to an elder brother.” The profundity of this remark grows on you.

  I was invited to a meeting in Vienna in the 1980s which was hosted by the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, Franz Koenig, a very fine man. It was a meeting of Christians and Jews. The Archbishop of York was there and dignitaries of both religions and a number of what you might call unattached intellectuals, unattached in the sense of not having any formal religious position. The Cardinal Archbishop welcomed us and spoke of the importance of tolerance. When it was my turn to speak I quoted a letter of George Washington in which he said, “Let us no more speak of tolerance as if it were by the indulgence of one class of people that others enjoy the exercise of their inherent natural rights.” To my surprise and delight the Cardinal Archbishop responded by saying I was quite right and he would no longer speak of tolerance but of mutual respect. That enormously increased my already considerable respect for Koenig. It takes a great man to respond so forthrightly. It would have been so easy to just pass my comment off or ignore it.

  When the intellectual arm of the Christian Democratic Party in Italy held a colloquium not long after that on what is called in Italian alterità, or “otherness,” I was asked to give a talk on the Islamic view of the other, a subject which has always interested me. When I got to Rome I was told that there were three panels, one on religious otherness, one on ethnic otherness and mine, which grouped together various elements—social, economic and so on. I asked if they meant other otherness and they said they hadn’t put it that way but that’s about what they meant.

  When I went to my panel I saw there were three talks on the agenda, one on the Jewish attitude, one on the Christian attitude and one on the Muslim attitude toward the other, more or less what I expected. What I did not expect, and found very disconcerting, was that the Jewish attitude was presented by a rabbi, the Christian attitude by a Catholic priest and the Muslim attitude toward the other was presented by me, putting me in something of a false position. It’s true that there was some concession to otherness in that the rabbi was the former chief rabbi of Ireland and the Catholic priest was an Israeli Arab so they were, in a sense, “other” in their own communities. Nevertheless, the rabbi was a genuine rabbi and the priest was a genuine priest. I began my remarks by saying, “Far be it from me to criticize the organizers of the colloquium who did me the honor of inviting me, but I am in no sense a representative or spokesman for Islam. I am not a mullah.” The priest sitting next to me said, “No, you’re a mufti,” which didn’t help. A mufti is of higher rank and is one who is authorized to issue a fatwa, a ruling on some point of theology or law.

  Shortly after this the rabbi from Ireland played an important role. He was one of the two intermediaries who negotiated the agreement between the Vatican and the government of Israel to establish diplomatic relations. I found it amusing that when Rome and Jerusalem finally decided to talk to each other, it was a rabbi from Dublin who helped bring them together.

  The Roots of Muslim Rage and the Clash of Civilizations

  In May 1990 I was selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities to receive the annual Jefferson Award. This involved giving a major lecture and delivering it in Washington and again on the West Coast. The subject I chose was “Western Civilization: A View from the East.” A slightly shortened version was published in the Atlantic Monthly in September 1990, called “The Roots of Muslim Rage: Why so many Muslims deeply resent the West, and why their bitterness will not easily be mollified.” I endeavored to draw attention to the growing anger in the Muslim world, and to the forms and direction in which this anger was expressed.

  By then it had become popular to refer to the hard-line elements in political Islam as “Islamic Fundamentalism.” I tried in the article to point out why this was misleading. Fundamentalism is a much misused word. It dates back to about 1910, when certain Protestant churches who wished to differentiate themselves from the mainstream churches published a series of pamphlets called The Fundamentals, in which they took up positions strongly and sharply different from those of the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians and the other mainline Protestant churches. There were two things to which they objected: one was liberal theology, and the other was Bible criticism. They insisted on the literal divinity and inerrancy of the Bible. At some point in the 1980s it became customary to use this same word, fundamentalism, of certain Muslim groups. It was unfortunate because these groups did not in the least bit resemble American Protestant Fundamentalists. They had different issues and certainly different tactics. I objected to the term, but we are now stuck with it. The word is now used principally of the Muslim Fundamentalists, and secondarily of the American Protestants. In fact it is now used universally and not only in English: the French talk about “les fondamentalistes” and the Germans talk about “die Fundamentalisten.”

  It is rather like the word “ghetto,” which has been re-semanticized, so to speak. Originally ghetto was a neighborhood in a European city to which Jews were confined by law. Now, it is no longer European, it no longer
concerns Jews, and it’s no longer defined by law. The word “ghetto” in modern American usage has a completely different meaning, which has in effect supplanted the older one. I think this is true of “fundamentalist.” Today, when we talk about fundamentalists, we are thinking of Muslims, not of the ones who originally took out the patent on the name.

  Muslim Fundamentalists are not worried about liberal theology because there isn’t any, and they are not worried about criticism of the Koran because that has not been an issue. Muslims believe in the literal divinity and inerrancy of the Koran text. But that’s not the point. The Fundamentalists are concerned about something quite different, which is what they see as the de-Islamization of Islamic countries. What they want is to restore the Holy Law of Islam (Shari‘a), to remove legal codes which have been imported from abroad, and to restore the full panoply of Islamic Law. They have an encyclopedia of grievances, the most important of which is the emancipation of women. In the speeches of Khomeini and the writings of the other Fundamentalists, that outranks all the other grievances by far.

  I believe that the repression of women has caused enormous damage to Islamic society. Not only is it depriving itself of the talents and services of half the population; it is also entrusting the nurture of much of the other half to uneducated and downtrodden mothers. At the present time there is a very interesting shift in emphasis from class to sex, and a new tendency in historical studies to consider the role of women. I see this as the major change in our times in the perception of what happened, and, more particularly, of what went wrong in Middle Eastern society. Women are after all half the population, and in many ways a much more important group than any religious, ethnic or economically defined entity.