What Went Wrong: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East
The title of Bernard Lewis' book, What Went Wrong: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, immediately strikes the eye of the reader as potentially, perhaps dangerously judgmental in its nature. The phrase seems to imply that there is something wrong about the nature of Islam, or that something went specifically awry in the development of this religion, as opposed to the other major religious traditions of Judaism and Christianity that came from the Middle Eastern region. Furthermore, the title does not take into consideration the complexity of the Muslim religion, a religion famously divided between two very distinct, polarized sects or branches, that of Shiite and Sunni Islam. The influence of Islam makes itself felt in many regions within the Middle East, and many nations, and all have their own unique complexities. Finally, the title also suggests that this 'Islam' is anti-modern in a way that is wrong and problematic, specifically with the nature of the religion, rather than with some of the leaders of nations or groups who might have been Muslim persons and committed wrongdoing. A bad or simplistic title does not necessarily mean that the author has written a bad or inaccurate book. But in this case, t
Lewis also criticizes Muslim "attempts to catch up with the Industrial Revolution" as if the Middle East is always attempting to mimic the West in a game of catch up, and has nothing to offer the West, culturally or economically. 2) In short, from the very beginning, Lewis conspires to tell a tale of Islam's fall from grace, not even of a rise and fall of a once-great civilization. Later on, Lewis has to admit that even though he thinks that Islam has been willfully isolating itself from Western knowledge since its conception as a faith, Christendom has also gone through periods of persecuting outsiders and others, and isolating itself from other regions of the world, but he does so only briefly and grudgingly. The book gets a B, as it is an interesting, quick-moving, and articulate read, with many interesting facts about the social structure of the Ottoman Empire's laws, customs, and social structure, but it should not be read as the only text one reads about the region, given the broad brush it uses to paint history. 'Lewis' book, for all of its faults, does express a very common view, that there is something inherently dangerous about the Islamic world, and the way that it interacts with the rest of the world. 12) This makes it seem as if Islam always mandated war as a tenant of the faith, but the European Christian Crusaders were merely attempting to protect Europe through a preemptive strike into the Holy Land. 151)While no one would wish to defend many of the current theocratic or military dictators that still reign over many of the nations of the Middle East today, it is problematic when a supposedly objective historian begins a text with an obvious bias and sees an entire region of the world as backward, and an entire religious tradition as possessing violence at its very core, for most of its history. 47) However, if this were true than Europeans, including Napoleon, would not have been so fascinated with the region, and attempted to possess its many glories.
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Acceptance Essays
