The book What Went Wrong? by Bernard Lewis is a historical summary of a short question about a very big problem. The author searches throughout the history of Islam's centuries-long relations with Europe to account for the disappearance of Islamic hegemony and self-confidence. The book identifies particular historical markers that could signify where things were turning south. The Islamic world, which once was the leader in wealth, arts and sciences, has fallen behind. How can a blooming and dominating world culture now be surpassed not only by the West, but most of the world? This is the problem that is the subject of this book. While it also entails the present situation with a direct reference to the 911 attacks, the author never actually answers his questions directly but gives a subtle examination that seems to be an attitudinal problem of Middle-Eastern Muslim countries via the West while avoiding the role of socio-economic factors or the influence of western colonialism in his explanations.
             As we read in the book, he describes Islam was once a proud and ancient civilization. It acclaimed the dignity and accomplishment of centuries of cultural sophistication. Indeed, it encompassed across a vast region of the globe where a multiplicity of ethnic and regional cultures flourished during the Ottoman rule. He writes: "Islam...created a world civilization, polytechnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental" (Lewis, p. 6). In commerce, in the arts and sciences, in mathematics, in military strength, Islam in the Middle-Ages rained supreme over Europe and China. What he is describing here is that this creates the aura of unquestioned certainty in the attitude of Muslims in which led to ignore the material advances of evolving Europe. He explains their attitude toward themselves and others prevented Muslims from adopting Western military and other technological modernization until it was too late. When Muslims ...