Islam and the West.

One of the peculiarities of relations between the Muslim and Christian worlds over the past 13 centuries has been the minimal interest taken by Muslims in the countries and peoples of Christendom (to use a word considered outdated in our secular age). This lack of curiosity, Bernard Lewis explains in the introductory essay of this stimulating collection, derived from a profound conviction of the superority of Islam, as the final revelation of God's truth to mankind, over both Christianity and Judaism. Muslims, in short, had nothing to learn, spiritually, morally, or intellectually, from the adherents of an imperfect and outmoded faith.

The conviction of superiority was naturally reinforced by the Muslim Arab conquests of the southern, western, and eastern shores of the Mediterranean, by the vanquishing of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks, and by the subsequent extension of Ottoman rule into the Balkans. It was not until the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683, an event to which Lewis ascribes crucial importance, that doubt set in. Doubt, but not yet fear, also arose over the expansion of Europe in Asia, Africa, and the Americas from the late fifteenth century on. But again, the lack of curiosity prevented the realization, at the heart of Islam, of what these developments might presage. Europe was of interest only insofar as it produced devices of use to the Muslim powers, especially in the field of armaments. "But as far as possible," Lewis observes acutely, "these [devices] were stripped of their cultural associations and thus reduced to dead artifacts, without organic roots." The civilization that gave birth to them was unworthy of attention in itself.

In contrast, European scholarship on Islam, the Arabic language, and the Muslim peoples dates back to the late Middle Ages. Initially it was prompted by religious antipathy and by the fear of subjugation by the armies of Islam - in other words, "know thy enemy." With the Renaissance the motivation for study underwent something of a change, although the element of fear did not fully recede until the Turkish retreat from the gates of Vienna. What Europe was now intrigued by was the opportunities for trade, for service as military instructors, and for diplomatic relations with Muslim governments, the Sublime Porte in particular. But there was something else at work beyond these practical considerations, and this was the European tradition of scholarly inquiry, of the pursuit of learning for its own sake, a tradition that, as Lewis pointedly remarks, was entirely lacking in the East.

Lewis himself is the very embodiment of the Western scholarly tradition. Formerly Professor of the History of the Near and Middle East at the University of London and Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, he is one of the greatest authorities in the world on the history, institutions, and culture of Islam, a man of remarkable literary and linguistic accomplishments, whose mastery of sources in a range of Oriental and European languages is so complete, and his capacity for critical analysis and judgment so profound, as to be positively intimidating. Yet he writes with such clarity and grace about complex, even esoteric, aspects of Muslim law, theology, and history as to make them readily accessible to the non-specialist reader.

He examines the subject of Western intellectual curiosity about non-western lands, peoples, and cultures, and the corresponding absence of such curiosity among Muslims, in two thoughtful essays: "The Question of Orientalism" and "Other People's History." Because they themselves are uninterested in the study of other races and civilizations (an observation that could be made of Asians as a whole: Indians do not study the Japanese, nor Arabs the Chinese) Muslims are puzzled by Western scholarly interest in them. Rather than welcome it, they tend to suspect and resent it, ascribing it to dark, ulterior designs upon them, their lands, and their resources. Although Lewis demolishes without difficulty the arguments advanced by some of the more irrational exponents of this view, he admits that it does exert an appeal in the present intellectual climate in the West, dominated as it is by hysteria over racism, Eurocentrism, and alleged callous neglect of the Third World's woes. Yet at the same time, such is the chaotic condition of the contemporary bien-pensant mind, the university campuses of America ring with vociferous demands for the institution of all manner of courses on non-western cultures. As Lewis comments dryly: "If we don't study and teach other cultures we are called arrogant and ethnocentric and if we do we are accused of spoliation and exploitation." One wonders sometimes if there is a similar clamor on campuses in the Middle East for the study, say, of Malory's Morte D'Arthur or Dante's Inferno, or if any Arab, Turkish, or Persian scholar has bothered to translate works like these into his own language.

The last section of Lewis's book (the essays are grouped into three sections in roughly chronological order: "Encounters," "Studies and Perceptions," and "Islamic Response and Reaction") is devoted to what is seen in the West as the revival of Islam, a subject on which, as Lewis demonstrates, a considerable degree of confusion reigns in Western intellectual and political milieux. The confusion arises primarily from the inability of the current leaders of Western opinion to understand the centrality of religion to the life of a society. Having themselves relegated religion to the sidelines of life, they simply failed to grasp, at least until lately, how powerful an influence Islam remained in the Middle East. Nowadays, of course, they find Muslim extremists under every rumpled bed.

Lewis traces the origins of present Islamic militancy to the adoption by Muslim thinkers of Western secularist ideas deriving from the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Because one of the attractions of these ideas was that they were not of Christian provenance - indeed, were deeply hostile to Christianity - the Muslims did not see that they were also a threat to Islam. Now that they have perceived the threat that secularism poses to their faith, and realized that the political nostrums imported from the West have failed to cure the ills of Muslim societies, many Muslims are prepared to accept the arguments of Muslim divines that only through Islam and its institutions can Muslims find a remedy for their social and political malaise. Hence the emergence of what in the West has become known as "Muslim fundamentalism."

While various Christian churches of late have begun to relinquish their claim to be the one, true faith, Islam never has. Europe is having to confront this unsettling reality as millions of Muslims from Asia and Africa arrive and settle within its frontiers. It is an entirely new phenomenon, Lewis emphasizes, this voluntary migration of Muslim peoples to countries that had never been part of the dar al-Islam (literally "the House of Islam," i.e., the Muslim homeland). In years gone by, Muslims living under European rule were either communities, notably in the Balkans, that had remained in situ after the reconquest of Christian lands, or they were the subjects of the European empires in Asia and Africa.

The situation of the present-day Muslim communities in Europe had never been visualized by the classical Islamic jurists when they addressed the question of whether or not it was permitted to Muslims to live under non-muslim rule. Generally, they concluded, it was not. How the question will be answered by today's jurists has yet to be seen, but the answer, in Lewis's view, will not be easy to formulate. European law may accord Muslims the right to practice their faith freely and openly, but this is not enough for a true believer. Islam is as much a legal, political, and social system as it is a religious faith. The law governing the Muslim community is the sharia, the law of Islam, which regulates every aspect of a Muslim's life and is applied by qadis (judges) in sharia courts. Moreover, a Muslim is enjoined by his faith to command and forbid, i.e., to exercise authority. In any conflict between Muslim and non-Muslim belief, the former must prevail. A Muslim also has a duty to proselytize but must not himself be converted to another faith: the penalty for apostasy is death. Among expatriate Muslims today, Lewis writes, "many still feel that it is their God-given duty to command what is good and forbid what is evil, in their new no less than in their old homes." If the tide of migration continues to flow as it has, and if the resurgence of Islam persists, Europe may well find itself, as in the Middle Ages, having to fend off the Muslim invader - without the spiritual backbone which medieval Christianity once gave it.