Bernard Lewis (1926-),
British author and professor
Lewis is the
Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of
Near Eastern Studies,
Emeritus, at
Princeton University and probably the West’s foremost expert on the
Islamic world.
Lewis was educated at the
University of London, earning his
BA and
PhD in history. With the exception of his service in the British
Foreign Office during
World War II as a specialist in the
Middle East, he has been teaching since
1938. From 1938 to
1974, he taught at the University of London; in 1974 he was recruited by Princeton.
Throughout his career, Lewis has specialized in the study of the Islamic world, from the day of
Muhammad to contemporary politics. He is said to be fluent in
Arabic,
Aramaic,
French,
German,
Hebrew,
Latin,
Persian,
Turkish, and other
languages. He is notable for examining the history of the Islamic world and using it to examine the current political scene. The main thrust (and note that I’m greatly simplifying things here) of much of his work is that Islam, the world’s great cultural and military power in the
middle ages, has lost its place as
king of the hill and the fact that the
infidels are in charge is the cause of current resentment towards
America and the west.
Lewis was among the targets of
Edward Said’s notable
1978 work
Orientalism, which claimed that Western academic study of the Middle East was a form of
cultural imperialism. Lewis’
old school approach to historical study was unfashionable in
postmodernist terms, but now he’s back in favor in the wake of the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks: his work is in high demand and he has been consulted by world leaders. Said, meanwhile, is still denouncing Lewis in the pages of
The Nation and elsewhere for believing in silly concepts like “The West” and “Islam”.
Lewis’ classic
1990 essay from
The Atlantic, “The Roots of Muslim Rage”: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/90sep/rage.htm
Said versus Lewis in
The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011022&s=said
Some of Lewis’ dozens of books:
The Arabs in History, London 1950;
The Emergence of Modern Turkey, London and New York 1961
The Assassins, London 1967
The Muslim Discovery of Europe, New York 1982
The Political Language of Islam, Chicago 1988
Race and Slavery in the Middle East: an Historical Enquiry, New York 1990
Islam and the West, New York, 1993
Islam in History, 2nd edition, Chicago, 1993
The Shaping of the Modern Middle East, New York, 1994
Cultures in Conflict, New York, 1994
The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years, New York, 1995
The Future of the Middle East, London, 1997
The Multiple Identities of the Middle East, London, 1998
A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of life, letters and history, New York, 2000
Sources: http://slate.msn.com//?id=2058632; http://www.princeton.edu/~nes/profiles/Lewis.htm