What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East

Although short, this book gives a very interesting discussion of the history of the tension between the Islamic religion and the thrust towards modernization in the West. Belief systems are slow to adapt to new ideas, and this is brought out with great clarity in this book. Via the study of its past, the author gives the reader much insight into the events of today's Middle East, and inspires further reading on the subject. The author discusses the need for the citizens of the Ottoman empire to emulate the technology of Western Europe. The underlying theme of the book is that European power, resulting from innovation and experiment, changed the balance of power between the Ottoman empire and Europe. But for a Muslim, living in Europe was an abomination. One should not mix with the infidels. The author explains the need though for Muslims to do just this, due to the threats from the West. [The disciples of hate in 911 clearly did not mind living in Western society and learning of Western devices. One can only wonder if at any moment they may have connected with some of the people in the area in which they were living and then perhaps had second thoughts about what they were going to do. Anger and hate are emotions that are hard to sustain for long periods of time. They require much concentration to preserve. But a little religion always helps in this regard]. The Ottoman's solution to the threat of the West, was, according to the author, to return to the basics of the Islamic religion, a belief he reminds the reader is still predominant in the Middle East. What is most interesting from the standpoint of today is the role of France as being the dominant European influence. In the book the rise of the modern Middle East begins with the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon in 1798. Even before that time French schools existed in the Middle East and the French language was compulsory for military students. One inevitably compares the three major religions of the West when reading the book. Interestingly, Islam "wins" if judged by tolerance for those of different beliefs and equal rights, but fails miserably when notice is made of the attitudes towards slaves and women. But as the author points out, a slave can become free by choice of his master. The status of woman in Islamic society though is static and immutable, unfortunately. Clearly Middle Easteners were perplexed by the rise of the West and its achievements. What accounted for the superiority of the West? What is the source of Western success? Clearly, as the book brings out, Middle Easteners were seeking answers beyond that which religion gave them, and, in retrospect, they were certainly correct to doubt the efficacy of religion in this regard. For, as the author notes, it was the infidels who benefited from the changes taking place. The author also addresses the role of technology in the modern Middle East in bringing about change, imposing limits on both rulers and teachers. But the cowards of 911 used technology in an attempt to bring about the demise of the West. However they could not use it without meeting their own demise, and have thus proven again the sterility of their belief system, and those that supported them. Another interesting commentary in the book is the role of young people, particularly in Iran. Educated in the West, they brought to Iran the then alien ideas of freedom. With the turmoil now facing the leaders of Iran this very day, this is a special irony. Should one call the young people now battling in the streets of Iran the "New Young Ottomans", in reference to the "Young Ottomans" described in this book? The comparison might be too loose, since the street fighters now were not educated in the West (but they do have access to a huge information base of "corrupting" influences: the Internet). The biggest tragedy in the history of Middle East is the reluctance of Islamic society to accept the science of the West, given the incredible contributions of the Middle East to modern science and mathematics. The author asks the reader to consider the question as to why one would accept Islam as being an obstacle to freedom, science, and economic development, when in the past, and at that time closer to the sources of Islamic faith than now, it was a pioneer in all three of these? The answer is quite straightforward from the standpoint of science: those that were introducing science were not acting like Muslims when they carried it out. Shall we call them Muslims who sometimes practiced science or scientists who sometimes acted like Muslims? Either designation will hold, for the two are diametrically opposed: no amount of prayer or supplication will bring about the results of science, for that is to be done with discipline of thought and painstaking experimentation...and no scientific experiment can illustrate the soundness of Islam, or indeed of any other religion, Western or otherwise. In an afterword to the book, the author expresses grief and concern of course over the events of 911. He points out correctly that the followers of bin Laden are only a minority, and that most adherents of Islam are concerned with living in freedom, in living in a world that allows them to live their own lives under a responsible government. The author expresses hope that freedom will triumph as it did over the repressive regimes of the twentieth century. But it will. The human mind of the twenty-first century is too efficacious to fail in its cause in this regard. And with billions of such minds populating our planet, the odds are against a grim future. Now more than ever is the time to be proud of being a member of the human species.

Sampling a broad collection of historical accounts, diplomatic cables, journals and official correspondence, Bernard Lewis illustrates the historical development of Middle Eastern political and religious institutions. This work, which is rich in vivid imagery and erudition, demonstrates Lewis’ gifted eloquence and mastery of foreign languages, with a wide range French, Turkish, Arabic, German and Italian sources cited throughout the study. Like Lewis’s other works, including The Crisis of Islam, widely considered his best work in the field, What Went Wrong? presents the reader with a profuse collection of accounts that describe the internal struggle battling for domination in the modern Muslim world: on the one hand, moderate Islam seeking to embrace the liberties of modern democracies and alignment with the West, and on the other, a fundamentalist strain of Islam that condemns any departure from ancient practice as a deviation from and corruption of true Islam. Lewis enters the minds of the disciples of the latter school and describes not only their struggle against outside influence, but also their struggle against the enemy from within (p. 107): In the literature of the Muslim radicals and militants the enemy has been variously defined. Sometimes he is the Jew or Zionist, sometimes the Christian or missionary, sometimes the Western imperialist, sometimes—less frequently—the Russia or other communist. But their primary enemies, and the most immediate object of their campaigns and attacks, are the native secularizers—those who have tried to weaken or modify the Islamic basis of the state by introducing secular schools and universities, secular laws and courts, and thus excluding Islam and its professional exponents from the two major areas of educations and justice. The arch-enemy from most of them is Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic and the first great secularizing reformer in the Muslim world. Characters as diverse as King Faruq and Presidents Nasser and Sadat in Egypt, Hafiz al-Asad in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Shah of Persia and the kings and princes of Arabia, were denounced as the most dangerous enemies of Islam, the enemies from within. For Lewis, the struggle between moderate and fundamentalist Islam has increased in the modern age, in part due to the twentieth century rise of autocratic government. Traditionally, justice within the context of Islamic governance meant not only that the ruler was there by right and not by usurpation, but also that “he governed according to God’s law, or at least according to recognizable moral and legal principles” (p. 54). This requirement “was sometimes discussed in terms of a contrast between arbitrary and consultative government” (p. 55). Yet today, consultative government has largely eroded in the Middle East, where capricious rulers who decide and act on their own have replaced “the wise and just ruler who consulted others” (p. 55). As a result, the region has come to be governed by corrupt rulers who, rather than act in accordance with principles of divine justice, oppress their people and subordinate their nations to foreign interests. This has in turn fueled the zeal of Islamic fundamentalists to purge their governments of all secular influence and restore the Shari‘a as their constitution and Islam as the State’s ordering mechanism. What went wrong in the Middle East was thus not natural disaster, poverty, foreign invasion or armed conflict, but rather, war of a different kind. What went wrong was the erosion of Islamic institutions that traditionally provided for the ordering of Islamic societies, but that gradually wore away when confronted with modernity, leaving a vacuum that was filled by unscrupulous rulers. The collage of cables, letters, vignettes, clippings and other texts that Lewis draws on serve as supportive materials to bring the reader to the forefront of Middle Eastern history and richly color the book with depictions of Middle Eastern and Ottoman culture and institutions. These materials are surprisingly dominated by Ottoman and Turkish rather than Arabic texts, perhaps because Islam experienced its civilizational apex during the Ottoman Empire, and they are not essential to explaining the causes of the decline of Islam in the modern age. Rather, without reference to these materials, one can extract the central thesis of the book from its concise ten-page conclusion.

very pleased with my order

Kann das Buch jedem nur ans Herz legen, der sich für einen kurzen Überblick der islamischen Geschichte und Probleme interessiert. Die Sprache ist auch leicht und verständlich, das Buch liest sich im Nu.

Its an old library book. Not sure why it wasnt kept on the shelves because its a great book.

Interesting but tended to tail off inconclusively at the end

By now a classic work in the field. By and large very objective, but occasionally a bit biased.