Bernard Lewis, scholar of Islam, turns 90

[Roxanne Appleby]

"It may be that Western culture will indeed go: The lack of conviction of many of those who should be its defenders and the passionate intensity of its accusers may well join to complete its destruction. But if it does go, the men and women of all the continents will thereby be impoverished and endangered." Bernard Lewis

"Make no mistake, those who are unwilling to confront the past will be unable to understand the present and unfit to face the future." Bernard Lewis

As a young man, he had been on His Majesty's service during the Second World War, working for British intelligence between 1940 and 1945. "In 1940, we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues. In our island, we knew we would prevail, that the Americans would be drawn into the fight. It is different today. We don't know who we are, we don't know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy." Bernard Lewis

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which once translated one of Mr. Lewis's books into Arabic, said that it was "the work of a candid friend or an honest enemy; someone who disdains falsification."

from "A personal tribute to Bernard Lewis" by BY FOUAD AJAMI
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008313

 

[cantdog]

Compared to Hodgson, Lewis is a suave racist. He allows his opinion of Islam's meaning to color everything he writes. An essayist, not a scholar.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The values of the west will no doubt change, just as the world economy is changing and the racial and ethnic composition of the nations is changing. National boundaries will become irrelevent, and languages will blend and merge along with the races. The very things that define nations today are dissolving and becoming obsolete.

If you're an advocate of free trade and free movement in the world, this kind of bledning (or mongrelization, depending on your point of view) is an inevitable consequence. The point is to fight to keep the best of all the cultures and traditions that will blend together to form the world of tomorrow.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Compared to Hodgson, Lewis is a suave racist. He allows his opinion of Islam's meaning to color everything he writes. An essayist, not a scholar.

Ah, "R" word: So easy to unleash, and attaching the stigma accomplishes so much to silence critics without ever having to think, much less actually engage their ideas.

Shelby Steele has made a career out of explaining why the technique is so effective. This from his latest, which is about Iraq and foreign policy, but the same thing applies to every other sphere of public policy, or even to honestly expressing highly informed viewpoints that don't toe the line - Bernard Lewis's sin.


'Today, the white West -- like Germany after the Nazi defeat -- lives in a kind of secular penitence in which the slightest echo of past sins brings down withering condemnation. There is now a cloud over white skin where there once was unquestioned authority.

'I call this white guilt not because it is a guilt of conscience but because people stigmatized with moral crimes -- here racism and imperialism -- lack moral authority and so act guiltily whether they feel guilt or not.

'Anti-Americanism, whether in Europe or on the American left, works by the mechanism of white guilt. It stigmatizes America with all the imperialistic and racist ugliness of the white Western past so that America becomes a kind of straw man, a construct of Western sin. Once the stigma is in place, one need only be anti-American in order to be "good," in order to have an automatic moral legitimacy and power in relation to America. (People as seemingly disparate as President Jacques Chirac and the Rev. Al Sharpton are devoted pursuers of the moral high ground to be had in anti-Americanism.) This formula is the most dependable source of power for today's international left. Virtue and power by mere anti-Americanism. And it is all the more appealing since, unlike real virtues, it requires no sacrifice or effort -- only outrage at every slight echo of the imperialist past.

'Europeans are utterly confounded by the swelling Muslim populations in their midst. America has run from its own mounting immigration problem for decades, and even today, after finally taking up the issue, our government seems entirely flummoxed.

'Possibly white guilt's worst effect is that it does not permit whites -- and nonwhites -- to appreciate something extraordinary: the fact that whites in America, and even elsewhere in the West, have achieved a truly remarkable moral transformation. One is forbidden to speak thus, but it is simply true. There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant. If there is still the odd white bigot out there surviving past his time, there are millions of whites who only feel goodwill toward minorities.'

from White Guilt and the Western Past, by SHELBY STEELE
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114652895556640997.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

 

[MzDeviancy]

Ummm I can speak very authoratatively on this: whites, in general, range from at least mildly to moderately racist against Arabs and Muslims specifically. This is not a case of a few hypersensitive individuals taking things the wrong way. Racism is still very prevalent, particularly towards those of Middle Eastern heritage. It's become completely unacceptable to say "nigger" even if you were quoting a song, but for some reason it's generally viewed as being okay to imply that all Arabs beat their wives, or that Islam is a violent and bad religion. Even in Canada, supposedly so much more tolerant than America, the RCMP passed out a survey to Muslims after September 11th asking, amongst other offensive questions, how many times a day the respondant prayed.

Please don't try and pass this off as the imaginings of the paranoid. It's really quite offensive.

 

[cantdog]

There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant. If there is still the odd white bigot out there surviving past his time, there are millions of whites who only feel goodwill toward minorities.'

from White Guilt and the Western Past, by SHELBY STEELE
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114652895556640997.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Where is Shelby Steele, that he has never seen a white supremacist?

And what in the world does this deluded person have to do with Bernard Lewis?