Book Review

 

 

Title: What went Wrong? The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East

Author: Bernard Lewis

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Year of Publication: 2002

 

Introduction

The supremacy of Islamic civilization is stretched across eleven centuries and almost three continents. Within a few years of its inception, Islam had risen to create a world civilization, which was poly-ethnic, multiracial, and international. It had achieved dominance in the fields of military & economic power, and even the civilized arts and sciences. Much of the rest of the world – especially medieval Europe – was a pupil of the Islamic world. The Muslim world-view of the Self and the Other was constructed in a large part by this dominant stature, reflecting symptoms of arrogance. However, the balance soon started to shift; the Europeans initially excelling in the arts and sciences and then gradually translating these advancements into military and economic triumph.

Like most global empires, the endemic threat to Islam was internal. At the turn of the fifteenth century, the world of Islam had three divisions: the Ottoman sultanate of Turkey, the mamlūk sultanates of Egypt and Persia; each a claimant to political and religious authority over all Muslims. While Egypt eroded early and was coalesced into Ottoman Turkey, the conflict between the Ottomans and Persia dragged on until the nineteenth century, sapping much of the strength of both. In the eyes of many, it was this intra-civilizational conflict that saved Europe from conquest.

The discovery of new sea routes between Europe and Asia by Vasco da Gama at the turn of the fifteenth century signaled a massive shift in the economic and strategic significance of the Islamic heartlands. As the routes first opened the way to European commerce, and then gradually to colonization, the military aspects of this discovery became threateningly clear. With the onslaught of the Mongols from the North, the Islamic civilization was virtually cornered. The situation stagnated for decades, and then a new generation of Turkish Muslims awakened to regain the glory of Islam in European and Central Asian lands. However, the combined power of Russian and European technological superiority produced crushing defeats in Vienna, Buda, and Azov. The Turks were now in the unfamiliar position of inferiority. The Treaty of Carlowitz, signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League signalled the initiation of a new era of interaction between Islam and the West.

 

The Lessons of the Battlefield

The treaty of Carlowitz was the first peace treaty to be signed by a defeated Ottoman Empire with victorious Christian adversaries. This treaty drove home two lessons. The first was military – defeat by superior force. The second lesson, more complex and novel, was diplomatic – learnt in the process of negotiation. Previously, a treaty was a simple matter as it constituted the dictation of terms, and the defeated army accepted them. However, the Ottomans were now in the unaccustomed position of reducing the results of a military defeat through political means, a task in which they had no experience. This establishment of parity fundamentally altered the Muslim worldview, and was despised by many as an unholy act of cooperation with the infidel.

Over the years, the Ottomans responded to the changing balance by modernizing and even westernizing their military. However, subsequent wars starkly revealed weaknesses of the Muslim states compared with the European powers. Military remedies for military failures was seen and understood to be inadequate. The quest for other causes and cures began.

 

Social and Cultural Barriers

Lewis identifies three issues that have achieved symbolic status drawing a sharp cleavage between the Western and Islamic civilizations: women, science and music. Of these, he regards women and music as the touchstone of difference between modernization and Westernization.

Lewis considers the status of women the worst-off amongst the three primary inferior groups established by Islamic law and tradition – unbelievers, slaves and women. The slave could be freed, the unbeliever converted, but it was the woman who was confined to this role without any method of salvation.

Unlike its reaction to feminism, the Middle East grudgingly acknowledged Western supremacy in the fields of sciences as it frequently manifested itself in the battlefield. However, the adoption of western science was selective, fuelled primarily by the realities of warfare rather than the pursuit of knowledge.

 

Modernization and Social Equality

Traditional Islam is regarded as unusually egalitarian considering the context in which it was established. However, as has been already mentioned, certain inequalities were sanctioned and even sanctified by holy writ.

The abolition of slavery and the recognition of the unbeliever were in a large part attributed to Western influence and interests. However, absence of internal or external pressures for the emancipation of women stagnated reform in this particular dimension of social life.

The traditional Islamic civilization is portrayed as innately and exceptionally conservative; all forms of reform being forced upon by the weight of circumstances or external domination, and in all cases ruthlessly resisted. Any evolution of Islamic thought and life is a result of Western impact and Middle-Eastern response – not a reassessment from within.

 

Secularism and Civil Society

Throughout the formative years of Judaism and Christianity, the followers of these beliefs were persecuted and were essentially rebels against authority. Islam, however, achieved victory and triumph within the lifetime of the Prophet (sws) – won over a state and established an empire. Secularism – the separation of political from religious authority – is internal to the West and alien to Islam because of these varying experiences at their inception.

Historically, Islamic fanatics – often confused with Islamic “fundamentalists” – have considered secularism to be anti-Islamic, and have revolted against it. They view the threat to Islam as having shifted from the Christians and Jews of without to the secularizers from within. Twentieth century reformers such as Kamāl Atāturk of Turkey, Nasser and Sadat in Egypt, and the Shah of Iran were denounced as enemies of Islam.

If tolerance is to be taken as a component of modernity, then secularism is surely a crucial characteristic for any Muslim state. In this respect, the Middle East has regressed rather than progressed on the path to modernity. Political rulers frequently invoke religious authority to infringe onto the rights of their own citizens on the one hand, and to declare war on the foreign powers on the other.

 

Time, Space and Modernity

The West is characterized by precision and accuracy. The Middle East is characterized by ambiguity and abstraction.

Western science in particular and civilization in general, progressed through a formal and systemized approach to measurement of dimensions. Their precise clocks and calendars made them efficient; the standardization of measurement for weights and lengths had implications for commerce and even warfare technology.

The Middle East focused on the intangible, theoretical and spiritual rather than the substantial, empirical and practical. This difference in perception of reality destined the Islamic civilization to stagnation while the West prospered and progressed. An empirical approach is necessary in order to control and subordinate the forces of nature to the will of mankind. The Middle East faltered, the West prevailed.

 

Aspects of Cultural Change

While prescribing modernization to the Islamic world, the advocacy for cultural transformation is viewed as camouflaged Westernization. Recent centuries have seen western cultural challenge to Islam. Western visual arts and music have engraved themselves everywhere in the Muslim world. Architecture, attire, institutions, currency, even politics; westernization has seeped into the lives of Muslims over the centuries, at times overtly, and at others in a subtle, even insidious manner. However, the chief mechanism of cultural colonization has been through the word. Through the use of language and various translation movements, the West was able to establish a predominantly one-sided communicative link with the Islamic world, paving the way for stronger influences through modern electronic media such as radio, television and the internet. In the haze between westernization and modernization, one thing is clear: dominant western standards have dictated modernity.

 

Conclusion

So, what went wrong? Muslim and Western scholars have come up with varying answers to this question. There are those who consider the causes to be external, while others point to internal stagnation and contradictions to explain the downfall of Islamic supremacy. For some, frustration might cause the question to be posed as “Who did this to us?”; assigning the blame variously to the Mongols, Imperialism, America or the Jews. Within the Islamic framework, the traditionalists consider it to be the inevitable result of abandoning the guiding principles in pursuit of light and flimsy causes, while for the modernists the decline can best be explained by inflexibility and failure to adapt and accommodate.

Scholars external to the Islamic framework consider Islam to be inherently incompatible with modernity. They ascribe the loss of civilization to the rigidity of the system and antagonism to transformation.

In Lewis’ own view, it is the lack of freedom in contemporary Muslim societies which prevents individual or group initiative towards progress. He considers freedom from indoctrination, freedom from economic individualism, freedom from patriarchy, and freedom from stifling government essential and necessary conditions for Islam to regain the glory that it once claimed.