The Sheila Variations

The Books: "What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East" (Bernard Lewis)

And here is my next excerpt of the day from my library.

My history bookshelf.

Next book on the shelf is What Went Wrong? : The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis. Oh boy. The thought police are gonna be all over me for this one!! hahaha

Anyway, Bernard Lewis has been out there, writing books on Islam and the Muslim world for many years - and he, of course, catapulted to national prominence (on a wider more populist level) following September 11, when his expertise was sorely needed. The whole "Why are these people so mad???" question is addressed, over and over and over again, in this book. It's a quick read, not too in-depth - it is meant to address a wide populace- not a select group of scholars. Muslim History 101. A very good quick reference book for the shelves. It's also good because Lewis has great affection for his topic - which gives his tone and his points a certain weight. He is truly sad it has come to this. But he's not surprised. Because of the history involved.

I highly recommend this book.

From What Went Wrong? : The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis.

At the peak of Islamic power, there was only one civilization that was comparable in the level, quality, and variety of achievement; that was of course China. But Chinese civilization remained essentially local, limited to one region, East Asia, and to one racial group. It was exported to some degree, but only to neighboring and kindred peoples. Islam in contrast created a world civilization, polyethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental.

For centuries the world view and self-view of Muslims seemed well grounded. Islam represented the greatest military power on earth -- its armies, at the very same time, were invading Europe and Africa, India and China. It was the foremost economic power in the world, trading in a wide range of commodities through a far-flung network of commerce and communications in Asia, Europe, and Africa; importing slaves and gold from Africa, slaves and wool from Europe, and exchanging a variety of foodstuffs, materials, and manufactures with the civilized countries of Asia. It had achieved the highest level so far in human history in the arts and sciences of civilization. Inheriting the knowledge and skills of the ancient Middle East, of Greece and of Persia, it added to them several important innovations from outside, such as the use and manufacture of paper from China and decimal positional numbering from India. It is difficult to imagine modern literature or science without the one or the other. It was in the Islamic Middle East that Indian numbers were for the first time incorporated in the inherited body of mathematical learning. From the Middle East they were transmitted to the West, where they are still known as Arabic numerals, honoring not those who invented them but those who first brought them to Europe. To this rich inheritance scholars and scientists in the Islamic world added an immensely important contribution through their own observations, experiments, and ideas. In most of the arts and sciences of civilization, medieval Europe was a pupil and in a sense a dependent of the Islamic world, relying on Arabic versions even for many otherwise unknown Greek works.

And then, suddenly, the relationship changed. Even before the Renaissance, Europeans were beginning to make significant progress in the civilized arts. With the advent of the New Learning, they advanced by leaps and bounds, leaving the scientific and technological and eventually the cultural heritage of the Islamic world far behind them.

The Muslims for a long time remained unaware of this. The great translation movement that centuries earlier had brought many Greek, Persian, and Syriac works wihtin the purview of Muslim and other Arabic readers had come to an end, and the new scientific literature of Europe was almost totally unknown to them. Until the late eighteenth century, only one medical book was translated into a Middle Eastern language -- a sixteenth century treatise on syphilis, presented to Sultan Mehmed IV in Turkish 1655. Both the choice and the date are significant. This disease, reputedly of American origin, had come to the Islamic world, from Europe and is indeed still known in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other languages as "the Frankish disease". Obviously, it seemed both appropriate and legitimate to adopt a Frankish remedy for a Frankish disease. Apart from that, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the technological revolution passed virtually unnoticed in the lands of Islam, where they were still inclined to dismiss the denizens of the lands beyond the Western frontier as benighted barbarians, much inferior even to the more sophisticated Asian infidels to the east. These had useful skills and devices to impart; the Europeans had neither. It was a judgment that had for long been reasonably accurate. It was becoming dangerously out of date.

Posted by sheila