Posted on 04/28/2007 7:34:45 PM PDT by gallaxyglue
The Third Islamic Wave by Bernard Lewis On March 7, The American Enterprise Institute granted Professor Bernard Lewis the Irving Kristol Award, an honor whose past recipients have included former President Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger and Justice Antonin Scalia. Professor Lewis was also selected to deliver the Irving Kristol Lecture. Below are excerpts from that lecture.
A favorite theme of the historian is periodization—dividing history into periods. Periodization is mostly a convenience of the historian for purposes of writing or teaching. Nevertheless, there are times in the long history of the human adventure when we have a real turning point, a major change—the end of an era, the beginning of a new era. I am becoming more and more convinced that we are in such an age at the present time—a change in history comparable with such events as the fall of Rome or the discovery of America.
Conventionally, the modern history of the Middle East begins at the end of the 18th century, when a small French expeditionary force commanded by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte was able to conquer Egypt and rule it with impunity. It was a terrible shock that one of the heartlands of Islam could be invaded, occupied and ruled with virtually no effective resistance.
The second shock came a few years later with the departure of the French, which was brought about not by the Egyptians nor by their suzerains, the Turks, but by a small squadron of the Royal Navy commanded by a young admiral called Horatio Nelson, who drove the French out and back to France.
From [that moment] onward, the heartlands of Islam were no longer wholly controlled by the rulers of Islam. They were under direct or indirect control from outside. What shaped their lives was Western influence. What gave them choices was Western rivalries. The political game that they could play—the only one that was open to them—was to try and profit from the rivalries between the outside powers, to try to use them against one another.
That game is now over. The era that was inaugurated by Napoleon and Nelson was terminated by Reagan and Gorbachev. The Middle East is no longer ruled or dominated by outside powers. These nations are having some difficulty adjusting to this new situation, to taking responsibility for their own actions and their consequences. But they are beginning to do so.
Reemerging Trends With the ending of the era of outside domination, [we see] the reemergence of certain [previously obscured] older trends in Middle Eastern history. One of them I would call the internal struggles—ethnic, sectarian, regional—between different forces within the Middle East. These have of course continued, but were of less importance in the imperialist era. They are coming out again now and gaining force, as we see, for example, from the current clash between Sunni and Shia Islam—something without precedent for centuries.
[The other trend we see] is the Muslims’ return to what they perceive as the cosmic struggle for world domination between the two main faiths—Christianity and Islam. The declaration of war beg[an] at the very beginning of Islam. There are certain letters purported to have been written by the Prophet Muhammad to the Christian Byzantine emperor, the emperor of Persia and various other rulers, informing them of his advent and summoning them to accept the new faith or face the consequences. The authenticity of these prophetic letters is doubted, but the message is clear and authentic in the sense that it does represent the long-dominant view of the Islamic world.
A History in Three Parts The Muslim attack on Christendom and the resulting conflict, which arose more from their resemblances than from their differences, has gone through three phases. The first dates from the very beginning of Islam, when the new faith spilled out of the Arabian Peninsula into the Middle East, Africa and Europe. After a long and bitter struggle, the Christians managed to retake part, but not all, of the territory they had lost. They succeeded in Europe, and in a sense, Europe was defined by the limits of that success. They failed to retake North Africa or the Middle East, which were lost to Christendom. Notably, they failed to recapture the Holy Land, in the series of campaigns known as the Crusades.
That was not the end of the matter. In the meantime, the Islamic world, having failed the first time, was bracing for the second attack, this time conducted not by Arabs and Moors but by Turks and Tartars. In the mid-13th century, the Mongol conquerors of Russia were converted to Islam. The Turks, who had already conquered Anatolia, advanced into Europe, and in 1453, they captured the ancient Christian citadel of Constantinople. They conquered a large part of the Balkans and for a while ruled half of Hungary. Twice they reached as far as Vienna, to which they laid siege in 1529 and again in 1683.
Again, Europe counterattacked, this time more successfully and more rapidly. They succeeded in recovering Russia and the Balkan Peninsula, and in advancing further into the Islamic lands, chasing their former rulers whence they had come. For this phase of European counterattack, a new term was invented: imperialism. When the peoples of Asia and Africa invaded Europe, this was not imperialism. When Europe attacked Asia and Africa, it was.
This European counterattack began a new phase which brought the European attack into the very heart of the Middle East—[an event whose results can be felt today.] [For instance], the war in Afghanistan led to the defeat of the Red Army and the collapse of the Soviet Union. We tend to see that as a Western victory in the Cold War against the Soviets. For Osama bin Laden, however, it was nothing of the kind. It [was] a Muslim victory in a jihad. As he saw it, Islam had reached the ultimate humiliation in this long struggle after World War I, when the last of the great Muslim empires—the Ottoman Empire—was broken up and most of its territories divided between the victorious allies. This seemed to be the lowest point in Muslim history.
In bin Laden’s perception, the millennial struggle between the true believers and the unbelievers has gone through successive phases. In this final phase, the world of the infidels was divided and disputed between two rival superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. In his perception, the Muslims have met, defeated and destroyed the more dangerous and the more deadly of the two infidel superpowers. Dealing with the soft, pampered and effeminate Americans would be an easy matter.
This belief was confirmed in the 1990’s when we saw one attack after another on American bases and installations with virtually no effective response of any kind— only angry words and expensive missiles dispatched to remote and uninhabited places. The lessons of Vietnam and Beirut were confirmed by Mogadishu. “Hit them, and they’ll run.” This was the perceived sequence leading up to 9/11. That attack was clearly intended to be the completion of the first sequence and the beginning of the new one, taking the war into the heart of the enemy camp.
The Third Wave In the eyes of a fanatical and resolute minority of Muslims, the third wave of attack on Europe has clearly begun. We should not delude ourselves as to what it is and what it means. This time it is taking different forms and two in particular: terror and migration.
The subject of terror has been [discussed] frequently and in great detail. [The subject of migration, however, has not.]
In earlier times, it was inconceivable that a Muslim would voluntarily move to a non-Muslim country. The jurists discuss this subject at great length in the textbooks and manuals of shari`a, but in a different form: is it permissible for a Muslim to live in or even visit a non-Muslim country? And if so, if he does, what must he do? A captive or a prisoner of war obviously has no choice, but he must preserve his faith and get home as soon as possible. An unbeliever in the land of the unbelievers who sees the light and embraces the true faith—in other words, becomes a Muslim—must leave as soon as possible and go to a Muslim country.
[But what of ] a visitor? For [a] long [time], the only [legitimate] purpose [for visiting an infidel land] was to ransom captives. This was later expanded into diplomatic and commercial missions. With the advance of the European counterattack, there was a new issue in this ongoing debate. What is the position of a Muslim if his country is conquered by infidels? May he stay or must he leave?
[The discussion is not merely for textbooks; it has modern-day implications as well.] There are obviously now many attractions which draw Muslims to Europe: [economic opportunity, freedom of expression and education]. Terrorists have far greater freedom of preparation and operation in Europe than they do in most Islamic lands.
[But what about] assimilation? How far is it possible for Muslim migrants who have settled in Europe, in North America and elsewhere, to become part of those countries in which they settle, in the way that so many other waves of immigrants have done?
[First, we must understand] the basic differences in what precisely is meant by assimilation and acceptance. Here there is an immediate and obvious [distinction] between the European and the American situations. For an immigrant to become an American means a change of political allegiance. For an immigrant to become a Frenchman or a German means a change of ethnic identity. Changing political allegiance is certainly very much easier and more practical than changing ethnic identity, either in one’s own feelings or in one’s measure of acceptance. England has it both ways. If you are naturalized, you become British, but you do not become English.
[We must also clarify the concept] of “religion.” For Muslims, it covers a whole range of different things—marriage, divorce and inheritance are the most obvious examples. Since antiquity in the Western world, the Christian world, these have been secular matters. The distinction of church and state, spiritual and temporal, lay and ecclesiastical, is a Christian distinction which has no place in Islamic history and therefore is difficult to explain to Muslims, even in the present day. Until very recently they did not even have a vocabulary to express it. They have one now.
Finding a Solution What are the European responses to this situation? In Europe, as in the United States, a frequent response is what is variously known as multiculturalism and political correctness. In the Muslim world there are no such inhibitions. They are very conscious of their identity. They know who they are and what they are and what they want; a quality which we seem to have lost to a very large extent. This is a source of strength in the one, of weakness in the other.
A term sometimes used is constructive engagement. Let’s talk to them, let’s get together and see what we can do. Constructive engagement has a long tradition. When Saladin re-conquered Jerusalem and other places in the holy land, he allowed the Christian merchants from Europe to stay in the seaports. [In his words], the merchants were useful since “there is not one among them that does not bring and sell us weapons of war, to their detriment and to our advantage.” This continued during the Crusades. It continued after. It continued during the Ottoman advance into Europe, when they could always find European merchants willing to sell them weapons they needed and European bankers willing to finance their purchases.
One also finds a rather startling modern version of it. We have seen in our own day the extraordinary spectacle of a pope apologizing to the Muslims for the Crusades. I would not wish to defend the behavior of the Crusaders, which was in many respects atrocious. But let us have a little sense of proportion. We are now expected to believe that the Crusades were an unwarranted act of aggression against a peaceful Muslim world. Hardly. The first papal call for a crusade occurred in 846 C.E., when an Arab expedition from Sicily sailed up the Tiber and sacked St. Peter’s in Rome. A synod in France issued an appeal to Christian sovereigns to rally against “the enemies of Christ,” and the Pope, Leo IV, offered a heavenly reward to those who died fighting the Muslims. A century and a half—and many battles— later, in 1096, the Crusaders actually arrived in the Middle East. The Crusades were a late, limited and unsuccessful imitation of the jihad—an attempt to recover by holy war what had been lost by holy war. It failed, and it was not followed up.
The Islamic radicals have even been able to find some allies in Europe. They have a left-wing appeal to the anti-U.S. elements in Europe, for whom they have, so to speak, replaced the Soviets. They have a right-wing appeal to the anti-Jewish elements in Europe, replacing the Axis. They have been able to win considerable support under both headings. For some in Europe, their hatreds apparently outweigh their loyalties.
Tit for Tat At the end of the first phase of the Christian reconquest, Muslims were given a choice: baptism, exile or death. When Muslims came to Europe, they had a certain expectation of tolerance, feeling that they were entitled to at least the degree of tolerance which they had accorded to non-Muslims in the great Muslim empires of the past. Both their expectations and their experience were very different.
Coming to European countries, they got both more and less than they had expected: more in the sense that they got in theory, and often in practice, equal political rights, equal access to the professions, all the benefits of the welfare state and freedom of expression.
But they also got significantly less than they had given in traditional Islamic states. In the Ottoman Empire and other states before that, the non-Muslim communities had separate organizations and ran their own affairs. They collected their own taxes, enforced their own laws, [ran] their own schools, administer[ed] their own laws. Three men living in the same street could die and their estates would be distributed under three different legal systems if one happened to be Jewish, one Christian and one Muslim. A Jew could be punished by a rabbinical court and jailed for violating the Sabbath or eating on Yom Kippur. A Christian could be arrested and imprisoned for taking a second wife. Bigamy is a Christian offense; it was not an Islamic or an Ottoman offense.
[In the modern state, Muslims] do not have that degree of independence. It is quite unrealistic for them to expect it, given the nature of the modern state, but that is not how they see it. They feel that they are entitled to receive what they gave. As one Muslim in Europe is said to have put it, “We allowed you to practice monogamy, why should you not allow us to practice polygamy?” Such questions—polygamy, in particular— raise important issues of a more practical nature. Isn’t an immigrant who is permitted to come to France or Germany entitled to bring his family with him? But what exactly does his family consist of? They are increasingly demanding and getting permission to bring plural wives.
Third Time’s a Charm? [So] where do we stand now? Is [the] third time [the charm]? It is not impossible. The [Muslims] have certain clear advantages. They have fervor and conviction, which in most Western countries are either weak or lacking. They are self-assured of the rightness of their cause, whereas we spend most of our time in self-denigration and selfabasement. They have loyalty and discipline, and perhaps most important of all, they have demography, the combination of natural increase and migration producing major population changes, which could lead within the foreseeable future to significant majorities in at least some European cities or even countries.
But we also have some advantages, the most important of which are knowledge and freedom. The appeal of genuine modern knowledge in a society which, in the more distant past, had a long record of scientific and scholarly achievement is obvious. They are keenly and painfully aware of their relative backwardness and welcome the opportunity to rectify it.
Less obvious but also powerful is the appeal of freedom, [and] freedom is making headway. It is becoming more and more understood, more and more appreciated, and more and more desired. It is perhaps, in the long run, our best hope, perhaps even our only hope, of surviving this developing struggle.
mark for later
“...Muslims’ return to what they perceive as the cosmic struggle for world domination between the two main faiths—Christianity and Islam...”
Says it all ................... FRegards
I agree that this the third Islamic wave, with a wave being defined as a movement of Islamic beyond its traditional boundaries.
But I define it differently.
The first wave was the capture of Spain and invasion of France which was ended at Tours.
The second wave ended at the seige of Vienna in 1673, when the Poles smashed the Turks.
The third wave is the less militant wave of migration to Europe starting in the 1950s of “guest workers”. This migration became the foundation of ever increasing immigration and the forming of Muslim power centers in Western Europe, something the other two waves could not accomplish by military power.
All three waves are enervated by the same powerful belief—to dominate Europe and make it submit to Islam, and thus give life to the maxim of Muhammed—to make the earth submit to Islam by any means necessary.
I will not convert or submit. I don’t plan to die at the hands of the so-called Religion of Peace.
Others in the west are not so sure. Those on the left, who cheer when the west suffers a defeat (because the left thinks we deserve it), will also have to choose. It appears they choose to submit, as strange as that seems given how much they hate anyone trying to impose their values on them.
Actually, only in the modern times, due to the fact that the Quran cannot withstand modern criticism, and those in power in Islam are afraid of it, just like China is of an unfettered internet.
Islam actually produced a voluminous amount of scientific advances because they made use of whatever they found in their travels and conquests.
excellent article.
moslems do not assimilate
unless they intermarry.
intermarriage with others by the invading tribes of rome led to comfortable vernacular cultures.
where there was no intermarriage,
there is still strife today (in the balkans).
Depending on what the Jihad crazies (whom the majority of Muslims havent seen fit to strangle) do, it could lead to the banning/elimination of all Muslims.
Dont think it impossible. A terrorist nuke killing a million people is more than enough to justify it and people will have the politicians heads if they dont do it.
>>They are self-assured of the rightness of their cause, whereas we spend most of our time in self-denigration and self abasement.<<
OMG. This should be repeated over and over until we truly understand the significance of that statement.
Blah, blah blah who gives a shit? I stopped giving a crap about muslims after 9/11 but in todays society look at the UK they are catering to stupid rules for these people who will never assimilate into western society but we are catering to a murderous form of religion because God forbid we offend them.
ditto
Bernard Lewis bump for later reading!
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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Whoops! Sorry Gallaxyglue. That ping was meant for my hubby!
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