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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,...

In a recent interview, Prof. Bernard Lewis, famed historian and leading expert on Islam, warned that "Muslims seem to be about to take over Europe." Was the fall of Europe inevitable? No, according to Prof. Lewis, who says it's coming about because "Europeans have surrendered on every issue regarding Islamic demands, due to political correctness and multi-culturalism." Europe has become woefully secular and its tepid attachment to a forgotten and dismissed Christianity is no match for the zeal of Muslims who remain fervent in their faith. Having been force fed that all cultures are equally valid, Europeans consider it unenlightened...

Islam could soon be the dominant force in a Europe which, in the name of political correctness, has abdicated the battle for cultural and religious control, Prof. Bernard Lewis, the world-renowned Middle Eastern and Islamic scholar, said on Sunday. The Muslims "seem to be about to take over Europe," Lewis said at a special briefing with the editorial staff of The Jerusalem Post. Asked what this meant for the continent's Jews, he responded, "The outlook for the Jewish communities of Europe is dim." Soon, he warned, the only pertinent question regarding Europe's future would be, "Will it be an Islamized...

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about why I voted against Dr. Gates and lay out in detail the concerns I have about the security posture of the United States today and how I do not believe that Dr. Gates is the appropriate choice to confront them. While I think he certainly has a lot of positive qualities, and in normal times I would certainly defer to the President's judgment on this, we are not in normal times. I believe we need a Secretary--and I think we need leaders in this country, particularly the Secretary--who has insight...

James Baker's "Iraq Study Group" seems to have been cast on the same basis as Liza Minnelli's last wedding. A stellar lineup: Donna Summer, Mickey Rooney, the Doobie Brothers, Gina Lollobrigida, Michael Jackson, Mia Farrow, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Jill St. John. That's Liza's wedding, not the Baker Commission. But at both gatherings everyone who was anyone was there, no matter how long ago it was they were anyone. So the fabulous Baker boy was accompanied by Clinton officials Leon Panetta and Bill Perry, Clinton golfing buddy Vernon Jordan, Clinton's fellow sex fiend Chuck Robb, the quintessential ''moderate'' Republican...

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered by Bernard Lewis on July 16, 2006, on board the Crystal Serenity, during a Hillsdale College cruise in the British Isles. By common consent among historians, the modern history of the Middle East begins in the year 1798, when the French Revolution arrived in Egypt in the form of a small expeditionary force led by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte--who conquered and then ruled it for a while with appalling ease. General Bonaparte--he wasn't yet Emperor--proclaimed to the Egyptians that he had come to them on behalf of a French Republic...

Occasionally I will hear a friend say, as he contemplates the utter wasteland our urban public schools have become, and as he views the deterioration of American society, ‘what this country needs is another depression”. Having been a young child during the ‘Great Depression’, and having therefore the interest in learning all I could about it, I do not agree with the thought. I do not agree that we need to go through another era when millions lived in abject poverty. I do agree with the concerns for our country, as teachers, numbed by classroom experiences and handcuffed by politically...

By common consent among historians, the modern history of the Middle East begins in the year 1798, when the French Revolution arrived in Egypt in the form of a small expeditionary force led by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte—who conquered and then ruled it for a while with appalling ease. General Bonaparte—he wasn't yet Emperor—proclaimed to the Egyptians that he had come to them on behalf of a French Republic built on the principles of liberty and equality. We know something about the reactions to this proclamation from the extensive literature of the Middle Eastern Arab world. The idea...

The victor of the war on terror is far from clear, the historian Bernard Lewis told a Hudson Institute conference. The British-born professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton said Monday that he was "more optimistic about the future of our struggle" in the early 1940s — when the French had capitulated to the Germans, when Stalin was Hitler's ally, and when America was still neutral — than he is today. "Hitler would have won under these conditions," Mr. Lewis said, citing America's inability to clearly define the war on terror and exactly who its enemy is. The professor, whose...

Is Iran planning an apocalyptic strike against Israel and/or the United States for August 22? If so, what should the U.S. do to protect Americans and our ally? Such questions are worrying a growing number of officials in the White House, at the CIA, and at the Pentagon, and for good reason.

Better cancel those holidays. We now have a date for Armageddon, and it's a week on Tuesday - August 22. This information comes from no lesser source than the Wall Street Journal, where Bernard Lewis, President Bush's favourite historian, provides the details. "In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity," the professor writes, "there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time - Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long-awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined. "Mr...

In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time--Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the U.S....

Chpt. 1 Slavery In 1842 the British Consul General in Morocco, as part of his government's worldwide endeavor to bring about the abolition of slavery or at least the curtailment of the slave trade, made representations to the sultan of that country asking him what measures, if any, he had taken to accomplish this desirable objective. The sultan replied, in a letter expressing evident astonishment, that "the traffic in slaves is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam . . . up to this day." The sultan continued that...

On fighting the war on terror I am familiar with this slogan. I feel that while we are indeed engaged in a war against terror, it is inadequate and even misleading. If Churchill had informed the country in 1940, "We are engaged in a war against bomber aircraft and submarines," that would have been an accurate statement but not a very helpful one. To say we are engaged in a war against terror is of the same order. Terror is a tactic. It's a method of waging war. It is not a cause, it is not an adversary, it is...

<p>Bernard Lewis is arguably the most important living scholar of Islam in the West. Author of more than two dozen books, the retired Princeton professor, who turned 90 earlier this year, has long been an adviser to governments and policymakers seeking to understand the intricacies of Islam and its relationship to the Western world.</p>

On May 31, Princeton professor emeritus of Near Eastern history Bernard Lewis will be celebrating his 90th birthday, but the festivities have already begun. On May 1, he was honored at a luncheon in Philadelphia, where Vice President Dick Cheney displayed unnatural humility in calling him the "very ideal of the wise man." In the Wall Street Journal's opinion section, Fouad Ajami of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies published a warm tribute, calling Lewis "the oracle of this new age of the Americans in the lands of the Arab and Islamic worlds." And on his website, Israeli-American...

There is a well-worn platitude that we have all heard many times before: it is perfectly legitimate to criticize the actions and policies of the state of Israel or the doctrines of Zionism without necessarily being motivated by anti-Semitism. The fact that this has been repeated ad nauseam does not detract from its truth. Not only do I accept it, but I would even take it a step further with another formulation that may perhaps evoke surprise if not shock: it is perfectly possible to hate and even to persecute Jews without necessarily being anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, hatred and persecution are...

“Europe will be Islamic by the end of this century at the very latest.” The floodgates opened with that comment from Bernard Lewis. Since its publication in Die Welt in July 2004, countless responses have appeared from writers as varied as George Weigel and Patrick Buchanan. The latest is Mark Steyn, in a New Criterion essay (reprinted in the Wall Street Journal) titled, in his customary understated style, “It’s the Demography, Stupid.” An unusual unanimity has prevailed – almost every writer concurs with Lewis that Europe is a lost cause, a casualty in the war against Islamofascism. The argument is...

Changing perceptions For Muslims as for others, history is important, but they approach it with a special concern and awareness. The career of the Prophet Muhammad, the creation and expansion of the Islamic community and state, and the formulation and elaboration of the holy law of Islam are events in history, known from historical memory or record and narrated and debated by historians since early times. In the Islamic Middle East, one may still find passionate arguments, even bitter feuds, about events that occurred centuries or sometimes millennia ago — about what happened, its significance, and its current relevance. This...

George Walden reviews From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East by Bernard Lewis One of the most instructive pieces in this collection of articles, essays and scholarly papers written over five decades by the historian Bernard Lewis explains the role of the dragoman - the interpreter - in Middle Eastern history. The region's many languages and civilisations meant that their power to ease or impede communication, to inform or skew policy, was immense. The most frequent complaint about the breed was less the inaccuracy of their renderings of foreign texts or tongues (though they were not above embellishing them...