A Century of Engagement and Reflection
Interview with Bernard Lewis
Written by : <
http://www.aawsat.net/author/adel-al-toraifi> Adel Al Toraifi
on : Monday, 25 Mar, 2013
Philadelphia, Asharq Al-Awsat-Bernard Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge
Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University and the
author of many critically acclaimed and bestselling books, including two
number one New York Times bestsellers: What Went Wrong? and Crisis of Islam.
The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years was a National Book
Critics Circle Award finalist. Internationally recognized as the greatest
historian of the Middle East, he has received fifteen honorary doctorates
and his books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Lewis'
latest work is Notes on A Century: Reflections of A Middle East Historian.
Asharq Al-Awsat's editor-in-chief Adel Al Toraifi recently met with Bernard
Lewis for an interview in Philadelphia, during which he provided his
sweeping overview of the region. Lewis reflected on the future of the region
after the Arab Spring, as well the history and literature of the Middle
East. Sharing personal anecdotes as well as his own analysis and judgment,
Lewis offered a nuanced and informed perspective on a region he has devoted
his life to studying and experiencing. A noted scholar as well on Islam and
the West, Lewis also reflected on how the West can and should engage the
region to avoid the pitfalls of past decades and missed opportunities. He
importantly stressed that the answers to the region's predicaments lie not
in Washington or London, but in the region itself.
The following is the full text of the interview:
Asharq Al-Awsat: What are your predictions on Arab world after the Arab
Spring?
Bernard Lewis: I don't think the historian can reasonably be expected to
predict the future but there are certain things that the historian can and
should do. He can discern trends. He can look at what has been happening and
what is happening and see change developing. From this he can formulate, I
will not say predictions, but possibilities, alternative possibilities,
things that may happen, things that may go this way or that way, in evolving
interactions. It is of course much safer to predict the remote rather than
the immediate future.
Q: What possibilities then do you see emerging from the Arab Spring?
I am to some degree pessimistic about the Arab Spring. Developing a
democracy is a slow and difficult business. We must be patient and give
emerging democracies a chance to develop. In the West, we tend to get
excessively concerned with elections, regarding the holding of elections as
the purest expression of democracy, as the climax of the process of
democratization. Well, the second may be true-the climax of the process. But
the process can be a long and difficult one.
The Arab masses certainly want change. And they want improvement. But what
does "democracy" mean in a Middle Eastern context? It's a word that is used
with different meanings, even in different parts of the western world. And
it's a political concept that has no history, no record whatever in the
Arab, Islamic world. We can't impose western models of democracy and judge
the Middle East by them.
Many believe the Arabs want freedom and democracy. Westerners tend to think
of democracy in our own terms-that's natural and normal-to mean periodic
elections in our style. But it's a mistake to try to think of the Middle
East in those terms and that can only lead to disastrous results, as we've
already seen in various places. Hamas did not establish a democratic regime
when it came to power through a free and fair election. I am mistrustful and
view with apprehension a genuinely free election-assuming that such a thing
could happen-because religious parties have an immediate advantage.
Q: Why do you see religious parties as a potential regression in terms of
democracy?
Political Islam did change over time but not necessarily for the best. A
dash toward Western-style elections, far from representing a solution to the
region's difficulties, constitutes a dangerous aggravation of the problem
and I fear that radical Islamic movements are ready to exploit so misguided
a move. In genuinely fair and free elections, the Muslim parties are very
likely to win. We get different figures from polls as to the probable
support for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is a very
dangerous, radical Islamic movement. The consequences could be disastrous
for Egypt. I can imagine a situation in which the Muslim Brotherhood and
other organizations of the same kind obtain control of much of the Arab
world. I would not say it's likely, but it is not unlikely. If that happens,
they would gradually sink back into medieval squalor.
Q: What path then should the Middle East take?
A much better course would be a gradual development of democracy, not
through general elections, but rather through civil society and the
strengthening of local institutions. For that, there is a real tradition in
the region.
There is an Islamic tradition which is not like that of the Brotherhood's
brand of religion-the tradition of consultation. It is a form of government.
If you look at the history of the Middle East and its own political
literature, it's totally against arbitrary and tyrannical rule. Islamic
tradition always insisted on consultation. This is not a just a matter of
theory.
There's a remarkable passage, for example, in the report of a French
ambassador to the sultan of Turkey a few years before the French Revolution.
The French ambassador was instructed by his government to press the Turkish
government in certain negotiations and was making very slow progress. Paris
said angrily, "Why don't you do something?" The ambassador replied that one
must understand that here things are not as they are in France, where the
King is sole master and does as he pleases. Here, the sultan has to consult
with the holders of high office. He has to consult with the merchants, the
craft guilds, and all sorts of groups. This is absolutely true. It's an
extraordinarily revealing and informative passage and the point comes up
again and again through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
There was a traditional system of consultation with groups which were not
democratic, as we used that word in the Western world, but which had a
source of authority-other than the state-authority-which derived from within
group, whether it be the landed gentry, the civil service, the scribes or
whatever. That could be a better basis for the development of free and
civilized government.
The authoritarian, even dictatorial regimes that rule most of the countries
in the modern Islamic Middle East are a modern creation, the result of
modernization. The pre-modern regimes were much more open, much more
tolerant. You can see this from a number of contemporary descriptions. A
nineteenth-century British naval official named Slade put it well. Comparing
the old order with the new order, created by modernization, he said, "In the
old order, the nobility lived on their estates. In the new order, the state
is the estate of the new nobility."
Q: You have mentioned that the West often misunderstands the difference
between freedom and justice when it comes to communicating their support for
democratic change in the Arab world. What is the difference between these
terms?
In the Western world, we talk all of the time about freedom. In the Islamic
world, freedom is not a political term. It's a legal term: Freedom as
opposed to slavery. In the past this was a society in which slavery was an
accepted institution existing all over the Muslim world. You were free if
you were not a slave. It was entirely a legal and social term, with no
political connotation whatsoever. You can see in the debate in Arabic and
other languages the puzzlement with which the use of the term "freedom" was
first perceived. They just didn't understand it. They wondered what this had
to do with politics or government. Eventually, they got the message. But
it's still alien to many. In Muslim terms, the measure of good government is
justice. The closest Arabic word to our concept of liberty is "justice".
The major contrast is not between freedom and tyranny, between freedom and
servitude, but between justice and oppression, or, between justice and
injustice. Looking at it this way makes it much easier to understand the
mental and therefore the political processes in the Islamic world.
Q: How best then can the West respond to the changes taking places in the
Arab world?
What bothers me about the Middle East at the present day is not so much what
they are saying and doing but what we are saying. We face a present moment
where we are unable to affect the change on the ground, but admittedly so,
the importance of the Middle East is declining for the West. We are
transmitting the wrong signals. We must be clear and more definite on the
need for freedom in the Middle East and our desire to help those who work
for freedom. There is question of whether democracy can work in the Arab
world.
There are different views. One, the so called pro-Arab point of view, which
says that these people are not like us; they have different ways, different
traditions. We should admit that they are incapable of setting up anything
like the kind of democracy we have. The aim of our policies should therefore
be to maintain stability and ensure that they are ruled by friendly rather
than hostile tyrants. In fact, of course, it is in no way pro-Arab. It shows
ignorance of the Arab past, little concern of the Arab present, and even
less for the Arab future.
The other point of view says that these are the heirs of an old and great
civilization. They have gone through some bad times but there are elements
in their society which will help, which can be nurtured to develop some form
of limited consensual government in their own cultural tradition. I think it
shows far greater respect for the ambitions and aspirations of the people of
the region. Western ideas may have helped precipitate such Middle Eastern
crises of transition as the Suez War of 1956, and more recently the Arab
Spring of 2011, but only the people themselves can resolve these crises. We
must be aware proposing solutions which, however good are discredited by the
very fact of our having proposed them. Our politics and diplomacy are not
welcome, though our weaponry and money are.
Q: Considering the Middle East's future after almost a century of your own
engagement with the region, what challenges do you see the region facing in
the coming decades?
I think the Middle East faces two critical problems. One, as I have
mentioned earlier, a clash of ideas and identities, and also, importantly,
its relevance declining with the transition away from oil as the main energy
source for the global economy. According to their own statistics, the total
exports of the entire Arab world, other than fossil fuels amount to less
than those of Finland, one small European country. Oil will either be
exhausted or superseded as a source of energy and then they will have
virtually nothing. In that case, it's easy to imagine a situation in which
Africa north of the Sahara becomes not unlike Africa south of the Sahara,
with growing emigration.
Q: What are your impressions of Bashar Al-Assad? How will the sectarianism
play itself out in Syria?
Assad is an accidental President and should not have been President. He
would have been a better Londoner. I have observed that when minorities are
under threat, instead of coming together, throughout history, they have
often been used against one another.
Q: Looking at the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty over 30 years on, what are
your recollections of this moment of peace?
During my occasional visits to Egypt I used to see the more or less the same
people every time. If you go to a country at intervals and talk to the same
people you have an opportunity to measure changes in mood and changes in
attitude. It gives you a cross-section of opinion, using the same samples.
After an absence of several years I had gone back to Egypt in 1969. Nasser
was still alive and in control. Although I did meet Nasser I had no serious
conversation with him, but I saw a lot of people, including old friends, and
I was very much struck by the change of mood. I came away with a clear
impression that Egypt was ready for peace. I even wrote an article,
published in Encounter under a pseudonym, in which I said that. I said that
I thought Egypt was ready for peace and that negotiations could really lead
to a treaty between Egypt and Israel. That was almost ten years before it
happened.
I went to Egypt again several times after that, in 1970, 1971, 1974, both
before Nasser's death in 1973 and after the Yom Kippur War. I did not meet
Sadat, who took over the presidency on Nasser's death in 1970 but I met some
of his close advisers and was absolutely convinced that a direct approach to
Egypt would produce results.
At the first opportunity after my return from my trip in 1969 I went to
Israel, sought out Golda Meir and tried to convince her that the Egyptians
were ready, and that a direct approach would almost certainly produce
results. She didn't believe me. She indicated that I had allowed myself to
be duped by the Egyptians and that it was all nonsense.
I put it to Golda, I put it even to Dayan, I also put it to Rabin. I even
wrote Rabin a letter to that effect. But it fell on deaf ears; they didn't
believe me or didn't want to believe me. Menachem Begin did.
Q: You mentioned your interactions with Golda Meir, what were your
impressions of her?
The students of Princeton have a noted debating society. It had become the
custom that from time to time the society would invite a distinguished
person to come to Princeton as their guest. In 1975 they invited Golda Meir,
who had just ceased to be the Prime Minister of Israel. She accepted and had
a very lively visit with many events. At one point an earnest student
admonished her that she shouldn't smoke so much as it was bad for her
health. "Well," replied the seventy-seven year old "I'm not going to die
young, am I?"
During the several days she was on campus the female students, who were
still a novelty at Princeton and quite defensive, put up a poster with her
photo on it and the caption, "But can she type?" The high spot, in this as
in similar visits, was a public address in the largest lecture hall of the
university. The auditorium was overflowed. The chairman, a senior university
dignitary, made the appropriate speech introducing our distinguished guest
and called on Golda Meir to speak.
She went to the lectern and said, "I think you will agree with me on
occasions like this speech is usually a bore. What is interesting is the
question and answer period. If the chairman will agree, I would suggest that
we skip the speech. You know who I am, you know where I come from, you know
what I am likely to say, so let's eliminate the speech and get straight down
to the questions."
At that time, UNESCO had refused to admit Israel but had admitted the PLO. A
student asked, "Why did UNESCO reject Israel and admit the PLO?" Golda Meir,
with a perfectly straight face, "As you know UNESCO stands for United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and one must
assume that these gentlemen, after due and careful consideration, decided
that the PLO has more to contribute to education, science and culture than
Israel." It brought the house down.
Golda Meir was very tough, very committed. Golda was fitted with a kind of
personal filtration system - she only heard what she wanted to hear. If she
picked up anything in what I was saying to fit within her pattern of
thought, she would immediately grasp and use it. Anything that didn't fit
just went straight past her as, for example, when I came to her in 1969 with
my story of Egypt being ready for peace negotiations.
Q: From your numerous travels around the Arab world, have you spent any time
in Saudi Arabia?
Unfortunately not, though I wanted to very much. I received invitations to
visit more than once over the years but sadly was unable to take them up at
the time. There was one occasion I remember when I entered the north of
Saudi Arabia without a visa.
Q: Can you tell us the story?
For many years I traveled almost every year to Jordan, where I had a
personal relationship with the royal family. I knew and respected King
Hussein. This helped me keep in touch with what was going on in the Arab
world. On this particular occasion I was traveling around with King
Hussein's driver near the border with Saudi Arabia and I asked if it was
possible to enter. The driver said it was probably not possible but he went
and spoke with the border guards anyway and the result was that they let us
through, so I spend a few pleasant hours wandering around the small towns of
northern Saudi Arabia, albeit illegally.
I also paid frequent visits to Turkey, Egypt, and when possible, Lebanon. I
have not been to Iran since the Revolution, though I did once, to my
surprise, receive an invitation to participate in a conference on religious
dialogue there. The subject is a very interesting and important one, but I
did not feel inclined to discuss it under the auspices of the current
regime.
Q: From your long and distinguished encounters with the Middle East both
professionally and intellectually, who is your favorite contemporary writer
on the Arab world?
Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, who studied in European universities and spent his life
in Egypt in the mid-19th century, wrote several important works about Islam
and its compatibility with modernity during an important period of change as
the Muslim World interacted with Europe in the 19th century. His perspective
and arguments were enriched by his understanding of Europe and how
principles of Islam and European modernity could complement one another.
<
http://www.aawsat.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/B-Lewis-wide.jpg>
Middle East historian Bernard Lewis. (AAA)
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Received on Tue Mar 26 2013 - 18:52:57 EDT
