Preview

What Went Wrong Bernard Lewis

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
Middle Eastern countries, especially Iraq, are often portrayed as overly religious, backward, and violent. Their image in the world has been clouded by the intergroup hostility that has existed between Muslim and Christian societies for centuries. In his review of Bernard Lewis’s book, What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, Professor Aslam Syed points out a commonly accepted Western narrative of the origins of this hostility. This narrative states that the ancient Muslim world was once an epicenter for intellectual thought and discovery. However, the Middle East “missed” the European Renaissance and Reformation and rejected ensuing technological advancement because it altogether dismissed “the denizens of the lands beyond …show more content…

When speaking of the current conflict in Middle Eastern nations, Dr. Ghassan Salamé asserts that the Islamists of today seek to restore “-a highly idealized old order of things” (22), and that their actions are “driven in part by an alienation from the present world system, in which they consider the Muslim world’s position as unjustly marginal in light of Islam’s past glories.” (22). The key assumption that both Dr. Syed and Dr. Salamé both address but fail to state outright, and that underpins the entire European narrative of the Middle East, is the assumption that the core values of the Middle East and the West are too incompatible to overcome and absolutely cannot exist in close proximity to one another without violence. This assumption is directly challenged by both Martin Amis’s short story, “In the Palace of the End” and Yasmina Khadra’s novel, The Sirens of Baghdad. Both stories transcend the narrative of inevitable conflict between European and Middle Eastern values by exemplifying the human capability for empathy in spite of religious, political, and cultural …show more content…

In the novel, the Iraqi main characters struggle with their perceived adversary, the West. This conflict is explained by yet another psychological theory, the contact hypothesis. The contact hypothesis states that “direct, positive contact between members of different groups has the potential to reduce intergroup hostility and aggression under the right circumstances…Yet negative contact experience may actually increase intergroup hostility and even provoke intergroup aggression.” (“Psychological Factors” 794). The multiple misunderstandings between U.S. soldiers and the villagers of Kafr Karam, such as the bombing of a wedding, ultimately lead to the characters fighting as rebels and the narrator’s eventual commitment to an act of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Akyol, throughout the book, often recognizes similarities and differences between Islam and Christianity; as well as, he notes the different environmental factors between the Middle East and the West and how they play a role in the political development of each religion. For example, Akyol explains the medieval christians’ fascination in Islamic liberalism and freedom, which Christianity, at the time, was considered a much more conservative ideology (78-79). Akyol uses these contrasting ideas to show the nature of religion and how it affects the development of a state in an academic and economic sense. As well as, he describes these differences in order to clear the misconceptions held by the West that Islam is a widely conservative ideology when in reality, it’s post-Qur’anic traditions that impose the conservative ideas seen in modern day Islamic states, in addition to giving a historical context that not necessarily long ago Christianity was considered the ultra-conservative doctrine.…

    • 466 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In order to make an argument contrary to the beliefs of many Americans, Karen Armstrong uses her biography Muhammad to portray Islam as a religion that was created simply to seek social change in a problematic time period. One central theme of the book is that at the time when Islam was created, it was helpful, almost necessary to the people of 7th century Arabia, as their lives were undergoing a period of rapid change. In fact, one could even take away from Muhammad that the message of Islam could be appropriate in today’s society as well. In the early centuries of the Common Era, Trade was revolutionized in the Middle east.…

    • 555 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Drug Trade of Brazil

    • 655 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Texts: The major sources include: William Cleveland’s A History of the Modern Middle East; Avi Shlaim’s War and Peace in the Middle East; and Nikolaos Van Dam’s The Struggle for Power in Syria.…

    • 655 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Study Guide

    • 1785 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Chapter 7(The Middle East) key concepts_ * The wolrd of Islam represents peoples of different ethnicities, cultures, and languages throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and parts of Europe who were unified through the religion of Islam while still maintaining regional diversity. * The Islamic world made tremendous contributions to art, science, and technology that would have a huge impact on cultural and economic developments in Asia, Africa, and Europe. *The Mongols had a significant impact on the spread of Islam and preserved and built upon Islamic intellectual discoveries. * The Mongols affected the Middle East in both positive and negative ways in terms of social, political, and economic stability.…

    • 1785 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The article, “The Radical Middle: Building Bridges Between the Muslim and Western Worlds” by Ali Gomaa seeks to address how the clash of civilizations has emerged as remark in today’s world. The presence of hostility and animosity among Muslim and western countries has increased the tension over the past decade, post 9/11 terrorist attack has marked the blooming years of the emergence of Islamophobia, following the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and the endless “drama” of Israel versus Palestine. The hatred towards Islam has significantly growing by the act of burning the Islamic holy Qur’an and the discrimination towards Muslims around the world. The research problem being address is how the Muslims should not react the exact way the westerns…

    • 278 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Clashing Civilization?

    • 577 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In Edward Said’s essay “Clashing Civilizations?”, he analyses in detail the arguments of Samuel Huntington in his paper on “Clash of Civilizations”. Edward Said incisively analyzes Huntington’s notion that differences in culture between the ‘West’ and ‘Islam’ will lead to conflicts between the two civilizations. Arguing against large understanding of cultures, Said makes a powerful case for multiculturalism. As he argues in this essay, “A unilateral decision made to undertake crusades, to oppose their evil with our good, to extirpate terrorism and, in Paul Wolfowitz’s nihilistic vocabulary, to end nations entirely, doesn’t make the supposed entities any easier to see; rather, it speaks to how much simpler it is to make bellicose statements for the purpose of mobilizing collective passions than to reflect, examine, sort out what it is we are dealing with in reality, the interconnectedness of innumerable lives, ‘ours’ as well as ‘theirs’.”…

    • 577 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Anthro Essay Outline

    • 920 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Samuel huntignwoods approach of civilization and the fundamentals of political islam is particulary examined. It focuses on two extremely polar regimes of both liberal and totalitarian. Both the civilizational approach and political islam argue that the formation of new political actors is replacing the old nation states across religious and cultural affinities. The article references, terrorist organization Al quad, as they are trying to legitimize political violence by manipulating the weakness of the nation states (Aydin, 2010).Addtionally, Huntingtwood clash of civilizations theisis, provides justification for Al-qaedas terror activiites (Aydin, 2010). Huntington argued that the differences between civilizations were ‘‘far more fundamental than differences among political ideologies and regimes’’(Aydin, 2010). Although different styles of regimes are involved, this article argues that the conflict between civilizations, are determined by cultural and religious differences (Aydin, 2010). Many scholars who agreed with this view argued that Islamic civilization should be expected to clash with Western values because of its ‘conflictual’ nature, (Aydin, 2010)…

    • 920 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.”(Siddhartha Gautama/Buddha).For years a religion has been split in two, cradling much contempt and malice in-between. A conflict that has existed for fifteen centuries, exists still today. From it, war and each continue to plague the countries of Iran, Iraq, and all others in the Middle East. Now, however, more and more people ask why the conflict persists, where it came from, and how anyone could benefit from such a religious struggle. In this report, I will be explain the infamous religious dispute that is Shia and Sunni Islam as explained in Lesley Hazleton’s book “After the Prophet”.…

    • 911 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Harlem Reflection

    • 401 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The smell of hummus wafts through the air and the Muslim call to prayer rings in my ears on the streets of Jerusalem. The beautiful and haunting Arabic became one of my favorite sounds during my visit to the Holy Land. All of these memories come back to me with nostalgia and tinges of sadness as I read today’s Monitor articles and discuss terrorism in my Current Issues class. Ever since my visit to Israel, I’ve felt a personal connection with the plights of different peoples in the Middle East. Through reading the Monitor the past couple months, I discovered different ways to pray for this troubled sector of the globe.…

    • 401 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Islam Final Research Project

    • 2380 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Topic: Exploring the religious and cultural dynamics and understanding of the Islamic Religion in a global geopolitical environment.…

    • 2380 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Oppression In America

    • 1692 Words
    • 7 Pages

    In recent years, America’s attention has been gripped by stories of women who have escaped the Middle East. Each story is unique, but they all share the same themes of oppression, abuse, and domination. Since then, Americans have felt compelled to “save” Middle Eastern women and many of the activists are now been highly praised for the influence they have had in the region. Others, however, have come to question whether the Muslim women in the Middle East really need the U.S. to rescue them from Islam. The notion that Muslim women in the Middle East are oppressed is too general for anyone to really claim and has not even been proved as credible. Oppression, especially of women, is a complex phenomenon that can be influenced not only by religion…

    • 1692 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bibliography: Primary Sources Fukuyama, Francis ‘The End of History’, Quadrant, August 1989, pp. 15-25. Fukuyama, Francis ‘The West has won’, The Guardian, 11 October, 2001, (unpaginated), http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/11/afghanistan.terrorism30, accessed 27 March 2010. Huntington, Samuel P. ‘The Clash of Civilisations?’, Foreign Affairs, 73, 1993, pp. 22-49. Secondary Sources Ahmad, Khurshid Islam: Its Meaning and Message, London, The Islamic Foundation, 1980. Esposito, John L. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, 3rd edn, New York, 1999. Gauhar, Altaf (ed.) The Challenge of Islam, London, Islamic Council of Europe, 1978. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values of Humanity, New York, Harper Collins, 2002. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization, New York, Harper Collins, 2003. Ramadan, Tariq Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity, Leicester, The Islamic Foundation, 2001. Qureshi, Emran and Sells, Michael A. (eds.) The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy, New York, Columbia University Press, 2003.…

    • 2520 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    During the late 19th century and the early 20th century, Islam in the Middle East was introduced to its greatest threat yet; modernization. Conflicts within the muslim community and the rapid development of the surrounding world, has left the muslim society in the dust. The technological/scientifically dominant Ottoman empire went through expiration and was left with the remnants of its broken empire. Western civilizations then modernized and quickly became more superior in its European trade, technological advancements, and consumerism, in result causing muslim subordination. Seemingly, the only response that this society can possibly come to is to modernize as an attempt to “rank up” in the world. It is this fact that has led to the struggle between modernization and what many experts call fundamentalism. Should they reform their society to complement the new modern world, or should they hold to their traditions? It is this resistance, this struggle between the old and the new that has led to many great conflicts within the muslim world. Though modernism has become more widespread in the muslim world today, Islamic Modernism has had more of a negative impact on the muslim society, that can be explained in three extremes: adaptation or rejection of modernism, relativism and religious fundamentalism, and modernism and fundamentalism.…

    • 1591 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Since the publication of Orientalism in 1978, Edward Said's critique has become the hegemonic discourse of Middle Eastern studies in the academy. While Middle Eastern studies can improve, and some part of Said's criticism is valid, it is apparent that the Orientalism critique has done more harm than good. Although Said accuses the West and Western researchers of "essentializing" Islam, he himself commits a similar sin when he writes that Western researchers and the West are monolithic and unchanging. Such a view delegitimizes any search for knowledge--the very foundation of the academy. One of Said's greatest Arab critics, Syrian philosopher Sadiq Jalal al-Azm, attacked Said for the anti-intellectualism of this view. Since German and Hungarian researchers are not connected to imperialism, Said conveniently leaves them out of his critique. Said also ignores the positive contribution that researchers associated with power made to the understanding of the Middle East. Said makes an egregious error by negating any Islamic influence on the history of the region. His discursive blinders--for he has created his own discourse--led him before September 11, 2001 to denigrate the idea that Islamist terrorists could blow up buildings and sabotage airplanes. Finally, Said's influence has been destructive: it has contributed greatly to the excessively politicized atmosphere in Middle Eastern studies that rejects a critical self-examination of the field, as well as of Middle Eastern society and politics.…

    • 9070 Words
    • 37 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Various psychologists investigate the conflicts in the middle east to understand the moral issues and of terrorism. However, it’s not appropriate to blame terrorism on religious ideologies, but investigate the social and political reasons behind such cruel acts. Fatherli. M. Moghaddam article “The Staircase of Terrorism” reveals the five levels of how vulnerable children become Islamic terrorists because of social injustice caused by the oppression of western powers. In the individual perspective, it’s easy for people to join a terrorist group due to the obligation to protect their families in a way (Kelman,2007, p.289). To my way of thinking, the progression of Middle Eastern terrorism originates from historical events and politics that generate evil actions in the name of Islam. Moghaddam(2005) shines the light on the current Issues of the Israel-Palestine conflicts and how the result of war still leaves the hearts of people bitter in both countries(p.165). All things considered, terrorism evolved primarily due to war because it’s a form of battle tactic that inflicts fear among the surrounding countries and a demanding…

    • 710 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays

Related Topics