<ul><li><p>Islam </p><p>Bernard Lewis </p><p>New York Oxford University Press, 1993.217 pages. LC 92-26938. ISBN 0-19-507619-2 $25.00 hardcover. </p><p>Review by Glenn E. Perry, Ph.D. Indiana State University </p><p>I s l a m and the West is a collection of essays by Bernard Lewis on somewhat disparate topics that were previously published in diverse places between 1976 and 1992 and that now have been to some ex- tent revised. The author explains that all of the selections are con- cerned with the relations between these two civilizations: the one de- fined as Islamic, the other at different times as Christian or European or Western, and that he has grouped them according to three main topics: encounters, perceptions, and responses (p. viii). He thus suc- ceeds in providing the minimal degree of coherence to such a vol- ume that is usually expected when important scattered writings like these are brought together in a more accessible form. </p><p>Under the rubric Encounters, the volume begins with a sub- stantial essay (originally presented as a lecture at Oxford in 1990) en- titled Europe and Islam. This incisively discusses the whole course of interaction between the Islamic and Christian worlds that has in more recent centuries been transmuted-with what the author ad- </p></li><li><p>Fall 1993 </p><p>mits is a certain asymmetry (p. 3)-into one between the former and Europe (or, more broadly, the West). </p><p>less general essay entitled Legal and Historical Reflections on the Position of Muslim Populations under Non-Muslim Rule that in- cludes, amidst some discussion of well-known aspects of Islamic ju- risprudence, some innovative analysis of what in the early Islamic period was largely a hypothetical question (p. 48) but which later became a real issue for jurists when Muslim frontiers contracted- and which, as the author points out, has taken on a radically new form with the recent voluntary migration from Muslim lands to pre- dominantly Christian countries that have never at any time formed a part of the House of Islam (p. 56). If I understand what Lewis means by the capacity of the tradition in the past to confront new problems and to respond to them in unexpected ways (p. 56), he is suggesting that todays Muslims are far from rigidly invoking medi- eval jurisprudence on these matters (and the absence of any mention of contemporary jurists who denounce such practitioners of this re- verse hegira demonstrates a kind of flexibility in Islam that has gone unnoted). </p><p>described as principally concerned with Western views of Islam (p. viii). This includes a concise, learned essay on translation from Arabic, partly a history but mainly a perceptive analysis of the prob- lems involved. It is followed by another short piece on The Ottoman Obsession, that is, Christendoms centuries-long perception of a threat from that direction, and another one on Gibbons treatment of the Prophet Muhammad(S). </p><p>talism and Other Peoples History, both of which are responses to recent attacks on Orientalism, particularly by Edward Said. Lewis articulates his outrage over the way the term Orientalism has been emptied of its previous content and given an entirely new one-that of unsympathetic or hostile treatment of Oriental peoples (p. 100)- a perversion of language. . . [and] of truth (p. 101), implying a predatory, one might even say a larcenous, interest in other peoples cultural possessions . . . [and supposedly constituting] the intellectual arm of imperialism (p. 121). He is right about the unfortunate way in which the word has now shifted its meaning-to the extent that a prejudiced upstart with no knowledge of the areas languages or his- tory earns the label Orientalist, while a learned scholar of the Mid- dle East who refutes bigoted misconceptions qualifies as a non-Ori- </p><p>The first section of the volume concludes with a much shorter, </p><p>The second section of the book-Studies and Perceptions-is </p><p>The section continues with essays on The Question of Orien- </p><p>80 m a </p></li><li><p>entalist. Lewis himself demonstrates his non-Orientalism (in this dis- torted sense) many times in this volume, as when he points out that the seventeenth century. . . Turkish capital was probably the only city in Europe where Christians of all creeds and persuasions could live in reasonable security and argue their various schisms and here- sies and then goes on to contradict the idea that the Ottoman ruler was more despotic and capricious than his Christian counterparts (pp. 81-82). Still, the hostile tone of some of Lewiss writings in recent decades-ven when they refute blatantly derogatory misconcep- tions-may have given solace to the enemies of the Islamic peoples and thus have been partly responsible for the unfortunate perception that the word Orientalism has acquired. </p><p>too ignorant to have opinions on such matters since he seems to think the early Muslim armies reached North Africa via todays Turkey and that British and French domination goes back to the end of the seventeenth century. I suppose that it would be possible for someone who is unclear on various historical facts about any country or civili- zation nevertheless to be able to discern prejudice. </p><p>The final section (Islamic Response and Reaction) begins with a revised version of Lewiss article, first pub </p><p>lished in 1976, on The Return of Islam, which pointed to the new antisecularist tide whose extent few others were alert enough to notice so early. Noting that before the Iranian Revolution There was a steadfast refusal on the part of the Western Media to recognize that religion was still a force in the Muslim world (and that there has been a subsequent tendency sometimes to go to the opposite ex- treme), Lewis gets to the heart of contemporary Islamist movements when he points out that Muslims are no different from non-Muslims in seek[ing] ways to protest and rebel against political oppression and economic privation and in react[ing] and respond[ing] in ways that are familiar to them, that is, to express political, social, [and] economic causes in Islamic terms (p. 135). He concludes that Islam provides the most effective form of consensus in Muslim countries, the basic group identity a-mong the masses, a reality that will be demonstrated as the regimes become more genuinely popular, and that the emergence of effective leadership, except in the case of Revo- lutionary Iran (he ends by wondering whether that leadership will continue to fare so well) has so far been the major limitation on Islam as a force in world affairs (p. 154). </p><p>The last three chapters are entitled The Shia in Islamic Histo- ry, Country and Freedom, and Religious Coexistence and Secu- </p><p>.Lewis even gets rude at times, implying that Said, in effect, is </p></li><li><p>Fall 1993 </p><p>larism. The one on the Shiis is a succinct, penetrating analysis of the differences between the two main branches of Islam, dealing with Shiism in terms of the rejection of usurpation and tyranny and the call for armed insurrection (p. 162), but Lewis rightly confuses anyone who is looking for a simple answer by pointing to the activist movements in Sunnism too. While Lewis is of course right in charac- terizing the Shii view of all regimes since the death of Ali as illegiti- mate or, at best, provisional (p. 165), he has largely overlooked the powerful rationales for quietism in Twelver Shiism that prevailed until the time of Ayatollah Khomeini. </p><p>Country and Freedom would in many respects be a good brief essay on the problem of identity (country loyalty or patrio- tism, the ethnic nation, and Islam) to assign to beginning students. The analysis is mostly sound, although the author seems to overlook the situation of the Kurds (and possibly of the new opportunities for pan-Turanism in the 1990s) when he proclaims that In Turkey, the patriotic idea has by now virtually supplanted all others (p. 173). </p><p>In Religious Coexistence and Secularism, Lewis comments on Jewish, Christian, and Muslim attitudes toward the notion of otherness (p. 174), including differences within Islam and within Christianity. He shows that secularism emerged in the West in the eighteenth century in reaction to the preceding era of intolerance, while the Muslim worlds existing pattern of religious toleration made it unnecessary to move on to this kind of real coexistence and equality but suggests that current developments-pointing to the rise to power of what he compares to a Christian priesthood in Iran, as had previously occurred in Christendom but not in Islam, as anoth- er step in the Christianization of Islamic institutions (p. 182), a cor- rective to the entrenched image of the Iranian revolution and other contemporary Islamist movement as traditionalist-among both Jewish and Muslim societies demonstrates that they may perhaps have caught a Christian disease and might therefore consider a Christian remedy (p. 186), that is, secularism. </p><p>portant position Lewis has attained as an interpreter of the Islamic world in the West would have justified making it available even if it contained nothing of intrinsic value. In fact, it includes brilliant piec- es-some rather general and often repetitive of what the author has written many times before and others that are more specific as well as new-that will be of interest to many people, ranging from the be- ginning student to specialists in various fields. But it should not be mistaken as an overall treatment of the relationship between Chris- </p><p>We are fortunate that this collection was published. The im- </p><p>82 !Lxmm </p></li><li><p>/slam </p><p>tendom/the West and the Islamic world/Middle East, as the latters glaring grievances over Palestine and the imposition of client re- gimes that continue to evoke the now increasingly Islamist revolts against Western hegemony hardly get mentioned at all. It is the a- voidance of such central factors in the Western relationship with the Islamic world that most of all distorts the picture. In addition, Lew- iss broader historical view of the interaction between Islam and Christendom (or East and West) needs to be supplemented by a geo- graphically wider perspective of a South or Third World of which the Islamic world forms an integral part, that for centuries has in- creasingly found itself facing Northern economic, political, and cul- tural domination. </p><p>THE NEW BIBLIOTHECA ALEXANDRINA A Link in the Historical Chain of Cultural Continuity </p><p>Revised edition 1991 </p><p>School of Library and Information Science University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee </p><p>Mohammed M. Aman, Ph.D. </p><p>UWM-SLIS Occasional Paper 3 This revised edition is the story of the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina </p><p>in Egypt, starting with its vanished ancient predecessor. Dr. Aman is a member of an international team of consultants for the new Library. </p><p>Wisconsin-Milwaukees efforts in the United States toward support of the Proceeds from the sale of this publication will go to the University of </p><p>Bibliotheca Alexandrina. </p><p>Send order to: Occasional Papers </p><p>ISSN 1050-8147 </p><p>UW-Milwaukie School of Library and Information Science P.O. Box 413 Milwaukee, WI 53201 U.S.A. </p><p>Tele: 414-229-4707 FAX: 414-229-4848 Internet: aman@convex.csd.uwm.edu </p><p>Dgest ofMiddl;! %t Studies 83 </p></li></ul>