The Crisis of Islam:
Holy War and Unholy Terror
By Bernard Lewis
184 pp. New York:
The Modern Library $19.95 (hc).
This brilliant new book by Bernard Lewis, though written before the war in Iraq, provides a helpful geopolitical perspective on the Middle East that zeroes in on the problem of terrorism. The startling insights of The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror may well inspire people to redouble their prayers.
Bernard Lewis is Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University and a leading Western authority on the history of the Middle East. In his previous book, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response,Lewis, What Went Wrong? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). he provided a mini-education in the Islamic world's centuries-long fall from wealth and power. The decline went hand-in-hand with the opposite fortunes of its archenemies in Christian Europe. Since the Renaissance, countries associated with the West have been on the rise—culturally, technologically, scientifically, militarily, economically, politically. Even now, as the West zooms forward, the Islamic Middle East idles in neutral. According to What Went Wrong? the region's standstill results from failure to resolve a conflict deep at the heart of Muslim society: There are those who urge renewal and recommitment to progress and change. But there are also those who want to "return to a real or imagined past."Ibid., p. 158. Islamic nations are whipsawed by these two antagonistic views of modernity.
