Faith and Power: Religion and Politics in the Middle East
Bernard Lewis, Joanne J. Myers
May 6, 2010
| Faith and Power: Religion and Politics in the Middle East |
Introduction
JOANNE MYERS: Good afternoon. I'm Joanne Myers, Director of Public Affairs
Programs, and on behalf of the Carnegie Council, I would like to thank you all
for joining us.
It is indeed an honor to present to you a man who is universally recognized
as the most influential postwar historian of Islamism and the Middle East, Bernard
Lewis. The Wall Street Journal anointed Professor Lewis "the world's
foremost Islamic scholar." The Baltimore Sun called him "a
towering figure among experts on the culture and religion of the Muslim world."
The New York Times wrote that "he is a doyen of Middle Eastern studies."
Bernard Lewis is nothing less than a national treasure, whose trusted voice
is one that politicians, journalists, historians, and the general public have
all turned to for insight about the Middle East, especially after the events
of 9/11.
In Professor Lewis's earlier
visit to the Carnegie Council, he discussed his widely acclaimed book, What
Went Wrong? But on that day, everything went right, as he nourished
our hunger to understand the Islamic world. He became our teacher and guide
to past centuries, when Islam and Christianity engaged in jihads and crusades,
conquests and reconquests. Throughout his presentation, he conveyed a brilliant
command of the subject, tremendous intensity, and an incredible wit, all attributes
that I know will soon be on display for you to experience for yourself.
Today we turn to him once again, this time for a refresher course on issues
that continue to haunt us and for which we search for clarification and understanding.
Professor Lewis will be discussing his latest book, which is entitled Faith
and Power: Religion and Politics in the Middle East. This work is a
compendium of articles, some never published before, others published in languages
other than English. Nevertheless, each essay illuminates the role of religion
and government in the Islamic world and how it has shaped these societies. Each
one will enrich our understanding of the nuances and historical differences
between the three interrelated Middle Eastern religions—Islam, Christianity,
and Judaism. As before, you will find his writings replete with the historic
insight that one might expect from the world's foremost Islamic scholar.
If past is prologue, then I know how privileged we are to have the opportunity
to listen to this remarkable scholar, whose encyclopedic knowledge and original
thought should make for a very special lecture. Please join me in welcoming
as our guest a man of incredible knowledge, known to most of us as Bernard Lewis,
but on occasion who has also answered to the moniker "Lewis of Arabia."
We are thrilled that you are here today. Thank you for joining us.
Remarks
BERNARD LEWIS: Thank you, Madame Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I'm
afraid that after that introduction, anything that I say will come as something
of a disappointment. But I'll do my best to alleviate it.
Time is limited, so I'll get down to business right away.
On the subject of faith and power, obviously we are dealing with what, in Western
terms, we would call relations between church and state. I try not to use that
terminology, because it doesn't apply to other systems. I have to make that
clear as I go along. I shall be looking at three religions, all rooted in the
Middle East, historically and ideologically connected: Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam. I name them in chronological order.
It is customary nowadays to speak of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The term
is a fairly recent one. In earlier times, it would have been found offensive
on both sides of the hyphen. But the reality is an old one. It has been going
on for a long time. Christianity obviously arose out of Judaism. Christians
retained the Jewish Bible, renamed it the Old Testament and added a New Testament
to it. That gives rise to an enormous amount of shared tradition and perceptions.
The advent of Islam, the third religion in the historical sequence, is a somewhat
different matter. Muhammad, the prophet and founder of Islam, did not retain
either the Old or the New Testaments. He decided that both had been corrupted
by their unworthy custodians and needed to be superseded. He therefore brought
a new revelation of his own. He did, however, retain important parts of the
Judeo-Christian tradition—or should I say, of the Jewish and Christian
traditions—which became part of Islam.
It is normal practice for all of us to see others in terms of ourselves, to
attribute to others the same motives, the same patterns of behavior as we have.
This is very misleading when we apply it to a different civilization, with different
traditions and different backgrounds. As I said, Islam did not retain any of
the Judeo-Christian Bible, but it did retain other affinities. For example,
Muslims share with Jews the belief in a God who is concerned in great detail
with what we eat or don't eat. Muslim rules for eating are not the same as those
of Jews, but they do overlap to quite a considerable extent. It's interesting
that when, at the beginning of the 19th century, Muslim governments sent the
first Muslim students to Europe, they were told that they could eat Jewish food,
because Jews obeyed more or less the same rules, but they must not eat Christian
food because Christians would eat or drink anything.
On the other hand, of course, there is this major affinity between Christianity
and Islam, in which both resemble each other and differ from Judaism. I hope
you see where I'm leading. Let me try to explain.
I'm sure you have all heard the name of a Franciscan monk called St.
John of Capistrano. His name still adorns the map of California. He devoted
much of his life to waging war against what he saw as the two great enemies
of Christendom, the Jews and the Muslims. Many of his collected sermons are
attacks on one or the other or both. He tried to organize pogroms of the one,
crusades to the other, and didn't do too badly.
Among his many accusations against the Jews, there is one which stands out in
that it is accurate. He said the Jews maintain and even advance this absurd
idea that everybody can be saved in his own religion. For once, St. John of
Capistrano was right. The Jewish Talmud says quite explicitly that the righteous
of all peoples have a place in Paradise. Judaism is for the Jews and those who
care to join them, but it is not an exclusive claim to Paradise.
Here we come to the major resemblance between Christianity and Islam. Christians
and Muslims share the belief—or should I say divided the belief—that
they were the fortunate recipients of God's final message to humanity, after
which there would be no other, and any pretense at one was a falsehood.
When you have two religions side by side with the same self-perception, obviously
conflict is inevitable. This gave rise to the long series of wars and ideological,
as well as military, conflicts between the two triumphalist religions. "Trimphalist"
is the term that has been devised to describe those religions that claim exclusive
truth, as against "relativist," for those who are prepared to believe
that others may be right, too.
The history of the struggle between Islam and Christianity is a very long one,
starting with the very beginning of Islam. Remember that in the seventh century,
when Islam in its present form was born, the whole of the Mediterranean was
Christian. The countries which are now called Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine,
Egypt, North Africa—all those were part of Christendom. The Arabs brought
Islam out of Arabia, conquered all those places, and began what became the process
of Arabization and Islamization in those previously Christian countries. From
there, they advanced across the Mediterranean into Europe, conquering Sicily
and Spain, which they held for quite a while, even advancing into France. Then
the Christians managed to stage a response to this, which was partially successful,
partially unsuccessful. The reconquest of Spain and Sicily succeeded. The attempt
to reconquer the lost lands of Asia and North Africa failed. The Crusade was
an extension of that, and that, as you know, failed.
That was the first Muslim attempt to invade and conquer Europe.
The second came with the advance of the Ottomans into Europe, the Ottoman
Empire. The Turks conquered Anatolia, a previously Christian country, in
the 11th century. Then they went on and conquered Constantinople, which became
Istanbul, and conquered a large part of southeastern Europe. Twice they reached
as far as Vienna, to which they laid siege. And it wasn't only that part of
Europe. The Barbary corsairs, whom we think of as pirates, but who thought of
themselves as waging maritime jihad in a holy war against the infidels—the
Barbary corsairs were part of the jihad, as I said. They were what, in Western
naval parlance, one might call privateers, raiding Western shipping and carrying
off vast numbers of captives from Western countries for sale in the slave markets
of North Africa. They raided very far. They raided the British Isles, Penzance,
Baltimore—I mean the original one in Ireland—even as far away as Iceland
and Madeira. This continued for centuries. This was part, as I said, of the
second great Muslim attempt to take Europe, one which brought the Ottoman armies
to the walls of Vienna and the Barbary corsairs as far as Iceland and Madeira.
That, too, was repelled. Eventually they were driven out. The counterattack
from Christendom was so successful that it culminated in the establishment of
the Western empires in previously independent Muslim countries.
Now I think we are witnessing the third attempt, not by military conquest, but
by migration and demography. This migration is something entirely new and very
remarkable, if one looks at it in the context of Muslim history. As I'm sure
you know, the Muslim religion is a legal religion, with a very elaborate juristic
literature, containing rules and regulations for every aspect of human life.
One of the problems considered in the Shariah, the juristic literature, is,
what is the position of the Muslim under non-Muslim government? How is he supposed
to behave?
It's interesting, the circumstances in which they consider it. One is the Muslim
who is taken captive, a prisoner of war or something like that, or seized in
a raid. Two is the Muslim who goes on business, a diplomat or a merchant who
has to travel in the lands of the unbelievers. Three is the unbeliever in the
land of the unbelievers who suddenly sees the truth and is converted to Islam.
Four, which was added at a much later stage in Islamic history, the position
of the Muslims, their homeland is conquered by the unbelievers and ceases to
be under Muslim rule.
The jurists discuss all these things at great length. What they never even considered
as a possibility is that Muslims might voluntarily emigrate from Muslim lands
to non-Muslim lands, creating a totally new and unprecedented situation—unprecedented,
that is to say, in Muslim doctrine, Muslim law, and, most important, Muslim
experience. This new situation is one that the jurists are still wrestling with.
I want to say something now about problems of identity and loyalty. There is
a significant difference in this between the perceptions in the Western world—in
the Christian or, as some people call it nowadays, in the post-Christian world—and
in the Islamic, and by no means post-Islamic, world. We tend to think of the
world divided into nations, nation or country. In American usage particularly,
"nation" and "country" are virtually synonymous. In British
usage they are not. When I first came to this country and some of my colleagues
at the university told me that during the summer they were proposed to drive
across the nation, I was horrified. To English ears, that suggested the massive
ill treatment of large numbers of people. Nowadays, I've got used to it. "Nation"
and "country" are virtually synonymous.
They don't apply in the Middle East. If you look at the map of the Middle East,
the Middle East and North Africa, you will see some strange things. One is that
the frontiers are almost all straight lines. The frontiers in Europe have evolved
from centuries of struggle over identity and control. The frontiers in most
of the Muslim world were drawn with pencils and rulers on maps, mostly drawn
by European diplomats and imperialists. These are new creations, new identities,
with rare exceptions, of which the most outstanding, of course, is Iran.
The idea of patriotism, self-definition by country and loyalty owed to country,
is a modern innovation in the Muslim world. Previously identity was defined
by religion. This was the primary loyalty. What they saw was not a nation subdivided
into religions, but a religion subdivided in various ways—regional, local,
ethnic, tribal, and so on—of new great importance. One sees this if one
reads not only Muslim historians, but even Muslim newspapers until fairly recently.
For example, I was reading not long ago an account by an Ottoman diplomat. An
Ottoman diplomatic mission was sent to Vienna to negotiate for the emperor.
He describes their arrival. He said, "We were greeted by an escort of six
infidel officers." He meant, of course, Austrian officers. But that wasn't
the point. He didn't say that: "six infidel officers." And so it goes
on. The word "Austria" or "Austrian" hardly appeared. It's
the land of the infidels, and the people are the infidels. That is the basic
"us and them."
One sees this even in the earliest newspapers, 19th-century newspapers, for
example. I remember reading in one newspaper, "There was an accident yesterday
on the bridge and two infidels were killed." That's what matters. This
is the basic identity.
That is beginning to change. Nationality is beginning to enter into people's
perceptions. But it's still comparatively new, and I would go further and say,
comparatively shallow. The basic identity, and therefore the basic loyalty,
is by the religious community to which you belong.
That, I think, is important also in understanding Muslim perceptions of what
is going on in the world today. With identity goes loyalty. That, of course,
again, is supremely important. In the modern era, there has been, of course,
a vast change in the Muslim world. All sorts of new political configurations
have emerged. For the first time, we are seeing the formation of nation-states.
For the first time, we are seeing the development of something which might be
called patriotism. This, I think, is an extremely important and significant
development. But it isn't so easy to get rid of the associations, the classifications,
and, let's face it, the loyalties of the past. That is the situation which we
in the Western world confront and which, more importantly, the people of the
Islamic world confront.
One last thing which I want to say something about, and that is the one which
inevitably occupies our attention. That is the theme of terrorism. I think I
can say quite clearly and explicitly that the various types of action which
we call terrorism are not only not encouraged, they are expressly forbidden
by Shariah, by the Muslim holy law. It is true that waging war is a religious
obligation, but precisely because it is a religious obligation, it is regulated
by religious law. Even the medieval Shariah texts go into astonishing detail
about what is permitted and what is not permitted. The Shariah requires that
proper warning be given before beginning hostilities. It has elaborate regulations
regarding the treatment of civilians, of women and children, and—of particular
interest to me—the aged. It discusses prisoners, how they may be treated.
It discusses the question of what weapons may be used. This may come as a surprise
to you: They discuss and, for the most part, reject the use of chemical weapons.
You may say, chemical weapons in Shariah? Yes, exactly. There were several kinds
of chemical weapons which were known and could be used. One was to poison the
water supply of the city that you were besieging. Another was poisoned arrows
and missiles of various kinds containing poisonous elements. These were known
and used, and they are, for the most part, forbidden.
Suicide is explicitly forbidden by Shariah. Here the position is very clear.
It is said that even if a man has lived a life of unremitting virtue, a totally
religious, pious, virtuous life, if he commits suicide, he goes straight to
Hell. Suicide is the unforgivable crime, and the punishment of the suicide is
the eternal repetition of the act by which he committed suicide.
One can only wish that the Muslims had a better acquaintance with their own
religion and their own doctrines and teachings.
In the modern age there have been, of course, many attempts to reinterpret these
teachings, even by those who profess to be authorities on the holy law. So,
for example, suicide is evil and is forbidden, but if you take a sufficient
number of the enemy with you, then it's permissible, and so on and so on - all
sorts of arguments like that. But, as I say, if one goes through this literature,
one is left wishing that Muslims had a better acquaintance with their own laws
and their own traditions.
I think I'll stop on that point.
Questions and Answers
QUESTION: Do the Sunni refer to the Shia as infidels, or do the Shia refer
to the Sunni that way?
BERNARD LEWIS: Sometimes informally, but normally they do not.
Let me go back a step. Within Islam, there is a certain permissible level of
difference of opinion that's characteristic of Muslim doctrine from the Middle
Ages. There's even a saying ascribed to the Prophet, "Difference of opinion
within my community is God's blessing"—or "God's mercy,"
actually. Difference of opinion was accepted. There are different schools of
jurisprudence, different doctrines, and one may belong to one or another. Each
holds its own principles and regards the others as different but still as Muslim.
The question that arises is, at what point does one pass the degree of permitted
difference? The notion of heresy is a Christian notion. There is no exact equivalent
in Muslim terminology. In the Muslim view, you have permitted difference of
opinion. If you go beyond the permitted difference of opinion, then you are
something worse than a heretic; you are an apostate. An apostate is one who
is a Muslim, but renounces the Muslim faith and turns to something else. That
is a major capital offense. The only penalty for that is death. It's so serious
an offense that even if the apostate recants and repents, he must still be put
to death, because for so serious an offense, only God can give forgiveness.
Differences between Sunni and Shia—normally, they were prepared to tolerate
each other, in the sense of still being Muslims, though that didn't, of course,
prevent them from fighting each other.
[Question inaudible—on the future of Israel]
As you know, I'm a historian, which means my business is the past. I'm not a
prophet. I'm an ancient historian—applying the adjective to the historian
rather than to the history.
But I think the basic question is this: What is it about? Is the argument about
the size of Israel or is it about the existence of Israel? If the argument is
about the existence of Israel, obviously there is no possible compromise; there
is no possible agreement. There is no intermediate situation between existing
and not existing. If it's about the size of Israel, then it becomes a nice,
simple question, like Alsace-Lorraine or Texas, which may eventually be settled,
after a long period of struggle, both military and diplomatic.
That's the best I can do by way of prophesy.
QUESTION: How much information is actually available on the life of the
prophet Muhammad? And is any of it true?
BERNARD LEWIS: There is an authorized biography of the Prophet which
is accepted by Muslims as authentic and accurate. That was, I think, generally
accepted for a long time.
Western scholarship has taken a different view. There have been a number of
different studies of the Prophet by various scholars in the West, who have subjected
the classical biography of the Prophet to close scrutiny. Some of them dismiss
it almost entirely and some accept most of it, except parts. But there's no
agreement on the subject, no.
There was a very hot debate about this question in the Soviet Union a number
of years ago, when the Soviet Union was still alive and well, or at least looked
well. There was an organization there which was called the League
of the Militant Godless, the function of which was to fight against religion,
all religion, in the Soviet Union. It was divided into various sections. There
was the Muslim section, meaning the anti-Muslim section, the Christian section,
meaning the anti-Christian section, and the Jewish section, meaning anti-Jewish,
and so on. The section dealing with Islam published a great deal of material
in the Soviet Union at that time. One of the lies was that Muhammad never existed,
that he was a totally mythic figure. But that has not been generally accepted
by any serious group of scholars.
By the way, it's interesting that all this violently anti-Semitic propaganda
in the Soviet Union did not occasion any protest in the Muslim world.
QUESTION: As a practicing Muslim growing up [in Pakistan], I was always
taught that there were many ways to get to Heaven, and while we considered this
to be the best, we did not look at it as the only path. Maybe that's the function
of Islam in Asia, because we did grow up in the Indian subcontinent, where,
while Muslims ruled, they were never the majority, and the population of the
subcontinent continued both their Hindu faith and their Buddhist faith and,
later, a new religion of Sikhism.
But even going back to the text, when we were taught it in translation, it said
very clearly that there should be no compulsion in religion, and the Jews and
the Christians—I guess there was another group described in there—
BERNARD LEWIS: The
Sabians.
QUESTIONER: The Sabians—were People of the Book.
I would like your comment, a little bit of elaboration on this. I know that
there are those who believe that everybody who doesn't believe like them—and
they would probably include me—which is more of the Wahhabi
sect—that the rest must change or they are all heretic. But that's,
from my growing up, a very small minority of our faith.
BERNARD LEWIS: Yes, it is true that Islam not only permits, but requires
a certain measure of tolerance of other religions. As you said, three are specified,
the Jews, the Christians, and the rather mysterious Sabians. The mysterious
Sabians were extremely useful. Since nobody knew exactly who they were, this
provided a label which one could apply to any group that one wanted to tolerate.
There were certain minimum requirements for a religion to be tolerated. It had
to be monotheist. It had to reject idolatry, which created problems in India,
obviously. It had to have a certain ethical basis.
In modern times, the question is no longer the same. It's no longer Muslims
ruling over non-Muslims. It's non-Muslims ruling over Muslims. That, of course,
created an entirely new situation, for which the classical juristic literature
provides no guidance. This was a possibility which obviously never occurred
to them. They did begin to discuss when the reconquest took place in Spain.
We find the jurists in Morocco discussing the situation: If the infidels conquer
a Muslim country, what does a Muslim do? May he stay if the new rulers are tolerant—in
the case of Spain, that proved an entirely hypothetical question—or must
he go anyway? There's a whole literature discussing this question, giving various
answers to it.
At first the general view was that, if the regime is tolerant and allows Muslims
to live a true Muslim life, they may stay. The opposition view—notably,
a certain Moroccan jurist called Wansharisi—was
that if the non-Muslims are tolerant, then the danger is even greater and it's
more important that they should leave. With the massive conquests of Muslim
countries by non-Muslim rulers, that obviously became an entirely theoretical
question.
QUESTION: You said that suicide is banned. I've read that. Forget the
Shia and the Sunnis. But by and large, when they have suicide bombings, they
are basically indiscriminate. Sunnis are killing Sunnis, and Shia—how does
that equate with any part of the past religion? Forget about today. In other
words, how do they justify killing themselves, not infidels?
BERNARD LEWIS: It doesn't equate. One can only wish that these people
had a better acquaintance with their own religion. These questions are raised
in the classical juristic and theological literature. The answers are very clear.
Suicide is forbidden. The question is asked, may one commit suicide if one takes
a large number of infidels with one? The general answer is no. Later, in more
modern times, some began to answer yes. That was part of the change which has
taken place.
Nowadays, of course, as you know, suicide has become very acceptable. But it
is quite explicitly forbidden by Muslim law, by Muslim tradition, by Muslim
theology.
There is a story told, for example, of the Prophet himself, that after one of
the battles in which he and his forces engaged against the infidels, a mortally
wounded Muslim was lying on the battlefield, and he killed himself with his
own sword in order to shorten his pain, knowing that he was dying anyway. The
Prophet said, "He has forfeited Paradise. He has preempted Allah."
QUESTION: If I understood you correctly, at the beginning of your presentation
you seemed to suggest that there was a new wave of conquest by means of migration
and—
BERNARD LEWIS: I didn't use the word "conquest."
QUESTIONER: Well, that's what I understood. What did you mean? That's not
my question, but if I'm incorrect, then I won't continue.
Let me continue with the question. Then you can correct me.
If that is indeed the case, is the so-called conquest or taking over of the
infidels' land a result of migration or is the migration, by design, in order
to bring in many, many numbers of people in order to create the new demography?
BERNARD LEWIS: It's interesting. The whole factor of migration is a comparatively
modern one. In earlier times, as I think I remarked before, the jurists discuss
at great length the position of the Muslim under non-Muslim rule, as the captive,
the visitor, the convert, and so on. What never entered their minds as a possibility
was that Muslims would voluntarily migrate to non-Muslim countries. This is
now happening on a grand scale.
I think, to begin with, it's what you might call normal migration, people going
to other places where they can get a better life, get jobs and the like. But
it has also begun to assume a different character, if one looks at the demography
and the immigration figures. It begins to look as though this might indeed be
"the third lucky," a Muslim attack on Europe. Certainly the figures
suggest that within a comparatively short time Europe will have a Muslim majority.
Many Europeans are very concerned about this. So are many Muslims.
Sadiq
al-Azm, a Syrian philosopher, wrote a very interesting study on this. It's
in Arabic. He ends by saying that the only question that remains about the future
of Europe is, will it be an Islamized Europe or a Europeanized Islam?
An interesting question, I think you'll agree.
QUESTION: You have said that Shariah forbids hurting women and children,
the elderly, and certainly committing suicide. If these things are indeed forbidden,
and they are carried out almost on a daily basis today as well, can you give
us some insight as to why there have been so few Muslim voices speaking out
against this?
BERNARD LEWIS: I wish I had an answer to your question. I'm afraid I
don't. I am, as you are, appalled at the silence of the Muslim world on these
clear violations of their own laws and traditions.
QUESTION: Is there a difference in religion and politics in the Middle
East as compared to non-Arab lands, such as Asia?
BERNARD LEWIS: Thank you. That's a very good question. May I rephrase
it slightly and, instead of religion and politics, say church and state?
In the Western world, religion and politics were represented by two different
institutions. In the New Testament, Christians are instructed to render unto
Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's, Caesar meaning the state
and God meaning the church.
The word "church" has two meanings. It's a building which is a place
of worship and study. It's also a great institution, with its own laws, its
own customs, its own history, its own personnel, and so on. In that sense, there
is no equivalent in Islam at all. The mosque is a building. That's all. We cannot
in any sense speak of the mosque as an institution.
The reason is very simple. Jesus was crucified, and his followers were a persecuted
minority for centuries, until they were able to convert a Roman emperor and
gradually take over. Islam triumphed during the lifetime of the founder. Muhammad
was not persecuted. He was not put to death. He became the ruler, the head of
a state which soon became an empire. He did what rulers do. He not only promulgated
laws, he enforced them. He raised armies, he fought wars, and so on and so on
and so on.
So in the sacred traditions of Islam, you have all sorts of matters which in
the Western world would be regarded as secular. In the Islamic tradition they
are in no way separable from the rest. The whole idea of a separation between
church and state is alien to Islam. In classical Arabic, you don't have any
pairs of words corresponding to "religious and secular," "sacred
and profane," "spiritual and temporal," and so on and so forth.
That's a vocabulary which was eventually developed in Arabic by Arabic-speaking
Christians and didn't come into Islamic usage until comparatively modern times.
This whole issue was unknown, and therefore meaningless.
Now, of course, it has become very meaningful. We have seen now for some time
a gradual imitation of Western and, more specifically, Christian practice in
the Muslim world. There is now in many Muslim countries a kind of religious
organization, with a hierarchy of muftis
and others running it Christian-style. You see this most clearly in present-day
Iran, where they have created the Muslim equivalent of a papacy and college
of cardinals and, above all, an inquisition.
QUESTION: You mentioned the Ottoman and Muslim articles referring to
the Austrians as infidels. I was interested to know how it's different from
the imperialistic European articles referring to Arabs and Muslims as barbarians
or savages. Is it just a question of terminology or does it go beyond that?
BERNARD LEWIS: In the Western world, it was normal to classify people
by nationality. This has been the modern practice. In doing that to their new
imperial subjects, they were treating them no differently from the way they
treated themselves and their own subjects at home. It was simply applying the
same system at home and abroad, which is, of course, what the Muslims did, too,
the other way around. They conquered territories in Europe and Asia and Africa,
and they applied a religious classification.
We all tend to see others in terms of ourselves. It's part of human nature.
QUESTION: Maybe it's bravado, but the president of Iran wants to annihilate
Israel. If the president were here, what would you say to him? How would you
address the youth of Iran? That pretty much will possibly change the makeup
of the country.
BERNARD LEWIS: What I would say to the president I can't repeat in polite
company.
As regards the youth, I think that is our best hope. There is a great deal of
evidence from various sources that the present regime in Iran has become extremely
unpopular. Thanks to the wonders of modern communications, there are ways of
keeping in touch undreamt-of in the past—and, as I said, many indications
of a rising discontent within the regime, directed, more particularly, against
the president.
There are two oppositions in Iran at the present time. There's the opposition
within the regime and the opposition against the regime. Both of them are against
the president.
QUESTION: Professor Lewis, can you tell us about the Muslim concept of
free will? Is it a deterministic religion or is there free will that would allow
these young students to indeed defy the religious doctrines as propounded by
the ayatollahs?
BERNARD LEWIS:
This has been an ongoing debate for many centuries within the Muslim world.
Among Muslim writers on the subject, including both the classical philosophical
and juristic literature, you find both points of view. On the one hand, there
are those who say that everything is preordained; everything is determined by
fate. There is a saying attributed to the Prophet, "Nothing shall befall
us save what God has written down for us." That's attributed to the Prophet.
On the other hand, there are others that insist that there is free will.
I think the best answer to this is given by a Muslim tract—I'm afraid I
don't remember the author's name, but it's a classical Muslim tract—who
says that he feels that the best answer to this question, which, as I said,
was intensely debated for centuries in Islam—he says that it's like a game
of chess. Your fate is determined by the throw of the dice, but you still have
choices and you can win or lose the game.
QUESTION: Islam is a proselytizing religion. Having said that, apparently
there is something engaging about it, because lots of people have been converting
over the last decades. I know this may not be a question for historians, but
what would be your guess as to the appeal of Islam for nonbelievers?
BERNARD LEWIS: You're right, of course, that Islam is a proselytizing
religion. Islam and Christianity, as far as I know, are the only two religions
that claim exclusive truth, and in being the fortunate recipients of God's final
message, they have to bring it to the rest of the world and not keep it selfishly
to themselves, like the Jews, with their revelation.
Having said that, that still leaves room for difference.
There is also the important point that a certain measure of tolerance is obligatory.
It's part of the Shariah. But it's limited, and circumstances change with what
goes on.
One of the obligations of a Muslim, according to Shariah, based on the Qur'an
itself, is jihad. The word "jihad" literally means "striving."
It's used in two different senses. One is what you might call moral striving,
to better yourself and to better the society in which you live, and the other
is the military sense and can accurately be translated as "holy war."
Precisely because holy war is the religious obligation, it is, as I said before,
elaborately regulated and all kinds of misbehavior is excluded.
QUESTION: I just want to make a quick comment. Sort of like the woman
from Pakistan who was raised in a more tolerant tradition, I was raised in a
mainstream Protestant Christian tradition, and to believe in a loving, compassionate
God—Christian values—and to believe that just because other people
don't know Jesus Christ, that doesn't mean they aren't accepted by God. When
you keep saying the Christian religion insists on only that faith, can you elaborate
on why you're saying the Christians believe that? Because that's not how I was
raised.
BERNARD LEWIS: As I understand it—correct me if I'm wrong—the
Christian belief is that theirs is the final revelation; there is no revelation
subsequent to the mission of Jesus. It has been developed in various ways since
then. This is God's final message to humanity, which must therefore be circulated
to all humanity in the fullness of time. Muslims have approximately the same
point of view about their religion. For them, the Christian revelation is the
semifinal, so to speak, and theirs is the final one.
Now, what to tolerate? Generally speaking, until most Christian countries ceased
to be devout, their general attitude on religion was very intolerant. It was
intolerant of other religions. It was intolerant of deviant versions of their
own religion. The toleration of dissent really comes with religious indifference.
When the Muslims ruled Spain, Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side
in reasonable harmony. When the Christians reconquered Spain, first the Jews
and then the Muslims were expelled. One finds that pattern, generally speaking,
in the long engagement between the two.
In the Western world, tolerance is an aspect of indifference. In Islam, it is
part of the religion. But, of course, that tolerance is strictly defined. There
are limits to what may be tolerated. The application, of course, is another
matter, too.
JOANNE MYERS: If there are no more questions, I would just like to pick
up on what you said. We threw the dice and won this afternoon.
I would like to ask you to join me in thanking Professor Lewis for a very memorable
afternoon.
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