Deep in the Middle East.(From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East)(Book Review)

From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East By Bernard Lewis Oxford University Press, 349 pages, $28

This distillation of a lifetime of writing from Bernard Lewis on Islamic history, the Middle East, and their relationship with the West is lacking in one respect: there is no index. But this is probably a virtue, because foraging through the writings of the West's foremost scholar of Islam for isolated references to Osama bin Laden or Baathism would be to undervalue, profoundly, the achievements and insights of Lewis's scholarship. However much today's convulsive global situation tempts us to go rummaging for topical sound bites, this must be resisted, for Lewis rewards patient reading.

To understand the long, slow dance between Islam and the West, we should follow his example and adopt a respectful, exacting, and deep historical approach to studying one of the world's major religions and the civilizations it has bequeathed. From Babel to Dragomans is as rich and intricate as a sheaf of Ottoman illuminations, and ought to be required reading for thoughtful students of twenty-first-century world affairs.

In this book, selections from Lewis's vast published repertoire have been divided into three sections: "Past History," "Current History," and "About History." The third group speaks to a more specialized, scholarly audience and ends the collection rather dryly. One essay, "In Defense of History," does stand out: Lewis briskly skewers the "self-flagellating history" practiced by many Western scholars, which ascribes the world's ills to the West. Throughout this collection, Lewis eviscerates ivory tower fashions like the modern academic tendency to celebrate non-Western cultures while ignoring the garish inequalities--between rich and poor, ethnic and religious groups, and men and women--that often cripple them. Lewis brooks none of the historical distortions that are often employed to puncture First World presumptions of enlightenment and progress.

Indeed, he is best known (and reviled in some circles) for his thesis on the flaws of Islamic civilization, which he has credited to an "inability to keep pace with the rapid advance of the West in science and technology, in the arts of both war and peace, and in government and commerce." Lewis's critiques, consistently buttressed by voluminous evidence, do not seem motivated by sectarian animosities. His goals, revealed in the "Current History" section, are to help Westerners better understand the complexities of Islam while helping Muslim societies come to terms ...