AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION: A LEGACY OF ISLAMIC CONFUSION

The summer 2011 Claremont Review of Books contained a featured review essay by Robert R. Reilly¹ which discussed Bernard Lewis's essay collection Faith and Power,- and the nonagenarian historian's reflections upon the so-called Arab Spring unrest in the Middle East, particularly North Africa.³ As distilled by Reilly, Lewis's views reiterate what the historian described to the Wall Street Journal's Bari Weiss during an April 2, 2011, interview.⁴

The failure of a young journalist⁵ such as Ms.

Lewis's legacy of intellectual and moral confusion has greatly hindered the ability of sincere American policymakers to think clearly about Islam's living imperial legacy, driven by unreformed and unrepentant mainstream Islamic doctrine.

German scholar Karl Binswanger concluded his brilliant 1977 analysis of the imposition of Islamic law on non-Muslims under Ottoman rule with a valid moral critique of the “dogmatic Islamophilia” epitomized by Bernard Lewis, and Orientalists of Lewis's persuasion.¹⁴

It is absolutely scientifically justifiable to call cynicism and “evil” by their names....We were able to confirm these rational errors because they were in a domain which was susceptible to rational argument. This rational access is not given for another domain. We would like to call this domain “religious,” but prefer “dogmatic,” because it is not just a question of expressing the irrational but of stubbornly clinging. That this domain is Islamophilic follows from the fact that there is an attempt to present the moral aspect of an Islamic fact as ethically valuable (not value-neutral!), even if historic (and any other) sense does not support such an interpretation. It is understandable that the Orientalist has a predilection for those peoples with whose history and culture he is concerned and wishes to present them in a good light. All the same, such a process has nothing to do with science.

..,[W]homever—consciously or not—downplays or misrepresents the morally negative aspects of the Dhimma or even distorts it into its (moral) opposite, because he would otherwise have to partially revise his pre-conceived evaluation of Islamic culture, he is behaving like the Marxist “researcher” who simply demonizes every manifestation of “evil” feudalism, instead of, or without (even therefore) investigating the functional accomplishments of feudalism. The Marxist “researcher” acts this way, because there is no place for critical examination of his own position in his pre­conceived conception of the world and science. For him “scientific socialism” is a dogma. Orientalist studies must defend itself from degenerating into an obstinate “scientific Islamophilia.” Or it will deserve the teasing name of “orchid specialty” (obscure and unimportant specialty) and not that of a science.