Bernard Lewis
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Bernard Lewis (born May 31, 1916) is a British scholar and the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, performed post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, returned in 1938 to the University of London as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History, once again at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Lewis taught there until 1974, when he accepted a position at Princeton University. In 1986 he formally retired, though he still retains a position there as an emeritus professor as noted above.
In the wake of the September 11th terrorist attack, interest in Lewis' work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Lewis is also known for his literary sparrings with Columbia professor Edward Said, who critiqued Lewis' supposedly "Orientalist" scholarship in his famous 1979 book of the same name.
Bernard Lewis has written over 20 twenty books and numerous articles. Among his more recent books are two that appeared in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attack: What Went Wrong? (written before the attack, but nonetheless relevant) and The Crisis of Islam.
Partial listing of his books
- The Arabs in History, London 1950
- The Emergence of Modern Turkey, London and New York 1961
- The Assassins, London 1967
- The Muslim Discovery of Europe, New York 1982
- The Political Language of Islam, Chicago 1988
- Race and Slavery in the Middle East: an Historical Enquiry, New York 1990
- Islam and the West, New York, 1993
- Islam in History, 2nd edition, Chicago, 1993
- The Shaping of the Modern Middle East, New York, 1994
- Cultures in Conflict, New York, 1994
- The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years, New York, 1995
- The Future of the Middle East, London, 1997
- The Multiple Identities of the Middle East, London, 1998
- A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of life, letters and history, New York, 2000
- What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, New York, 2002
- The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, New York, 2003
- From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East, 2004
Trivia
- He was fined one franc by a Parisian court after expressing doubt, in a November 1993 Le Monde interview, whether the 1915 Turkish massacre of Armenians qualified as an act of genocide. [1]
- His book, What Went Wrong, became a U.S. bestseller after the September 11 attacks.
External links
- Lewis's Princeton [homepage]
- Atlantic Monthly: "The Roots of Muslim Rage"
- "Debunking Edward Said" by Ibn Warraq: the section "Said, Sex, and Psycho-analysis" recapitulates "The Question of Orientalism" chapter in Islam and the West, Lewis' response to Said.
- Counterpunch: "Scholarship or Sophistry? Bernard Lewis and the New Orientalism"
- Zionist.org: Links to online articles by Bernard Lewis.
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