by Bernard Lewis
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Product Description
For centuries, the world of Islam was in the forefront of human achievement -- the foremost military and economic power in the world, the leader in the arts and sciences of civilization. Christian Europe was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from which there was nothing to learn or to fear. And then everything changed. The West won victory after victory, first on the battlefield and then in the marketplace. In this elegantly written volume, Bernard Lewis, a renowned authority an Islamic affairs, examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic world as it tried to make sense of how it had been overtaken, overshadowed, and dominated by the West. In a fascinating portrait of a culture in turmoil, Lewis shows how the Middle East turned its attention to understanding European weaponry, industry, government, education, and culture. He also describes how some Middle Easterners fastened blame on a series of scapegoats, while others asked not "Who did this to us?" but rather "Where did we go wrong?" With a new Afterword that addresses September 11 and its aftermath, What Went Wrong? is an urgent, accessible book that no one who is concerned with contemporary affairs will want to miss.
Amazon.com Review
Bernard Lewis is the West's greatest historian and interpreter of the Near East. Books such as The Middle East and The Arabs in History are required reading for anybody who hopes to understand the region and its people. Now Lewis offers What Went Wrong?, a concise and timely survey of how Islamic civilization fell from worldwide leadership in almost every frontier of human knowledge five or six centuries ago to a "poor, weak, and ignorant" backwater that is today dominated by "shabby tyrannies ... modern only in their apparatus of repression and terror." He offers no easy answers, but does provide an engaging chronicle of the Arab encounter with Europe in all its military, economic, and cultural dimensions. The most dramatic reversal, he says, may have occurred in the sciences: "Those who had been disciples now became teachers; those who had been masters became pupils, often reluctant and resentful pupils." Today's Arab governments have blamed their plight on any number of external culprits, from Western imperialism to the Jews. Lewis believes they must instead commit to putting their own houses in order: "If the peoples of Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, [and] poverty and oppression." Anybody who wants to understand the historical backdrop to September 11 would do well to look for it on these pages. --John Miller
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Average Customer Review:
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 The standard answer is ignored!, 2008-09-03
This book is chock full of interesting facts, but as other reviewers have pointed out, the author fails to answer the question in his title: What went wrong? The strange thing about this is that there is an answer that is usually given to this question, so it is mystery why he doesn't discuss it. That answer is that the thinker al-Ghazali argued against philosophy (and science) and made revelation much more important than reason and that his influence was powerful enough to send a chill into the Muslim world for the next several centuries.
I don't know enough to know whether that answer is right or not, and I welcome responses from anyone who can shed light on it.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Lewis Recrosses Familiar Turf, 2008-08-20
Bernard Lewis is the preeminent contemporary Western scholar of Islam (at least in its Middle Eastern manifestation). As such, he has previously written extensively and authoritatively on the interaction of the Middle East and the Western world (most notably in The Muslim Discovery of Europe and The Middle East and the West). Unfortunately, this book doesn't really build on these earlier works, offering minimal new information or noteworthy analysis.
Lewis sets things up with long-established fact that during Europe's "Dark Ages," the Middle East was a booming intellectual center, preserving the knowledge of the Greeks. However, since this high point, the region has been in a steady decline in power and status relative to the West. Lewis positions this long-term, ongoing "what went wrong?" decline as the central "problem" of the modern Middle East. Moreover, he says, it is has for too long been framed by Middle Easterners in the form of the unhelpful question "Who did this to us?" (ie. the British, Americans, Zionists, etc.). He suggests that it is only very recently that some in the region are discarding this mindset and replacing it with the question, "What did we do wrong?" In other words, the abandonment of victimhood and the assumption of responsibility.
The book then goes on to sketch Ottoman/Western interactions from the 16th-century on, showing how increased Western curiosity about the East (and economic interest) led them to travel widely in the East and establish various semi-permanent settlements there (such as merchant houses and embassies). He also discusses relatively obscure but interesting notions, such as the psychological ease with which Christian visitors could travel in Muslim versus the correspondingly theologically thorny "problem" of Muslims traveling among and settling in Christian lands. Similarly, Westerners were keen to master the languages of the East, and had educational systems which facilitated this, whereas in the East, the practice was to rely on a translators class (often Greeks). The overall effect was one whereby the West was able to rapidly absorb the learning of the East, while the East was no nearly as able (or psychologically willing) to take advantage of advances made in the West.
Lewis's aim is more descriptive than prescriptive, and while these details are interesting, the broad picture is one that's been painted before. Namely, that the historic inability of Muslim civilizations to separate secular and religious spheres of life hampered their ability to absorb beneficial aspects of Western culture and learning. So, if you've read Lewis' earlier works, this one is unlikely to add much to your understanding of Muslim/Western relations.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 WWW!!!, 2008-08-05
This book gives harsh reality about Middle east.I believe he gave his best answer for "What Went Wrong?". He is very informative. I enjoyed his point of view. One of my favorite sentence "Europeans managed to create a Christianity without compassion, so did some Middle Easterners create a democracy without freedom."
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Outstanding., 2008-07-01
Required reading for a summer course at Hopkins; Lewis seems to have done it again. Some novel (to me, at least) outlooks, everything backed up flawlessly, trenchant insights.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
everyone should get aquinted with this book., 2008-05-08
this is well written and really is helpful in understanding the roots of the problem caused by 911. the author obiously knowws what he is talking about and has the credentials and credibility to go along with it. he is the most knowledgable in the subject in current times. it really is sad that most americans can tell you who won a reality show but they cantell you of the roots of a war that they are fighting and losing thier children to!
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