Interesting that the necktie was derived from a Balkan officer's uniform in 1660. A few decades later the expansion of Islam was arrested nearby at the gates of Vienna in 1683...
Why Islam Fell From Grace
January 11, 2002
By KAREN ELLIOTT HOUSE
interactive.wsj.com
How has it come to pass that a civilization that for centuries led the world in science, medicine and the arts, that amassed great riches through conquest, trade and human enterprise, has fallen so low that it lags most of the world in these and other pursuits while devoting its energies to fratricide, terrorism and the politics of despotism and denial?
The inestimable Bernard Lewis, an emeritus professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton, poses this question, albeit more politely, in "What Went Wrong?" (Oxford, 180 pages, $23). His slim volume is replete with the exceptional historical insight that one has come to expect from the world's foremost Islamic scholar. But not even Mr. Lewis can account fully for what brought about the decline of the Islamic world and the humiliation that fuels its anger today.
The question of what went wrong now haunts our headlines. Over a millennium, the religion of the seventh-century prophet Muhammad, who was both a spiritual leader and temporal warrior, encompassed much of the best as well as some of the worst of human history -- the glories of high civilization as well as the cruelties of conquest.
Today Islam has shrunk to a pitiably narrow spectrum. On one end sits the Saudi royal family, self-proclaimed guardians of Islam's holy sites, indulging in their lavish lifestyles while buying off fundamentalist critics they pretend to represent. On the other end sits Osama bin Laden, using fundamentalism to pursue an agenda of hatred against all who stand in his way.
A World Civilization
If the flowering of Islam spanned nearly 1,000 years, its decline has consumed a mere few hundred and counting. Muhammad, to whom Allah revealed the tenets of Islam, began the conquest of Arabia. The religion rapidly spread to Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa, all until then part of Christendom. In the ninth century and beyond, Muslims took control of parts of Spain, Portugal, Russia and Anatolia. In the course of their conquests, they adopted much of the best of the civilizations under their rule.
Early Islam also put into use important innovations from the outside, such as the manufacture of paper from China and decimal-positional numbering from India. The Islamic Middle East was the first, Mr. Lewis notes, to incorporate Indian numbers into mathematical reasoning. Thus "Arabic" numerals are so named to honor not their Indian inventors but the Arabs who first brought them to Europe. Indeed, medieval Europe was a pupil of the Islamic world, relying on it for major achievements in the arts and sciences and for the preservation of classical learning.
"Islam created a world civilization, polyethnic, multiracial, international and one might even say intercontinental," writes Mr. Lewis. "In the Muslims' own perception, Islam itself was indeed coterminous with civilization, and beyond its borders there were only barbarians and infidels."
The decline of Islam can be dated roughly from the moment that its expansion was arrested at the gates of Vienna in 1683. A religion that had come to measure its success by the acquisition of territory -- as much as the conversion of souls -- couldn't cope with equilibrium. The absence of continuous rise led to inexorable fall.
As Europe advanced from the Renaissance to the formation of nation states, from New World exploration to the Industrial Revolution, Islam's geopolitical fortunes dramatically reversed. A region that had once exported riches to Europe became an economic backwater. An empire that had triumphed by the sword lost Egypt to Napoleon's modern weaponry. A civilization that had conquered much of the world was reduced to humiliating status as British and French colonies. And of course in our postcolonial period, Islam has become the religion of a largely sordid collection of impoverished and despotic regimes where ruling cliques subjugate and terrorize their own peoples. Think Syria, Iraq, Iran, the Taliban.
Reading Mr. Lewis's book, one is reminded that there are many reasons for the humbling of Islam and the rise of the West, ranging from Europe's superiority at ship building, which allowed small countries like Holland and Portugal to become powers, to Islam's subjugation of women, which squandered the talent of half its population. But the fundamental reason -- best grasped if we read between the lines of "What Went Wrong?" -- derives from major differences between Christendom and the Islamic world.
First, Christendom developed a concept of separation of church and state (not without many tensions over the centuries), in which religion devoted itself to the spiritual realm while the state advanced progress on a myriad of temporal fronts. Islam accepts no such dichotomy. The state is the church and the church is the state. Christian societies cultivated a spirit of compromise, stemming in part from compromise between spiritual and temporal interests, popes and emperors, moral values and material progress. In Christendom piecemeal progress was possible. With Islam, it was all or nothing.
Second, while Islam was able to adapt to those it conquered, it proved unable to live harmoniously with or adapt from those it could not conquer. Mr. Lewis notes that Europe sent emissaries to live in the Islamic world and learn from it, but Muslims were uncomfortable living among infidels, and all beyond Islam's borders were infidels. Mr. Lewis observes that, until the 18th century, only one medical book was translated into a Middle Eastern language -- a 16th-century treatise on syphilis, presented to Sultan Mehmed IV in Turkish in 1655. Small wonder that Islam's science halted at the end of the Middle Ages even as Europe's rapidly advanced.
The Blame Game
Finally, Islam's search for scapegoats contributed to its decline and now prolongs it. Mr. Lewis recounts various Islamic excuses for the sad condition of the Muslim world today -- the woeful state of its economic development, literacy and science, its dearth of political freedom and human rights. Different eras have produced different excuses, with the Turks blaming the Arabs and the Arabs blaming the Turks and the Persians blaming both. A recent culprit has been Western imperialism, first the British and French and then the U.S. Israel is also a popular modern villain.
As Mr. Lewis remarks, Islamic regimes perpetuate themselves by encouraging their people to play the blame game and point to outsiders, not the government, for their troubles. Meanwhile, the regimes cloak themselves in religion, avoiding criticism by claiming to represent Allah's infallible word.
The inescapable conclusion is that the Muslim world is a prisoner of its history. Islam is a religion that commands obedience, not understanding; that preaches conversion through force, not persuasion. One symptom of the problem is that the author of this thoughtful book on Islam is an elderly British gentleman. Until Muslims themselves are ready to ask and answer the question "What Went Wrong?" there is little prospect of putting things right.
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Ms. House is president, international, of Dow Jones & Co. |
