"The Bernard Lewis Trial
Bernard Lewis is a Professor Emeritus at Princeton University in the department of Near Eastern Studies who was condemned in a June 21, 1995 French court decision for statements he made denying the Armenian genocide.
Later, he wrote an account of the ruling in a letter published in the June 15, 1996 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly.
This page is to show the ruling, both in the original French and translated into English, as well as provide an opportunity to compare it with the version given by Bernard Lewis so that readers can gauge the accuracy of this well-known historian.
Here are excerpts from both Bernard Lewis' letter and the actual ruling:"
from the 1996 French court ruling:
"Whereas, even if it is in no way established that he pursued a purpose alien to his mission as a historian, and even if it is not disputable that he may maintain an opinion on this question different from those of the petitioning associations, the fact remains that it was by concealing elements contrary to his thesis that the defendant was able to assert that there was no "serious proof" of the Armenian genocide; consequently, he failed in his duties of objectivity and prudence by expressing himself without qualification on such a sensitive subject; and his remarks, which could unfairly revive the pain of the Armenian community, are tortious and justify compensation under the terms set forth hereafter;...."
users.ids.net
The following shows that Lewis was spouting in his pre-emeritus period as well.
"Islamic Revolution: An Exchange
By Abbas Milani, Tomis Kapitan, Reply by Bernard Lewis
In response to Islamic Revolution (January 21, 1988)
To the Editors:
In his "Islamic Revolution" [NYR, January 21] Mr. Bernard Lewis made some statements which are, quite frankly, surprising coming as they do from a well-known scholar of Islamic civilization. At one point, he asserts that "all Muslims believe in the literal divine origin and textual inerrancy of the Koran." In one sense this is perfectly so, but because "literal" typically modifies a noun expressing a semantic, not a causal, notion, the words imply there is no debate over the interpretation of the Koran within Islamic thought, hence, that "there is no liberal theology or critical Koran study against which a protest or reaction might be necessary." It takes no expert on Islam to realize that there is a long-standing debate about interpretation (ta'wil) among Muslim scholars of the Koran, extending even to controversy over punctuation. Indeed, it is mentioned in the Koran that certain passages are unclear or ambiguous (mutashabihat), and the reading of this passage has engendered plenty of "protest and reaction"—as evidenced by the reaction to the Decisive Treatise of Ibn Rushd.
Lewis suggests that Islam differs from Judaism and Christianity in its theocratic view that "the state is God's state, the law is God's law. The army is God's army—and of course the enemy is God's enemy." I have often heard Christians in America's heartland echo similar sentiments. Again, I recall a chilling West Bank settlement tour in which Jewish settlers from Ophra argued that because they were under orders from their "Supreme Commander" (God) they could not be concerned with "enemy casualties" (among the Palestinians). Both groups quoted their scriptures. Obviously, Islamic militants have no monopoly on the claim of being divinely appointed warriors.
But Lewis is most bewildering in his assessment of what has aroused such "passionate anger" among Muslim revolutionaries. He ignores the overwhelming challenge to the Islamic world presented by the state of Israel, especially by the latter's control over Islamic holy places in Jerusalem. Anyone who has spoken with Islamic enthusiasts, or viewed PBS's recent "The Sword of Islam," knows this much, and to fail to mention it is to reveal little of what underlies the "Islamic Revolution."
Tomis Kapitan
Greenville, North Carolina
To the Editors:
The enigma of the Islamic Revolution continues to bewilder Western minds, and a flurry of attempts continue the problematic process of unraveling the mysteries of this phenomenon. When an eminent scholar of the erudition and stature of Mr. Bernard Lewis contributes to this process his propositions, because of their likely impact on scholarly as well as public opinion, need to be more rigorously scrutinized. Such a scrutiny, unfortunately, brings to light what seems to me to be many serious ambiguities as well as doubtful assertions. Within the confines of a short letter, I shall try to point to some of these problems.
In charting a course out of the labyrinth of the Islamic Revolution, Mr. Lewis cautions against passing judgments on the revolution, arguing that it "has a long way to go before it works itself out, and before we can determine its nature and consequence." Surely the imperatives of objectivity in historical scholarship entails a certain emotional as well as temporal distance from the subject of analysis. Yet if, for instance, historians who in the Thirties studied the Nazi phenomenon had taken Mr. Lewis's counsel and suspended judgment till the day Nazism had completely "worked itself out," they might have all been consumed by the Holocaust that proved to be one ominous consequence of this "working out" process. The calamities already brought upon the Iranian society and its people warrant not only some serious preliminary judgments but, in fact, demand concerned action.
But Mr. Lewis seems to have a rather peculiar reading of revolutions. In his view, in the "theater of revolution," the public is not "just spectators…. The audience must know, preferably know intimately, the essentials of the plot, the characters…the desired, indeed the inevitable outcome." I know of no revolution in history that would fit this description. In revolutionary movements the masses are often manipulated elements in plots they know virtually nothing about. In fact, revolutions rarely operate based on shared knowledge — let alone "intimately" shared knowledge. The motive force is more often myth and manipulated emotions. Passion and envy, rather than compassion and informed values and opinions, are the more common inspirations for the frenzied ecstasy of mass revolutionary activism. The Islamic Revolution is a prime instance of this historic truism.
Mr. Lewis concludes this rather eccentric analysis of revolutions by indicating that Iranian revolutionaries have borrowed two things from the West: their technologies of destruction and propaganda on the one hand, and their "models of style and method" on the other. For in Mr. Lewis's opinion "summary trial and execution of great numbers of ideologically defined enemies…are deeply un-Islamic." The history of Islam in Iran, particularly from the time of the Safavid, is replete with summary trials and executions and persistent use of violence and indoctrinations. What is new about the Islamic Revolution, and what in my view constitutes its specificity, is not its "models of style and method" but its fundamental structure as a pseudo-totalitarian regime whose ultimate goal is not the simple consolidation of power but rather a change in the nature of man, or better yet, a rehabilitation of man to his "true," ascetic Islamic self. It wishes to remold each and every facet of public and private life in concordance with the normative prescriptions of its "total" ideology. Terror, legitimized by the chiliastic self-righteousness of such a total ideology, is the inevitable tool and consequence of such remolding. In short, its genealogy is epistemological rather than geographic.
Further on, while trying to understand the "revolutionary appeal" of Islam, Mr. Lewis claims that "among Muslims" Islam is "the most acceptable, indeed in times of crisis the only acceptable basis of authority. Power seeks legitimacy, and attains it more effectively, among Muslims, from Islam rather than from national or patriotic or even dynastic claims, still less from the Western notion of national or popular sovereignty." While these claims may be true about some of the more recently created Islamic states, they prove inaccurate in the case of Iran. The long and tenacious allegiance of Iranians to many of the elements of their pre-Islamic heritage, the role of the Persian language in forging and sustaining a national sense of identity, the significance of national and popular sovereignty in two of the three great upheavals in modern Iranian history (the Constitutional Revolution in 1905 and Mossadeq's movement for nationalization of oil in 1953) are only some of the elements in the Iranian dual sense of identity which has systematically denied total hegemony to the Islamic culture.
Mr. Lewis then grapples with the problem of labeling the different factions within the Islamic Republic of Iran. He finds the "distinction between moderates and extremists" as "somewhat misleading" and opts for another set of categories. He writes of "pragmatists" and "ideologues" and considers the former more prone to compromise and places in the latter category all of those who insist on ideological purity. Finally he denounces the use of the term "fundamentalist" as "inaccurate and misleading." In fact, I would suggest that, in the context of Iranian postrevolutionary politics and shi'i history, fundamentalism is indeed an accurate and valuable term. Curiously, Mr. Lewis seems to dismiss the term "fundamentalist" because it has originated in the context of American Protestantism. Surely if such were adequate grounds for dismissal, the terms offered by Mr. Lewis would also be highly suspect: "ideologues" has its roots in eighteenth-century French politics and the genealogy of "pragmatists" goes to certain philosophical schools in the history of the Great Satan.
In the context of present-day politics in Iran, fundamentalists advocate a strict and literal application of each and every Islamic law. In religious exegesis, they deny any interpretative license and opt for strict adherence to the letter of a divine, nonerrant, and totally self-sufficient canon. The relatively well-circulated Tehran daily Resalat systematically propounds this brand of fundamentalism. Furthermore, a glance at recent events in Iranian politics seriously undermines the heuristic value of Mr. Lewis's distinction between the ideologues and the Pragmatists. Behind the façade of the ideological purity of the most fervent radical ideologues lurks a Machiavellian sense of realism, a bizarre configuration of changing political alliances, feverish rhetoric and pragmatic resilience in matters of dogma. Pragmatists are indeed those very same ideologues who buy arms from Israel and the Great Satan and yet launder it all to the masses—those informed participants in the revolutionary drama—as a momentous victory of the "humbled" against the "haughty."
In the meantime, while analysts bicker over facts and factions, the vastly discontent Iranian populace seems to suffer the fate that might indeed be the ultimate paradox of many revolutions: world public opinion seems to acquiesce to the rhetoric of the regime and, accepting an alleged solidarity between the ruler and the ruled, chastises the vanquished victims of terror and irrationality as culprits in the crimes of the victors.
Abbas Milani
College of Notre Dame
Belmont, California"
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