Bernard Lewis QUOTES

1 " Not being interested in other cultures is the normal state of mankind. "

― Bernard Lewis , The Muslim Discovery of Europe

2 " It is often said that Islam is an egalitarian religion. There is much truth in this assertion. If we compare Islam at the time of its advent with the societies that surrounded it—the stratified feudalism of Iran and the caste system of India to the east, the privileged aristocracies of both Byzantine and Latin Europe to the west—the Islamic dispensation does indeed bring a message of equality. Not only does Islam not endorse such systems of social differentiation; it explicitly and resolutely rejects them. The actions and utterances of the Prophet, the honored precedents of the early rulers of Islam as preserved by tradition, are overwhelmingly against privilege by descent, by birth, by status, by wealth, or even by race, and insist that rank and honor are determined only by piety and merit in Islam. "

― Bernard Lewis

3 " One female who knows what to do
is better than a thousand males who don't. "

― Bernard Lewis , Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish & Hebrew Poems

4 " I have no time in the world but the time in which I am
and that lasts a moment and passes like a cloud. "

― Bernard Lewis , Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish & Hebrew Poems

5 " I do not dye my hair black
so as to be young again and sin again
but because people dye their clothes black in mourning,
so I have dyed my hair black, mourning for my old age. "

― Bernard Lewis , Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish & Hebrew Poems

6 " America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend. "

― Bernard Lewis , The United States and the Middle East

7 " Your life is a sum of counted breaths.
With each breath that passes
a part of life is lost.
That which gives life brings death every moment nearer,
and your caravan is led by one
who will not jest with you. "

― Bernard Lewis , Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish & Hebrew Poems

8 " Secularism in the Christian world was an attempt to resolve the long and destructive struggle of church and state. Separation, adopted in the American and French Revolutions and elsewhere after that, was designed to prevent two things: the use of religion by the state to reinforce and extend its authority; and the use of the state power by the clergy to impose their doctrines and rules on others. This is a problem long seen as purely Christian, not relevant to Muslims or for that matter to Jews, for whom a similar problem has arisen in Israel. Looking at the contemporary Middle East, both Muslim and Jewish, one must ask whether this is still true -- or whether Muslims and Jews may perhaps have caught a Christian disease and might therefore consider a Christian remedy. "

― Bernard Lewis , What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam & Modernity in the Middle East

9 " In 1940, we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues," he told me when I pressed him for a reading of the struggle against Islamic radicalism. "In our island, we knew we would prevail, that the Americans would be drawn into the fight. It is different today. We don't know who we are, we don't know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy. "

― Bernard Lewis , What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam & Modernity in the Middle East

10 " As Osama bin Laden puts it: "In this final phase of the ongoing struggle, the world of the infidels was divided between two superpowers--the United States and the Soviet Union. Now we have defeated and destroyed the more difficult and the more dangerous of the two. Dealing with the pampered and effeminate Americans will be easy. "

― Bernard Lewis , Islam and the West

11 " To a Western observer, schooled in the theory and practice of Western freedom, it is precisely the lack of freedom—freedom of the mind from constraint and indoctrination, to question and inquire and speak; freedom of the economy from corrupt and pervasive mismanagement; freedom of women from male oppression; freedom of citizens from tyranny—that underlies so many of the troubles of the Muslim world. But the road to democracy, as the Western experience amply demonstrates, is long and hard, full of pitfalls and obstacles." Page 115 "

― Bernard Lewis , What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam & Modernity in the Middle East

12 " Those who are unwilling to confront the past will be unable to understand the present and unfit to face the future. "

― Bernard Lewis , Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian

13 " The difference between Middle Eastern and Western economic approaches can be seen even in their distinctive forms of corruption, from which neither society is exempt. In the West, one makes money in the market, and uses it to buy or influence power. In the East, one seizes power, and uses it to make money. "

― Bernard Lewis , What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam & Modernity in the Middle East

14 " The signatories quote various Muslim authorities and then proceed to the final and most important part of their declaration, the fatwa, laying down that “to kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able, in any country where this is possible, until the Aqsa mosque [in Jerusalem] and the Haram mosque [in Mecca] are freed from their grip, and until their armies, shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the lands of Islam, incapable of threatening any Muslim. "

― Bernard Lewis ,

15 " For the study of Middle Eastern history, and at the present time one might even add of world history, some knowledge of Islam’s origins and of its scriptures is necessary. Already in my student years I was reading the Koran, the biography of the Prophet, and the extensive literature concerned with them. But at no time did I specialize in these topics. I am not an expert in theology or scripture, and I looked at these, if at all, only with a historian’s eye. I am, by vocation and profession, a historian, principally interested in the history of civilization. Looking back, I see that by this choice I saved myself a lot of trouble. This was not my purpose at the time but I have become well aware of my narrow and fortunate escape from one of the most difficult and dangerous topics of our profession. Even for Muslims, and far more so for non-Muslims, the study of the sacred biography and the sacred text has become highly sensitive, not so much a field of research as a minefield. This has not prevented my critics from attacking me for my treatment of Muslim scripture and sacred biography. In this as in other matters, the attacks came from both sides. On the one side I am accused of traducing Islam and its sanctities, on the other of defending and even concealing its flaws. As long as the attacks continue to come from both sides, I shall remain confident of my scholarly objectivity. Once, "

― Bernard Lewis , Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian

16 " Terrorism requires only a few. Obviously, the West must defend itself by whatever means will be effective. But in devising means to fight the terrorists, it would surely be useful to understand the forces that drive them. "

― Bernard Lewis ,

17 " The social institutions and attitudes inherited from earlier times and maintained with increasing rigidity made it difficult to adapt to changing circumstances or to create new political and economic institutions which would facilitate such an adaption. An attitude towards unbelievers that varied from condescension in good times, to hostility and mistrust in bad times, made it difficult to learn from them, or even to understand them, at a time when it was the West, and not as previously the Islamic world, that had something to teach. "

― Bernard Lewis , The Arabs in History

18 " wholly given up to villainy and debauchery, and ride the steed of perfidy and presumption, and dive into the sea of error and impiety, and are united under the banner of Satan. "

― Bernard Lewis , The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years

19 " With few exceptions the pietists are assigned a minor role in the creation of the Arab Empire. "

― Bernard Lewis , The Arabs in History

20 " Black slaves seem to have cost from two to three hundred dirhams; black eunuchs, at least two or three times as much. Female black slaves were sold at five hundred dirhams or so; trained singing girls or other performers, at ten or even twenty thousand. "

― Bernard Lewis , Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry

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