Longtime Princeton University professor Bernard Lewis, a expert on Middle East history, is being remembered for his scholarship and its effect on world events after dying Saturday.
Lewis died at age 101 after a lifetime popularizing his interpretations of Islamic history, and how it connected present conflicts to deeper legacies.
In 1990, Lewis wrote the essay “The Roots of Muslim Rage” for The Atlantic, using the term “clash of civilizations” — a conceptual framework that become popular and controversial for viewing relations between Muslim societies and the West.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Lewis became well known to a broader audience. He was an influential supporter of the Iraq War and was highly regarded by supporters of an interventionist U.S. foreign policy.
“No one offered sounder analysis or better insight than Bernard Lewis,” former Vice President Dick Cheney said in 2006.
Prominent students and ideological allies recalled Lewis fondly in Sunday op-eds, statements, and social media posts.
“Bernard Lewis was a true scholar & great man. I owe a great deal of my understanding of the Middle East to his work,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote on Twitter. “He was a man who believed, as I do, that Americans must be more confident in the greatness of our country, not less.”
“To borrow from Shiite Muslim legal scholarship, Bernard Lewis is the marja-e taqlid, ‘the source of emulation,’ the scholar to whom on the great questions one must make reference,” American Enterprise Institute fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote in The Weekly Standard.
Jay Nordlinger, senior editor of National Review, eulogized Lewis as “a great friend of the Arabs,” writing, “This is poorly understood both by his enemies and by some of his fans.”
Nordlinger quoted Lewis saying: “Some people believe that Arabs should be free of dictatorship, like others in the world. This is known as the anti-Arab, or Western-imperialist, view. Other people say or imply that Arabs are destined to live under dictatorship, as the natural and rightful state of affairs. This is known as the pro-Arab view.”
Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, wrote: “A giant, if not the giant in the West of the study and scholarship of Arabic, Middle Eastern, and Islamic history has passed. … We all learned from his work and those who rejected it did so from fear rather than rational argument.”
In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Bernard Lewis was one of the great scholars of Islam and the Middle East in our time. We will be forever grateful for his robust defense of Israel.”
In addition to weighing in on current events, Lewis was known or being fluent in many languages and for his historical work reviewing Ottoman archives. Although Jewish, some students called him “the imam” because of his expertise on Islam.
Lewis authored many books, including The Crisis of Islam after 9/11 and The Assassins about the 11th and 12th-century Islamic sect whose targeted killings generated the word assassination.
Among his detractors are people enraged by Lewis’ assessment that the mass-murder of Armenians during World War I was the result of nationalist struggles between Armenians and Turks, rather than deliberate genocide.
Others dismissed as alarmist his warnings about the influence of theology on Iranian politics, including a 2006 Wall Street Journal op-ed in which Lewis wrote that for Iran’s leaders, Aug. 22 of that year, “might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world.”
Lewis’ death did not soften passionate reaction to his work, from supporters and detractors alike.
“If you want to know why so many Arabs and Muslims won’t be shedding tears, go read some of his work and how it influenced US policy and views on the region,” wrote New York Times op-ed contributing writer Wajahat Ali.
“His orientalist work has been deconstructed, reconstructed, legitimized wars+denied genocides,” wrote Brooklyn College CUNY professor Louis Fishman. “Say what you want, his print on Middle Eastern studies was a heavy one-I was never a fan, but his work shaped so many scholars-for or against him.”
