Review: Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong?

The Middle East is the relative backwoods that it is today because at its height, Islamic civilization reveled in a superiority complex. Muslim culture took it on faith (in itself rather than in God, in this case) that there was nothing the non-Islamic world could teach it, nothing in the non-Islamic world worthy of study, nothing in the non-Islamic world worthy of adaptation, let alone assimilation. Until the late 18th century, Lewis points out, “only one medical book was translated into a Middle Eastern language”—a book on syphilis. The irony wasn’t lost on Muslims: European influence was closely associated with something diseased.

That, at least, is Bernard Lewis' thesis in What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response.

Is Lewis right? Read the full review...

See Also:

• Review: The Arabs: Journeys Beyond the Mirage, by David Lamb
• Review: Storm from the East: The Struggle Between the Arab World and the Christian West, by Milton Viorst
• Ten Essential Books on the Middle East