I recently read Bernard Lewis's book "What Went Wrong?" Lewis is a Middle East expert-one of the most respected. He writes about the rise and fall of Islam and the reaction by the Muslim world to its failures. Too often Muslims ask "Who did this to us?" Vicitmization is not helpful to the development of a country.
There was a time when Islam kept science and the humanities alive while Europe went though its dark ages. But something happened to the Islamic world. Lewis explains.
The book was written before 9/11. Think about that when you read it. And I recommend that you do. It is an easy read.
There is a paragraph in the book that to me speaks to Islam in the present:
: “If they can abandon grievances and victimhood, settle their differences, and join their talents, energies and resources in a common endeavor, then they can once again make the Middle East, in modern times as it was in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, a major center of civilization. For the time being the choice is their own.”
There is an old Yiddish (Jewish) expression that I am going to clean up a bit to summarize my views on that paragraph.
If the Bubbie (grandmother) had…wheels, she would be a …bus.
We spend a great deal of time, today, trying to understand Islam and the behaviour of too many in the Islamic world. Why do they do what they do? Why do they turn to terror, or what we call terror which, to too many of them, is following Islam.
Lewis tries to give us an idea of the "psyche" of Islam. I fear we are watching a repeat of history.
