The name Bernard Lewis provokes very different reactions in different people. For some he is the world’s foremost historian of Islam and the Middle East, the English academic who originally coined the term ‘clash of civilisations’ (as Samuel Huntingdon, who popularised it, freely acknowledged). For some he is a Princeton man, a neocon who celebrated his 90th birthday (four years ago) with Cheney and Kissinger; whose ‘Lewis Doctrine’ was said to have inspired the invasion of Iraq and botched the war on terror. For still others he is an international sage, who saw the threat of both Khomeini and bin Laden before most people had even heard of them. Or, if you believe the late Edward Said, Lewis is ‘an old-fashioned colonialist’ with ‘an extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong’. ‘As long as I am accused by both sides, I feel justly confident,’ says Lewis laughing. ‘Edward Said’s ideas on orientalism were totally ahistorical, and some of his mistakes were so absurd I had to put them down to honest impartial ignorance. But I have lived for a very long time, and many changes have taken place within the Muslim world.’
They most certainly have. For the first few decades of his life, Islam was a very positive influence in Lewis’s life. In 1937 he took the top first in his year at London University and, having already mastered Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, moved to Paris to learn Turkish and Persian. ‘The teacher was Turkish, we communicated in French, and the only textbook was in Italian,’ he chuckles. ‘That’s how I learned Persian.’ Then in 1950 he was one of the first non-Turks to be allowed into the Ottoman archives — ‘I was utterly delighted, it was like an Aladdin’s cave.’ But about recent changes, Lewis is very worried indeed. In his new book, Faith and Power: Religion and Politics in the Middle East, the odd sentence suddenly jolts the reader out of the glories of Islam’s past and into a more sinister present: ‘Either we bring them freedom, or they destroy us,’ he writes. Isn’t that a little apocalyptic? ‘They are advancing, there is no doubt,’ responds Lewis, who says that Europe faces two forms of attack — terror and migration. ‘The extent to which they are taking over Europe... If present demographic trends continue, they will become the majority.’
Lewis has consistently written with admiration about Islam, and has frequently made clear that bin Laden and his followers are wrong to claim religious justification for their activities — ‘at no point do the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder. At no point do they even consider the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders.’ Why, then, does he fear such an advance? ‘It’s a threat because of the present form of Islam. If it wasn’t for oil and money, Wahhabism would have been a local cult in the Nejd desert. But the Saudis’ immense wealth and influence has spread Wahhabism all over the world. And it’s doing much better in Europe than in the Islamic world. Most of the Turks who have been arrested for being militant are from Germany, not from Turkey, where religious teaching is more controlled.’
Not that he thinks that Turkey is the beacon of hope it used to be. Lewis believed the west-looking secular state imposed by Kemal Atatürk could be a model for other Muslim countries, but the AKP government of prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in power since 2003, is Islamist-leaning and close to both Hezbollah and Hamas. In the aftermath of the killing of nine Turkish activists on the Mavi Marmara, Turkey is reported to be considering cutting diplomatic ties with Israel altogether. ‘I find it very alarming. Erdogan wants to change the whole direction. He’s gradually taking over the country step by step, universities, the police — he’s got everything except the judiciary.’ Mind you, he adds of the country so dear to his heart: ‘It’s not a lost cause. I’m not giving up on Turkey.’
About Iran, Lewis is now ‘cautiously hopeful’. ‘There is opposition to the regime and there is opposition within the regime. It can be replaced by internal change.’ Trying to ‘make nice’ with Tehran, he says, ‘seems to me absurd’. (It is the only Americanism to pass his lips during our 90-minute conversation. Despite having moved to Princeton from a chair at SOAS in 1974, his accent is still that of his childhood in Kensington.) But he is against military intervention. ‘We must not give them a gift they do not enjoy, patriotism. Iran, as opposed to the post-world war creations in the Middle East, is a real nation with a history going back millennia. There is a strong sense of common identity.’ If Ahmadinejad went, would Iran still be a theocracy — or could it become a western-style liberal democracy? ‘I think that’s possible.’
What about Afghanistan and Iraq: should we stay? ‘Having gone in, I think we have a duty to finish the job, cut and run is not a good policy. In both we should not stay longer than absolutely necessary, we should try to work out methods of handing over. You know,’ he continues, launching into one of the many anecdotes that pepper his conversation, ‘the Afghanistan I went to 40 years ago was known as the Switzerland of Asia. I heard it so many times that when I was on a plane from Kabul and an Afghan said it to me again, I pointed to my wristwatch and said, “when you can make one like that I’ll believe you.” He roared with laughter.’
It is the type of government that Afghanistan enjoyed under its monarchy that he believes could point to a form of democracy compatible with Islam. ‘There was some level of consultation and mutual respect. Democratic ideas, in the sense of limited authority, go back to classical Islam. When a new sultan was enthroned the crowds greeted him by saying, “sultan, do not be proud, God is greater than you.” His subjects, in effect, had rights. Sharia states quite clearly that if the ruler does something against the law he must not be obeyed and disobedience is justified. There wasn’t an electoral system, but there were very elaborate systems of consultation with tribal chiefs, field heads, merchant and craft guilds.’
Lewis contrasts this with the power of European monarchies at the time. He tells the story of the French ambassador to Istanbul in 1786, who had to explain his lack of progress in persuading the Ottomans to enact some military reforms. ‘Things here are not as they are in France, where the king is sole master,’ he wrote home. ‘The sultan has to consult.’
Returning to Iraq, I say it is hard to reconcile the cautious historian who warns against the dangers of premature democratisation with the bellicose neocon we are told urged the White House into battle. ‘I’m perplexed,’ I tell him. ‘I’m perplexed, too!’ he replies. ‘It’s a misrepresentation.’ People talked to him, he says — Cheney in particular — and sometimes they listened, sometimes not. In fact, he claims that invading Iraq was ‘not the idea’ at all. What he and his friend Ahmad Chalabi wanted was a declaration of support for the northern zone, which had operated out of Saddam’s reach since the first Gulf war. ‘It was practically independent and was really a very effective, functioning democracy. On two occasions at least they said they would like to proclaim an Independent Government of Free Iraq. They didn’t need military or financial support.’ Just a declaration from the US. ‘They asked the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, but they never got it. That’s what I and Chalabi were asking for.’
Did he think this could have led to Saddam’s regime unravelling? ‘I’m sure it would. They were doing an excellent job and they had extensive support in the remainder of Iraq. It would have served as an example to other countries.’ One idea, favoured by Lewis, was for Prince Hassan of Jordan (the late King Hussein’s brother) to become Iraq’s king. He was a member of the same Hashemite family as the country’s former monarchs, and ‘a number of people thought the best prospect for democracy would have been a monarchy on British lines. Of the democracies that have been democracies for a long time and continue to be so, most are monarchies.’
He is, I think, a conservative (his work contains too many nuances and warnings for the ‘neocon’ label to stick), with a great affection for the peoples and religion of the Middle East and a romantic attachment to their past. Far from being a ‘propagandist’ against his subject material, he assigns much of the region’s trouble to the malign influence of Western ideas. He even calls anti-Semitism ‘a comparatively recent import from Europe to the world of Islam’ — and he is Jewish.
‘To hate and persecute people who are different is normal. Anti-Semitism is something different, a tribute to the Jews, a diabolical quality of evil.’ Jews in Islamic lands did have problems, he says, but it was the Christians who were the real threat. Jews were merely considered cowardly by Arabs. He tells an old Ottoman joke: ‘Before they imported European anti-Semitism, at the time of the Balkan war, the Jews in Istanbul wanted to make a contribution. Could they form a Jewish brigade? The Ottomans said yes, armed and equipped them. Then, when they were ready to set out, the Jews said could they have a police escort — because there were bandits on the way.’ He pauses. ‘You wouldn’t call that anti-Semitic, would you? It’s amused contempt, not the idea of a cosmic evil.’
Although he is ‘not optimistic’, fearing for the future of the ‘good Islam’ he respects, he sounds stoical about his own prospects. ‘I’m 94, and all the people I knew are dead.’ To what does he attribute his longevity and vigour? ‘Genes,’ he says. ‘And I have a Scotch before dinner every evening.’
Sholto Byrnes is a contributing editor of the New Statesman.