Rating: 
Summary: Good History
Review: Bernard Lewis provides a good historical commentary on the current conflicts in the Middle East. In a world where many academics are allergic to democracy, Lewis' call for a democratic Middle East is refreshing. The book focuses, as the subtitle indicates, on the clash of Islam and modernity. Yet, on this central issue, the analysis is in my view superficial. Any analysis of Islam's reaction to modernity must ipso facto be theological. We are dealing with a theological phenomenon. A good successor to this book would consider how Christianity was able to assimilate its Jewish heritage, while Islam continues to view both Judaism and Christianity as corruptions. That theological comparison will reveal more about Islam's clash with modernity, than will an exclusively secular analysis.
Rating: 
Summary: A mysterious Middle East exposed
Review: As once the economic, intellectual and military power of the world, Muslim countries may not be suffering a Dark Age but they are enduring stagnation. How did such radiance reverse itself? It boils down to cast of mind. This cast is what Princeton's Bernard Lewis reveals in unique and gripping style. An excellent writer, Lewis' practice is new. He provides cause and events to a limit, but so well constructed that he generates, naturally, questions from the reader just as we've absorbed enough. Then, next chapter, our curiosity peaked, these natural questions are addressed, expanded and the process repeats. We find the Muslim world in a strengthening grip of literalists, fundamentalists and some radicals with a mindset currently unwilling or incapable (axiomatic by habit, not lack of intelligence) of separating religious from political philosophy (or even having political philosophy). Shades of religious fundamentalists in America are easily recognized and results in Islam should serve as warning and reminder of what the Founders knew as calamitous when church and state are joined. However, Lewis adds, "There is nothing in Islamic history to compare with emancipation, acceptance, and integration of other-believers and non-believers in the West; but equally, there is nothing in Islamic history to compare with the Spanish expulsion of Jews and Muslims, the Inquisition, the wars of religion..." The old endorsement and support of slavery by Islamic law of Blacks and Whites (captured into bondage all the way from Iceland), its intolerance of "unbelievers" (with priority in the homeland) and repressive control of women (who, ironically, may own and dispose of property) is information not allowed for expression in our modern West. But through a lifetime of study and analysis with an eye to facts and events of history, Lewis tells the truth regardless, and tells it well.
Rating:
Summary: Secular freedom versus pious belief
Review: Most readers probably expect this book to give them an answer to the question what went wrong in the U.S. relationship with Muslim nations and why did Muslim fanatics declare holy war on the U.S.? They won't find the answer here. "What went wrong?" is the question asked by the other side, namely the Muslims in the Middle East who saw their relationship with the European "infidels" reversed in the course of one millennium: "At the peak of Islamic power, there was only one civilization that was comparable in the level, quality, and variety of achievement; that was of course China. But Chinese civilization remained essentially local, limited to one region, East Asia, and to one racial group. It was exported to some degree, but only to neighboring and kindred peoples. Islam in contrast created a world civilization, polyethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental."(6) Bernard Lewis's short book outlines the reasons behind this reversal without going into too much detail. If I read the book correctly, the seed to the decline and fall of Muslim power was contained in the early success of Islam - the pride and arrogance that comes with the notion of infallibility and superiority, and consequently the unwillingness to learn from the "infidels." A second important reason appears to be the religious fervor of Muslims: the secularization that is the basis for Western success was from the beginning pre-empted in the Muslim world by the early successes of Muhammad. What Muhammad, the religious leader, did became the law; and this law was divinely ordained, superior and inflexible. The broad strokes of his narrative are probably the reason for some of the negative criticism the book received from other historians. But all things considered, "What Went Wrong?" is an excellent introductory text. It reads like a thriller for someone who is not familiar with history from a Muslim point of view. For that reason alone it deserves its status as a best-seller.
Rating: 
Summary: 1000 years, one unanswered question
Review: For those of us with a contemporary American attention span, but the willingness to concentrate for its entire duration this book provides a facinating - if concise - view of the affect of modern European history on the great Islamic ( specifically Ottoman ) empire. Contrary to the objections of others, I don't feel it was Lewis' intention to answer the question that forms the title of this book. I think instead his object was to point out the events that led to the formulation of this question "What went wrong" as the crux of Islamic scholasticism. The book left me wanting more detailed information as it should, being at best a overview of many years of historical influnces between the Christian west and the Muslim middle-east. As such the book was a good read and much more palitable to a layman, or someone first approaching the subject ( as I was ) than the formidable multi-volume collection that could have - an most likely has been - accounted on the subject.
Rating:
Summary: Thematically Strong Book On Isalm's Cultural Decline
Review: Bernard Lewis presents a strong interdisciplinary intellectual history of salient points of Islam's numerous and varied interactions with the West. Lewis begins with Islam's transformation from military superior to inferior of the West, concluding that "the problem was not, as was once argued, one of decline. The Ottoman state and armed forces were as effective as had ever been....it was European invention and experiment that changed the balance of power between the two sides." Building from this well documented point about Islam's continued attempts to adopt Western military theory, means and practices to no avail, Lewis develops the thematic parallel on how Islam historically differed from the West in the interrelated spheres of money, social evolution, cultural goals, music and religious practices. He further explains how those religious beliefs and practices prevented Islam from developing its own brand of modernity in each of these areas. Far from being a Neoconservative diatribe against Islam, Lewis writes with an erudition and sensitivity about such things as Islam's absorption and strong development of many Western literary traditions, while at the same time, pointing out how it has never kept pace with cultures around the globe that have grappled with freedom, liberation, feminism, individualism and innovation. Lewis examines and reasonably rejects the usual grand historical themes as the cause of all this: nationalism, imperialism, anti-Semitism, Islam itself and the rise of technology. As he points out, Islam's only consistent response to Western progress has been to dig in its heels and become more "Moslem" in a continually narrower, more aggrieved and more victimized way. This is what has gone and continues to go wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Don't expect to be spoon-fed
Review: I disagree with the reviewers of this book who are upset because they believe that the author did not answer the question which is the title of the book. The answer is stated repeatedly by building up evidence from history. The author simply does not spoon feed the answer to the reader, but leads the reader by examples. Also, very briefly in one or two sentences scattered in the book the author even gives a suggestion for a solution.
The book is somewhat dry reading, yet to me, having this book as my first introduction to reading about these issues outside of the popular press, it was a brisk read, and a revelation of insight into the religion and culture of Islam. I enthusiastically recommend this book to others as a first step to understanding the conflicts in the middle-east and terrorism.
What went wrong is the civilization's (I mean religion AND culture both) closed-minded concept that they have the ultimate perfect solution on how to run a society politically and economically, one requiring no modification despite the advance of knowledge and technology in the world; the solution being the religion of Islam and the Koran. Also, these cultures don't make a distinction between religion and government, to them it is natural that the two concepts are unified. I wouldn't blame the religion alone because the people/culture have the choice to accept their religion as the sole guide to life or to take it as only part of the guide and to accept that there are other valid guides out there in the world. Islam was quite tolerant of other cultures in the middle ages, but now sees them (and especially the U.S.A.) as a threat to their and the religion's survival.
Lewis offers the solution by suggesting it is the same solution which got Europe out of the dark ages, the eventual receptivity to new ideas, and the separation of church and state.
Rating:
Summary: Keep asking yourself the question
Review: What is easy to miss in reading this book is that Lewis' intent was not to offer simplistic answers to the basic question of what went wrong. Instead this work is an attempt to illustrate that Muslims have been asking themselves this question for years without being able to answer it. The examples he uses suggest that once having succeeded in a particular field, Muslims could not imagine anyone surpassing their own achievements, and allowed others in the West to catch and then surpass them. He seems to be arguing that its essential dynamism was lost in the process of becoming so successful for such a long period of time, and that only by its' adherents reintroducing that essential element - an openness to look outside itself - can Islam once again become a force for positive change in the modern world, and, in so doing, revitalise itself.
Rating: 
Summary: Hardly a fraction of the story....
Review: An incredibly ethnocentric book from an incredibly ethnocentric writer. While I do think that some of his ideas are worth merit, he is simply not knowledgable enough about his subject matter. In order to fully understand a people, one must overcome his/her own biases and try to know what it is like to live within their mindset. One thing that really bugs me is that he keeps bashing the entire civiliazation; trying to make them seem completely backward and never contributing anything worth merit (unless it was a thousand years ago)--which of course, is a lie. If you really want to understand these people, pay attention to their art. While Lewis wants to make it seem as if Arabs have no clue what things like a theater is, the arts actually do play a fundemantal role in their lives. Read books by Naguib Mahfouz (an Egyptian writer who won the Nobel Prize), Taha Hussein, Tawfiq Hakim, and Skina El-Sadat, May Ziada, and hundreds of others. Watch movies directed by Youssef Chahine, Hassan El-Imam, Henry Barakat, and Salah Abu-Seif. Listen to music by artists like Umm Kalthum, Abdel-Halim Hafez, Shadia, and tons of others. I have always believed that art is the supreme expression of any people, and by watching the artistic efforts of Arabs, it would shed an appropiate light on their desires, loves, hates, nationalistic and political feelings. ...
By the way, don't forget to throw this book and other that have been trying to capitalize on post 9/11 fears in the trash.
Rating:
Summary: Academic
Review: This book is a solid piece of historical interpretation but it reads like a typical history professor's thesis. It's certainly not for the novice or for the public at large. It is, instead, geared more for the academic world; a great thing if you work or live in academia but not so much if you're simply an individual interested in learning and understanding Islam as it relates to today's world.
Rating:
Summary: The Muslim world 101
Review: Recognized worldwide as one of the leading -if not the leading- experts in the Muslim world and the Middle East, Lewis has timely written this short work which sums up the last centuries of that strategic, unescapable, bloody realtionship between the West and the Muslim world. This book tries to help answer one single question: What went wrong? How come the Muslims got to this situation of utter inferiority and hatred/fear/envy of the West? Some centuries back, when Western Europe was a very primitive, unhealthy, fanatical, quarrelsome place, the Muslims (Arabs, Persians, Turks, etc.) had built the most advanced society in the world, and by far. In sanitation, pleasure, luxury, knowledge and general wisdom, they were well beyond people living in cold castles or frozen huts. Many if not most of the works by the Ancient Greeks have reached us thanks to the work of many Muslim scholars (Avicena, Averroes and others). In Spanish, almost every word for luxury activities and items comes from Arabic. But something happened along the way and the Muslim world started receding back in precisely all those aspects in which they used to excel. One of the most important is cosmopolitanism. In the Muslim world, people from many different backgrounds coexisted, even if not always harmonically, while the West was a very fanaticized place. Which is, of course, the opposite of what happens today. Lewis cites many factors: religion, arrogance, an exteremely limited curiosity to go see the outer world, their seemingly being unable to produce science of their own initiative, and others. I can not imagine another book more relevant to start to understand the complex and confusing events taking place in our time. A concise, short, well-written, fasciniating study of the difficult relationship between two worlds, this book should be widely read, especially by eleventh-hour "experts" in history, diplomacy and war.
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