Rating: 
Summary: Unintentionally Revealing
Review: "The Crisis of Islam" expands upon the author's award-winning November 2001 article (titled "The Revolt of Islam") for the New Yorker. In brief, the book (as well as the original article) attempts to provide an accessible, yet thorough, historical background to the contemporary rise of Islamic terrorism.While the book is fascinating on its own terms, what this writer found particularly interesting is what Prof. Lewis' scholarly integrity forces him to reveal: the basic, intrinsic radicalism and violence of Islam. Bernard Lewis is generally considered to be one of the foremost Western experts on the Middle East and Islam. He is clearly a mainstream - even "liberal" - academic. As such, he strives mightily in "The Crisis of Islam" to demonstrate that Osama bin Laden's (and Yasser Arafat's) version of Islam is not "true" Islam. In other words, he attempts to sell the current politically-correct line that Islam is really "a religion of peace," etc., etc. However, the only real deviance from "true" Islam that Lewis is able to substantiate is the use of suicide killings against innocent civilians. In all other respects, as the early chapters of "Crisis" demonstrate, bin Laden's basic worldview is as old as Islam itself - i.e. that all non-Muslims are infidels who must eventually be converted or destroyed, that any submission of Muslims to non-Muslim political leadership is sacrilege, and that Christianity is Islam's foremost rival. Only the leadership of the infidels has changed - in earlier centuries, the "House of War" was led by Spain, Russia, and the Holy Roman Empire. Today, the only infidel (i.e. "Christian") power left is America. Many people - Prof. Lewis included - would very much like to believe that our current crisis is with a ... perversion of "true" Islam. However, as Lewis' own masterful history shows, the true "Crisis" is much older and much deeper.
Rating: 
Summary: ISLAM, is it our problem or their problem?
Review: An impressive name but a somewhat pretentious book. The author is a world renown authority on the Ottoman Empire in particular and Islam and the near east in general. For a non fiction book written by a scholar the, writing is easily understandable and interesting, a combination I find is sometimes lacking in scholarly publications, however, at 164 pages, The Crisis of Islam is a short book and it pretty much rehashes material from previous books After reviewing a short history of Islam, Lewis proceeds to tell us what he thinks are the problems facing the Islamic religion and how these problems affect mainstream and fundamentalist Muslims and skews their view of the west, especially America, which according to Lewis, is viewed as an extension of The Byzantine and The Holy Roman Empires. A bit of a stretch to me. While Moslems feel their religion is superior to other religions, most notably, Christianity and Judaism, they also believe they are morally superior as well and with some justification, however, in a free society such as ours you will have everything from rabid Christian Fundamentalists to criminals with most people in the middle. Having never experienced a free society, the rank and file Muslim cannot possibly understand the concept. It seems endless, the list of human rights and other humanity issues that Islamists justify in the name of religion. Oh we did that, it was Gods will. Oh, that was because Allah willed it. When Islamic hordes raced across Africa and Asia it was not to conquer but to spread the word of the Islamic God and in their minds, it probably was. All the lands they conquered around the Mediterranean Sea were Christian lands but when Christians took back or came back as protectorates, they were imperialists and colonialists. Among other things, they call America to task for having allowed slavery in our country, while conveniently forgetting the substantial Arab contribution to the slave trade, not counting having slaves into the sixties. What this seems to boil down to is that Moslems are not responsible for anything. If something good happens it's Allah's will, if something happens that they don't like, it's the Wests and specifically America's and of course Israel's fault. Accountability seems to be missing from the Arabic and Farsi dictionaries. Apparently they have no control over their own lives. Lewis brings up the point that while democracy will work with Islam, Islam, will not work with with democracy. What he means, is that Islamists, especially fundamentalists, view democracy as a vehicle to power that once achieved can be dispensed with. The rationalization is that once fundamentalists are elected and establish a religious government, they are implementing Gods law and that trumps any law of man. We have seen this in Iran where a Theocracy was elected, whereupon it enacted laws to perpetuate their power base and diminish that of reformers. Another excellent point alluded to by Lewis is that, in many cases, these peoples religion has been around a lot longer than their their countries and therefore boundaries and nationhood, don't mean that much to the average Muslim, while their religion is all important. Westerners feel pride and kinship with their countrymen. Muslims feel pride and kinship with other Muslims of all nationalities. That is why they are so personally involved in the Palestinian issue. I don't think it's any secret that many Muslims, especially Fundamentalist Muslims have been brainwashed. They go to private Islamic Schools, called Madrasas, where they study nothing but the Koran and where in many schools they hear unending diatribes about the evils of the West and America especially. While Muslims think their religion is far superior, they recognize that their society has become backward. It makes them feel outgunned and angry. As we discussed previously, the Muslims are not very good at introspection. To them what is obviously a flawed society, somehow, has been caused by the unbridled success of the west. After 9-11, we got to see and hear numerous high ranking Moslems on T.V. tell us how terrorism, at least upon non-combatants is strictly against Islam. Dr Lewis seems to confirm this in this book, stating categorically, that nothing is contained within the pages of the Koran that would either specify, nor condone such behavior. He further states that the suicide bomber phenomenon is directly contrary to the Koran and that suicide is such a sin that it will keep you out of heaven, no matter how righteous you've been. Nevertheless, extremists, such as bin Laden, have managed to find plenty adherents for their convoluted view of Islam and somehow contravened the prohibition against suicide. Conclusion As much as I would like to ignore the Muslims and their myriad of self made problems, I'm afraid for us to ignore the extremist Muslim threat would, for us, be a form of our own suicide. The extremist nuts have indeed found a cause to keep them occupied, and it is US! Should we once again stick our heads in the sand, I'm afraid our posteriors would get burned. What can we do? I'm not sure but whatever we do is going to take a long, long time. It took us seventy years to defeat communism, so we better be prepared for the long haul. Iraq might be a good start if we can pull it off, getting an appreciative citizenry there. However, many Iraqi's have already forgot how much they dreaded and hated Saddam and are now directing their wrath at us. A classic case of what have you done for me lately. Starting a gradual push for women's rights seems like a good idea, and putting pressure on various friendly governments to shut down or at least change the curriculum of the Madrasas, would seem prudent, since most terrorists started there. What we really need to do, is see if we can make life for the average poor Muslim more tolerable. If their government isn't beating them down, their religion is suffocating them. The suicide bombers are most likely brainwashed and probably drugged but I wouldn't be surprised if some of them didn't find the idea of controlling something, maybe for the first time in their life, a little intoxicating, Even if it is only their own death.
Rating: 
Summary: Short and informative
Review: Bernard Lewis does an excellent job of tracing back several of the problems plaguing the modern Islamic world to historical developments, especially during the 20th century. One learns, for example, how several destructive ideologies developed in the West were imported in the Arab-Muslim world by much-too-eager students like Nasser in Egypt. How the ideology of the Baath party in Syria partly derives from Nazi rhetoric introduced to the country (under French mandate during World War II) when they came under the Vichy government. How Nazi-inspired anti-semitic propaganda is still alive and well in that part of the world. How the fundamentailist Wahhabis, nowadays the main sponsors and promoters of Islam around the non-islamic world, would have been "a fringe group in a marginal country" if Saudi Arabia didn't happen to have oil. And much more. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A Brief Primer on the Middle East and Its Troubles
Review: Bernard Lewis is one of the most respected Middle East experts, but unlike other writers who can make that claim he is also a noted historian rather than a journalist or retired military officer. His expertise is based on a lifetime of scholarship and is beyond question. Recently, he also hit the best seller list with "What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response," a collection of essays that are best appreciated by those with some prior knowledge of Islam and the Middle East. His latest work, "The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror," is also derived from previous essays and articles, but here Lewis has ably integrated earlier pieces into a single, and very readable, book. The purpose is clearly to provide a post-9/11 source on Islam and the Middle and their relationships with the West, especially the United States, that is accessable to those who are not experts in the study of these issues. Modest in length, this is still a detailed work that speaks with a unique authority. He may not map out possible strategies or policies, though he does have an in as an advisor to the Bush Administration, but he certainly tells us something about the thought processes, and the belief system of a culture that seems so alien to many Americans. In reference to the sources of terrorism that use Islam as justification he concludes that the West has every right to defend itself, but must also seek some "useful" understanding of the "forces" that "drive" these people. "The Crisis of Islam" works quite well in illustrating these "forces." Actually, Lewis is far more successful in explaining "what went wrong" in this volume than in his more celebrated, earlier work. If this work also becomes a bestseller it will be good news simply because it will mean that an increasing number of people are educating themselves about peoples, cultures, and problems that they know so little about.
Rating:
Summary: Understanding the mind of modern islam
Review: Bernard Lewis is the author of dozens of books on Islamic history, spanning some five decades. This volume examines the various undercurrents in the Muslim world today, and how a divided Islam is seeking to interact with the rest of the world. Arab unity, Lewis demonstrates, is now an oxymoron. Today no single Muslim polity exists, and this is part of the problem, or identity crisis, which the Islamic world faces.
For many centuries there was one Islamic community united by one ruler. Even when that community splintered into various states, there was still a discernable unified polity. No longer however. It is this divided and amorphous body, with the loss of a coherent center, that is now seeking to find its way in the modern world. Resentment, disorientation and despair have been part of the reaction.
Of course Islam is more than just a religion, it is a culture and civilization as well. As part of his historical examination, Lewis compares the Islamic and Christian civilizations. In many ways they are sister civilizations, he argues
They certainly have much more in common with each other than with the major eastern religious traditions. And of course both share common ancestry with Judaism. And both appeal to divine revelation and a divine law-giver.
But there are major differences as well. This is especially apparent in the relationship between religion, society and the state. They are clearly separate - or at least should be - in Christianity. But no such distinction exists in Islam. Church and state relations, so much of an issue of debate in Western Christian nations is not even an issue in Islam. The Muslim world is at once both a religious and a political sphere. One can choose between God and Caesar in Christianity. Both are one and the same in Islam.
And of course Islam responded to modernity in a much different manner than did Christianity. In fact, it can be said that it was Christian civilization that gave birth to modernism, and it has in many ways accepted its offspring. Islam on the other hand did not - perhaps could not - give rise to such a development, and even if it did, [...]
With the differing reactions to modernism in mind, Lewis examines the various responses to the crisis in Islam that has followed, with extensive discussion of one of the more frightening options, that of terrorism.
The rise of Islamic extremism is examined in detail, with helpful comparisons made of other forms of militancy, including the Christian Crusades. While some may seek to argue that the major monotheistic religions are the same in terms of the use of force, Lewis demonstrates some obvious differences.
He makes clear that while there has always been a history of armed conquest in Islam, Christian use of arms is both tangential and unjustified in terms of its own faith and its propagation. Indeed, while there are some similarities between the histories of Christian and Islamic civilization, this is an area of major difference. Jihad is a religious obligation in Islam, while the Crusades were a late, limited and [...]
While the concept of jihad can also be understood in a more general sense as a religious striving, from its inception it also had a military connotation. And throughout Islamic history, jihad has mainly been understood to mean armed struggle.
True, both Islam and Christianity have a concept of just war theory, but differences nonetheless exist. For example, much of Islam's wars were fought against the followers of other faiths. Christian battles tended to be in-house, against those seen as heretical and schismatic.
And to the modern Muslim terrorists at least, there is no such thing as collateral damage. Uninvolved civilians are a prime target. This is a major means of inspiring fear and winning psychological victory, along with gaining publicity. Christianity eschews such practices in principle, although Islam is not alone in resorting to such means. European terrorist organizations also spring to mind.
Moreover, there is in Islam no instruction to turn the other cheek, nor an expectation of swords being beaten into plowshares. In addition, there is the theory and [...] which is foreign to Christianity. It arose at an early period in Islam's history, and of course we get the term from a Muslim sect dating from the eleventh century.
Lewis makes it clear however that the bulk of Muslims are neither fundamentalists nor terrorists, and have little sympathy for their cause. And he leaves open the question as to which way the majority of Muslims will go. If they follow the path of groups like Al Qaida, then the future looks grim indeed. But if the majority pursue a better, more peaceful option, then there are hopeful prospects ahead.
But Lewis is realistic on this. He reminds us that of the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, only one, Turkey, has had any history of length of democratic institutions. The only other two at the moment who might move in this direction are Iran and Iraq.
And he rightly notes that the war against terror and the struggle for freedom are closely related. Fostering pro-democracy reforms in the Middle East will be difficult and painstakingly slow. But they are possible and must be pursued with the same rigor that we use in combating terrorism.
In sum, this book is both realistic in its appraisal of recent Muslim history, but sensitive to distinctions, and hopeful of a better future than what we have recently been through.
Rating:
Summary: The crisis of a civilization gone wrong
Review: Bernard Lewis is the dean of Middle Eastern historians. In his voluminous works he has traced the development of Islam politically, culturally and historically. Long before 9/11 he had a strong sense of Islam in crisis , of a faith and civilization which had once been among the most progressive of Mankind decaying into backwardness. There are a number of reasons for this given by Lewis- including the inability of the Islamic world to seperate church from state, its inability to free itself of the monopoly of religious learning alone, its focus on conquest and domination of lands and peoples. The turn to Fundamentalist and radical violence is in one sense a reaction to backwardness and failure, an effort to contend psychologically and militarilty with the West. As it is now there appears no easy way out for Islam from its backward situation, though Lewis raises the hope that a more moderate kind of Islam prevalent in the past can overcome the fanatical fundamentalists who have seized leadership in so many Islamic countries- and who are leading the world terror campaign against the West.
Rating:
Summary: They Know Zilch About Us, but What Do We Know About Them?
Review: Bernard Lewis, a Professor Emeritus in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University, has created yet another incredibly useful and timely book from articles he wrote for the New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic Monthly, and other publications. THE CRISIS OF ISLAM -- even more than its excellent predecessor WHAT WENT WRONG? -- is both cohesive and spot-on. All nine chapters as well as the introduction are informed by the events of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath. The final chapter, for instance, deals directly with the subject of suicide bombers, discussing the Qur'an's ban on both suicide and murder of innocent civilians, and going on to discuss the "martyrs" of Hammas and the Al-Aqsa Brigades as a form of death cult that goes against the teachings of Islam. I was particularly intrigued by Lewis's reference to some remarks made by Osama bin Laden regarding the "humiliation and disgrace" Islam has suffered for over eighty years. He refers specifically to the abolition of the Caliphate by Kemal Ataturk and his followers in 1924. For the first time since the days of Muhammad, Islam was without a leader. Lewis suggests that Osama would not be averse to the role himself -- which would be roughly equivalent to making Jeffrey Dahmer the headmaster of a boys' school. The chapter entitled "A Failure of Modernity" gives striking evidence of the backwardness of most Islamic nations. A 2002 United Nations report states that "the Arab World translates about 330 books annually, one-fifth of the number that Greece translates. The accumulative total of translated books since [the ninth century] is about 100,000, almost the average that Spain translates in one year." If we in the West have been accused of the oddest things at times, it is because ignorance of the West is endemic. And, I might add, dangerous. In order to avoid falling into the same trap ourselves -- such as by getting all our information from "The O'Reilly Report" -- we owe it to ourselves to know why over a billion Muslims have decided that we are the Great Satan. Knowledge is more powerful than an arsenal of MOABs.
Rating: 
Summary: The book is based on a wrong fact
Review: By my own searches and reading in Islam (including my 14 years of living with them) and comparing that with what the book had to say :
The book trys to explain why islamic terrorists hate the west , trying to give us and impression that those people are people with diginity and pride .. who don't accept their lands and wealths to be taken (stolen) by other nations with the same feeling about others ... but simply that's not true.
Muslims subdued many countries crushing them down dead , or turning them into slaves and steal every dime they have .. this is any nations goals to rule over all , but simply not the moral values of a nations that pretends to be the nation chossen by God ..
Mohammed for example said :
Muslim: C41B20N4678 "Proof Of The Martyr's Attaining Paradise: Jabir said that a man said, `Messenger of Allah, where shall I be if I am killed?' He replied: `In Paradise.' The man threw away the dates he had in his hand and fought until he was killed." Quoted (Prophet of Doom)prophetofdoom.net,
while the book declares :
Muslim martyrs used to fight to defend their souls and to save their religion , and had no intend to get killed ...
Most muslim ideologys are based on hatred to others , Jews are sons of donkeys and apes (look in faithfreedom.org)
Even christians are considered infidels that stand in the face of that god..
You can take a better look at islam in :
http://www.faithfreedom.org/
http://www.propehtofdoom.net/
or Read the book :
Prophet of doom (a report that explains real islam , and bathed islam by some liars)
Rating:
Summary: Good book if you have no idea of whats going on
Review: First off, it was difficult to decide which of Bernard Lewis's book concerning this topic to choose from. Overall, this book gives a short history of Islam and how it has developed over 1300 years. It seems the fanantics are interrupting the Koran and as well as past leaders in ways it was not intended. One of the reason to read this book is to understand how Muslims think and how they look at the Koran. It is not the same way Christians look and interrupt the bible. This was very revealing to myself. The other thing is actually some of the verses of the Koran Lewis discusses. That in and of itself is very scary.
Many thing I knew, but this book did a good job of filling in some gaps and a little deeper understanding of their faith. I plan on reading some more of Lewis's books.
Rating:
Summary: "Taking a Considerable Risk on a Theological Nicety"
Review: Islam has become relevant in the worst possible way. Many Americans sought a rationale for 'why they hate us' in primary sources and found no answers there, and Daniel Pipes has said more or less that reading the Qur'an is probably the worst way to learn about Islam. Similarly, to understand how the Muslim and Arab world sees the West, one needs to draw on its history, or at least, its common experience of history. The Crisis of Islam takes such a pragmatic approach.
An essential and often underappreciated aspect of Islam is its relationship between religion and state. While Christianity has a built-in separation between the two, for Muslims religion is the state. The great conquests made in Europe during the Dark Ages were a vindication of the truth of Islam itself, and for centuries it seemed as if the sky was the limit. Indeed, jihad by the 'House of Islam' (Muslim lands) on the 'House of War' (the rest of the world) is an imperative for Muslims.
But this built-in expansionism has a catch: land that becomes Muslim may never be lost, just as any person who ever accepts Islam strays from it only on penalty of death. While it was bad enough that Christianity recaptured Europe in the 16th century, the defeat of the Ottoman empire in 1918 (the last of the caliphates lasting through thirteen centuries) was an unmitigated disaster. The mere presence of foreigners on holy land is an unbearable humiliation and a constant reminder of the failure, not just of the Muslim state, but of Islam itself.
In the 20th century, the Arab world tried to regain some of its standing by playing off the European imperial powers against each other. First allying itself with Nazism and then Communism, they had a knack of betting on the wrong horse-- the collapse of the Soviet Union must finally have been the last straw for many disenchanted Muslims, the culmination of an intolerable growing cognitive dissonance between the deep natural truth of Islam and its all too publically visible failure. What was going wrong?
While some Muslims realized that their only real future lay in modernization, they faced an uphill battle. The whole of Saudi Arabia has as many universities as Israel built for just the Palestinians, and that in any case churn out mainly degrees in Islamic studies. The entire Arab world has translated in its entire history as many foreign books as Spain does in one year.
Radical Islam provided a different answer-- that rather than being too much steeped in religion, Allah was showing his displeasure because Muslims were just not religious enough. They embarked on a campaign to intimidate people into submission and to assassinate leaders they accused of apostasy. Then, the almost comical delusion that the mujahedeen in Afghanistan single-handedly brought down the mighty Soviet Union provided the confirmation that Allah favored them-- and belief that it was similarly in their power to destroy the one remaining impediment to renewed Islamic world domination: the United States.
Interestingly, America wasn't even on most Arabs' radar screen until the late 20th century. When the radical Islamists finally looked, they were shocked by our freedom of religious, political, and sexual expression.
It's useless to point out to radical Muslims that their interpretation of Islam is not supported by the Qur'an, because the success of their actions proves to them the truth of their beliefs. It's useless to point out that the United States has no territorial ambitions when Islam itself is predicated on imperialism. It's useless to point out that we represent freedom, because to radical Islam, freedom is tantamount to apostasy.
Radical Islam offers the promise of renewed Muslim glory and a vindication of eternal truths. As long as it is seen to be effective it can only further radicalize Muslims. We have to prove them wrong.
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