The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror [Paperback]

Looking through Islamic history, Lewis explains how a preoccupation with a loss of status and power, a world view looking to blame outsiders rather than looking inward for critical self-examination, and a lack of democratic tradition, continues to radicalize the Middle East. The author further seeks to explain how Islamic culture holds a different world view from those in the west and that we need to understand this world view if we are to confront the threat of terrorism.

Readers should be aware that this text is not an introduction. Lewis does not write for laymen. Assuming a certain baseline of knowledge, he tends to gloss over arguments or offer evidence in a sort of short hand, expecting the educated reader to understand references and names. In a world where most non-fiction is over written, Lewis is a throw back to an earlier age, writing thin volumes that are light on detail and heavy on argument. This does not detract from the quality of his work, but it does limit what a reader without a firm grasp of the fundamentals can learn from reading it. Still, there is much to be learned from this work, in particular his examination of the Wahabbi sect being exported by Saudi Arabia and the traditional self understanding of Islam as an ï¿ascendantï¿ religion that would spread over the whole world.

Readers should also look to Lewisï¿s earlier work, in particular ï¿the Middle East: A Brief Historyï¿ and ï¿Islam and the West,ï¿ both essential reading for someone whishing to understand the modern Middle East.

Lewis states that Muslims have long memories and root their present ambitions in their perceptions of both the recent and the very distant past. In a video from October 7, 2001, Osama bin Ladin spoke of the "humiliation and disgrace" suffered by Islam for "more than eighty years" (xv). While most Americas wondered what this might mean, Lewis points out that bin Ladin's Muslim listeners "picked up the allusion immediately and appreciated its significance" (xvi). In 1918 the Ottoman Empire, ruled by a Muslim sultan (or caliph), was defeated and its capital, Constantinople, was occupied. The empire's land was parceled out to the British and French empires. To Muslims, this was an unanticipated and unparalled reversal of their long history of global conquests, since for "Muslims, no piece of land once added to the realm of Islam can ever be finally renounced" (xxviii-xxix). This loss of social and religious influence in the face of the global influence of non-Muslim nations (particularly America) is in large part what constitutes "the crisis of Islam" today.

Muhammad, despite early setbacks in Mecca, was a very successful religious reformer, businessman, statesman, and warrior. The Qur'an proclaims Islam as the culminating manifestation of ancient monotheism that is destined to cover the earth. Lewis notes that "in Muslim tradition, the world is divided into two houses: the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam), in which Muslim governments rule and Muslim law prevails, and the House of War (Dar al-Harb), the rest of the world, still inhabited and, more important, ruled by infidels" (31).

We often hear from Western analysts that "jihad" primarily means an inner struggle for religious purity, but Lewis disagrees. For the majority of Muslim history, Jihad has been interpreted "to mean armed struggle for the defense and advancement of Islam" (31). The "presumption is that the duty of jihad will continue, interrupted only by truces, until all the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule" (31-32).

But does the concept of jihad justify the fury let loose against America on September 11, 2001? Lewis thinks not. He cites an hadith (an influential saying of the prophet recorded outside the Qur'an), where suicide is said to be "punished by eternal damnation in the form of the endless repetition of the act by which the [person] killed himself" (153). Modern Islamic terrorists today differ from the traditional Muslim martyr who was "willing to face certain death at the hand of his enemies or captors" (152-153), but not to be the direct cause of his own death. Thus, the September 11 terrorist attacks had "no justification in Islamic doctrine or law and no precedent in Islamic history" (154). One hopes Lewis is right, but how many Muslims worldwide are as knowledgeable of their own tradition as this scholar? Tragically, many seem more willing to heed the violent interpretations and pronouncements of Osama bin Ladin and cohorts.

Lewis is neither an apologist for the West, nor an antagonist of Islam. He is rather a learned and fair-minded scholar whose reflections on these vexing issues are urgently needed today.

--Douglas Groothuis is Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary