Alas, heart-broken Bernard Lewis, a fellow of endless jest

« Here’s a skull now; this skull has lain within the earth three-and-twenty years, » the gravedigger tells Hamlet. It seems the skull is Yorick’s, the king’s jester. 

It is miles right here that Hamlet says his infamous strains: « Alas, heart-broken Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of endless jest, of most effective fancy. »

I was as soon as right this moment reminded of Yorick’s skull and Hamlet after I heard Bernard Lewis had died. Then the strains of an Omar Khayyam poem and his unceasing consciousness of the mortality of human presence ran through my tips: 

« For I endure in tips stopping by the style

To stare a Potter thumping his wet Clay:

And with its all-obliterated Tongue

It murmur’d -« Gently, Brother, gently, pray! »

It is miles unseemly to pick out out the horrors of a irascible man upon his passing. Nonetheless Bernard Lewis was as soon as no longer a habitual rogue. He was as soon as instrumental in causing tall suffering and loads bloodshed in this world. He was as soon as a infamous Islamophobe who spent a prolonged lifestyles studying Islam in insist to demonise Muslims and mobilise the mighty navy of what he known as « the West » in opposition to them.

Factual imagine: What earn of a person would employ a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is miles terribly a extraordinary proposition. Nonetheless there you possess it: the dumb Bernard Lewis did exactly that. 

He was as soon as the manager ideologue of post-September Eleven politics of abominate in direction of Islam and Muslims.

« Dr. Lewis’s friendship – and ideological kinship – with the Frigid Battle hawk and Israel supporting Sen. Henry M. « Scoop » Jackson (D-Wash.), » we are suggested, « opened prominent doorways within the capital, eventually giving Dr. Lewis favoured status among high White Home and Pentagon planners before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. » 

That is largely the most most neatly-liked legacy of Bernard Lewis. The invasion, occupation, and destruction of Iraq. 

Nonetheless Lewis’ affiliation with powers of death and destruction went much deeper than that. Afghanistan and Iraq are in ruins this day, 1000’s and 1000’s of Arabs and Muslims had been murdered, scarred for lifestyles, subjected to the indignity of navy occupation and refugee camps, in no dinky measure thanks to the systemic maligning of Muslims Lewis evolved in his books and articles, and with them told generations of imperial officers.

For them, Lewis was as soon as the provision for what Islam is and who the Muslims are. When US President Donald Trump acknowledged « Islam hates us, » it was as soon as Bernard Lewis speaking. When Trump’s first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn acknowledged « Islam is… love most cancers, » it was as soon as Bernard Lewis speaking. 

I was as soon as detached a graduate student on the College of Pennsylvania after I first encountered Lewis in person at a Princeton College convention. There was as soon as consistently a distance, a manufactured aloofness between him and the remainder of the scholarly community. 

He was as soon as more at dwelling with heads of train, look chiefs, navy officers, intelligence communities, settler colonialists in Palestine, imperial viceroys in conquered Muslim lands. 

He had vitality and basked in it. We detested vitality. 

He is now showered with praise by essentially the most highly good Zionist Islamophobes within the US and Israel. We’re on the reverse aspect of the fence – with Palestinians, dealing with Israeli sharpshooters whom he favoured, enabled, encouraged, weaponized with a potent ideology of Muslim and Arab hatred.  

‘How abhorred in my creativeness it’s a long way’

With the death of Bernard Lewis, the prolonged saga of exchanges between him and Edward Acknowledged eventually involves an close. I was as soon as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and unique at their now legendary debate in Boston on 22 November 1986, all throughout the Middle East Analysis Affiliation convention.

Long before that, love 1000’s of different young scholars, I adopted their debates on the pages of the New York Analysis of Books. I was as soon as, and I remain, squarely on Acknowledged’s aspect. Nonetheless that was as soon as no longer, neither is it now, a merely political situation; rather, it was as soon as and is a potently merely and intellectual disposition.

The variation between the 2 men was as soon as the distinction between the politics of profitable vitality and the intellectual braveness to revolt. 

Lewis was as soon as a historian of vitality and in vitality and for the vitality that dominated us all and he served happily and rewardingly. The more highly good the imperial audacity of a mode of info manufacturing, the more Lewis pursued and served it. 

Acknowledged was as soon as exactly on the replacement aspect of the fence, within the tradition of anticolonial struggles of Asia, Africa, and Latin The United States – which he theorised into our reading of Palestine.

You regarded at Lewis, and you saw Lawrence of Arabia incarnate – a British colonial officer with a slipshod shriek over the natives’ language and culture, out within the sphere to abet essentially the most vicious colonial challenge of the century. You regarded at Acknowledged, and you saw him in a disclose line from essentially the most revolutionary serious thinkers of all time – alongside Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, V Y Mudimbe, Enrique Dussel, and naturally Antonio Gramsci and Theodore Adorno.  

Acknowledged attracted a total generation of distinguished thinkers from every continent on planet earth. Lewis attracted profession opportunists who, love him, wanted to be shut to and costly to vitality. 

In January 2003, correct a pair of months before Acknowledged passed away, he and I had been invited to Rabat, Morocco for a convention on « Dialogue of Civilization ». He might well no longer whisk. He known as me from Spain insisting I’m going.

I went to Rabat, easiest to study upon my arrival that Lewis was as soon as there too. For the total duration of the convention, while I was as soon as sitting with the dumb Egyptian philosopher Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and literary theorist Ferial Ghazoul discussing hermeneutics, Lewis was as soon as chaperoned by the young Noah Feldman, the becoming adviser to Paul Bremer, who was as soon as the « provisional coalition administrator » of Iraq after the US invasion.

In one shot you seemingly can look how Lewis was as soon as passing the baton of provider to empire to the subsequent generation.

‘The harmful that men compose lives after them’

The unique train of conception about Bernard Lewis, now showing in diverse autopsy reflections and obituaries, has him hated by the international left, adored by the becoming-wing Zionists, and in between, you possess these goody-two-shoes who attempt to sound wise and just and focus on « in nuances ». Sure, he was as soon as a huge pupil early in his profession, they now inform, but later his scholarship diminished, and he grew to vary into too political. Such branding of Lewis, cherished by some and hated by others, deeply distorts a map more serious verbalize. 

Beyond the political and merely abhorrence for Lewis is the legacy of his mode of pondering and writing, his colonially and racially infested formula of info manufacturing that was as soon as as much subservient to powers that study and enriched him as it was as soon as profoundly at odds with the serious turning point in postcolonial knowledge manufacturing. 

Lewis was as soon as no pupil objectively committed to historical truth. Moderately the contrary: He has left within the wait on of no longer a single book by which he was as soon as no longer cherry-choosing info and figures to demonise Muslims, fail to bear in mind and denigrate their civilisation, and subjugate them normatively, morally, and imaginatively to the colonial domination of people that he served.

His most infamous most neatly-liked book, What Went Tainted? The Conflict Between Islam and Modernity within the Middle East (2002) is now not any longer a piece of scholarship. It is a manual of style, an indoctrination pamphlet, for educating security, navy, and intelligence officers within the US and Europe as to why they must watch to manipulate the Muslim world. 

Lewis was as soon as consistently on the heinous aspect of history, blinded by his hatred, appealing by essentially the most racist cliches within the alternate. His reaction to the upward thrust of Arab revolutions in 2011 is the becoming example of who Bernard Lewis was as soon as and the map he idea.

« One other thing is the sexual aspect of it, » he opined on the commencement of Arab revolutions, « One has to endure in tips that within the Muslim world, casual intercourse, Western-style, would now not exist. If a young man wants intercourse, there are easiest two prospects – marriage and the brothel. That you just might also merely possess these mountainous numbers of young men growing up without the cash, either for the brothel or the bride trace, with raging sexual need. On the one hand, it will in all probability lead to the suicide bomber, who’s attracted by the virgins of paradise – essentially the most efficient ones on hand to him. On the replacement hand, sheer frustration. »

This is obscenity in gloomy and white – merely, political and intellectual financial worry on rotund throttle.

His book on The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (1967), which serious scholars love Farhad Daftary later disregarded as nonsensical gibberish, was as soon as definitive to the style he wanted to notify Muslims – as congenital murderers. 

His distinctiveness was as soon as in manufacturing a cosmic divide between « Islam and the West, » between Muslims and the neatly-liked world, a field that was as soon as the staple of his writing, most condescendingly in his two books: The Muslim Discovery of Europe (1982) and Islam and the West (1993). 

Bernard Lewis was as soon as no pupil of Islam. He was as soon as a British colonial officer writing intelligence for his fellow officers on the style to rule the Muslim world better. A Instruction manual of Diplomatic and Political Arabic (1947) – one of his earliest volumes – foretold his profession as a colonial scribe on the provider of the British and later American empires. 

Currently, when we judge of Bernard Lewis’ legacy, we judge of the Islamophobic alternate that has US President Donald Trump and his gang of billionaires topped on the White Home. 

Currently, when we judge of Bernard Lewis, we judge of his political progenies – John Bolton, the nationwide security adviser of america, essentially the most degenerate sabre-rattler sitting correct within the wait on of the US president. Currently, when we judge of Bernard Lewis, we judge of US Secretary of Narrate Mike Pompeo, a infamous bigot with a pathological hatred of Muslims. Currently, when we judge of Bernard Lewis, we judge of Gina Haspel, the newly appointed director of the US Central Intelligence Company, a girl who ordered the torture of Muslims.

No one was as soon as more instrumental in manufacturing the seems to be like of a indispensable and irreconcilable distinction between « Islam and the West » than Lewis – his singular fulfillment that later Samuel Huntington picked as much as earn The Conflict of Civilizations. 

This wants no extra proof and proof than having a possess a study who’s praising him after his death. « Bernard Lewis was as soon as one of many huge scholars of Islam and the Middle East in our time. We might well be forever grateful for his sturdy defense of Israel, » acknowledged Israeli Top Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, himself, in the end, one other world-class authority on Islam and the Middle East!

« As an ethical pupil and a huge man, » chimed in newly minted US Secretary of Narrate Mike Pompeo, one other topnotch pupil within the sphere of Islamic research, « I owe a huge deal of my determining of the Middle East to his work […] He was as soon as furthermore a one who believed, as I compose, that Americans desires to be more confident within the greatness of our country, no longer less. Thanks, Mr. Lewis, for your lifetime of provider. »

« You merely can’t win a better authority on Middle Jap history, » this according to Dick Cheney, the weak vice president who brought us waterboarding and Abu Ghraib torture chambers and who, in the end, is furthermore a stellar authority on Islamic history and doctrine himself. 

You put Netanyahu, Pompeo, and Cheney collectively, with their mountainous fancy and admiration for Lewis, and you seemingly can also earn the firm he saved, the hatred he flamed, the death and destruction he sought visited upon the people he « studied » to death. 

Dreary before his death

Bernard Lewis died prolonged before he met his creator. The rich and diverse world of distinguished pondering – in Asia, Africa, Latin The United States, apart from to in Europe and the US – to which Edward Acknowledged was as soon as integral and definitive, left Lewis and his books a extraordinarily prolonged time within the past within the dustbin of Orientalist history.

« Lewis’s verbosity, » as Acknowledged put aside it succinctly some 36 years before Lewis died, « scarcely conceals each the ideological underpinnings of his situation and his unheard of capability for getting every thing heinous. » 

Lewis is commonly when compared with Acknowledged as if the 2 had been equal. They weren’t. They had been the polar opposites in every sense. Acknowledged was as soon as a towering serious thinker who revolutionised the sphere of literary and postcolonial research.

Lewis was as soon as an ideological functionary, an intelligence officer, on par with Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington, competing for the ears of highly good people to snarl them the style to abominate Muslims more persuasively. 

Acknowledged enabled the merely authority of a generation of distinguished thinkers. Lewis taught navy strategists how and why to rule Arabs and Muslims more successfully. 

The mode of ideological knowledge Orientalists love Lewis produced was as soon as no longer within the fervour of truth and determining. It was as soon as supposed to be frail in humiliating and denigrating human beings and dominating their worlds and cultures, killing their sense of self-respect, telling them essentially the most efficient abundant thing to be was as soon as a white European settler colonialist. 

This critique is now not any longer completely in accordance with Edward Acknowledged’s magisterial book, Orientalism. What Lewis produced, French philosopher Michel Foucault – prolonged before Acknowledged – known as le savoir-pouvoir or vitality-knowledge: the determining that serves vitality. And it was as soon as works love Lewis’ that Argentinian philosopher Enrique Dussel referred to when he wrote in his book Philosophy of Liberation: « That ontology did now not come from nowhere. It arose from a outdated expertise of domination over other people, of cultural oppression over other worlds. Sooner than the ego cogito, there is an ego conquiro; ‘I triumph over’ is the life like basis of ‘I judge’. »

Both Acknowledged and Lewis within the point out time are gone. Nonetheless Lewis left within the wait on of a racist legacy of elevating a fictitious « West » on the expense of « the Leisure », while Acknowledged summoned essentially the most efficient and most generous in every for a better future for all. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s possess and compose no longer essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.