برنارڈ لیوس کے فکری متاثرین کا تعارف اور جارحیت پسندی کے فروغ میں ان کا کردار

Abstract

Bernard Lewis, historian of the Middle East, passed away on May 19, just shy of his
102nd birthday. No other person in our time has done as much to inform and
influence the West’s view of the Islamic world and the Middle East. A long career
of scholarship in the United Kingdom, followed by decades as a public intellectual
in the United States, earned him readers across the globe. In the late 1970s,
particularly after the publication of Edward Said’s devastating criticism of
orientalism (Orientalism was published 40 years ago this year), pride joined
prejudice as a driver of what became Lewis’ rage against those who refused to see
the history of humanity as a series of inevitable clashes of civilizations. Lewis's
influence extends beyond academia to the general public. In the mid-1960s, Lewis
emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East and his analysis
of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity
and aroused significant controversy. In this article, Bernard’s intellectual influence
upon the western writers is discussed and his political theories is one of the reasons
that is enhancing extremism in the Muslim societies.