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

Introduction to the intellectual cliques of Bernard Lewis and their role in promoting aggression

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.