Bernard Lewis held that the West’s triumph leaves Islam to accept Western modernity

Evidence

Among the later works, The Middle East: 2000 Years of History from the Rise of Christianity to the Present Day (1995) summarized his views at some length. In its conclusion, he observed that ‘the larger problem that had been exercising Muslim minds for centuries [was] the problem of Western wealth and power contrasted with the relative poverty and powerlessness of the Muslim states and peoples.’ This echoes in a blunter form the conclusion of The Arabs in History, written so many decades earlier. The Arabs had their day in the Middle Ages. For Lewis, history in the longer term has been the story of the Triumph of the West. Islam just has to come to terms with a modernity shaped by the West. It is not the kind of message that most Muslims want to hear. On the other hand, it is hard to say that it is obviously wrong. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 469

Categorization

• SEED: The phrase ‘it is hard to say that it is obviously wrong’ about Lewis’s West-triumph thesis is a strong pivot for an essay weighing historical inevitability claims.
• QUESTION: Is Lewis’s framing that Arabs ‘had their day in the Middle Ages’ a deliberate echo of a racial decay narrative? Worth examining the rhetorical lineage.

Related

• Bernard Lewis reduced fourteen centuries of East-West to unchanging conflict. (similarity 0.85)
• Bernard Lewis argued Arabs are unready for Western-style elections (similarity 0.81)
• Bernard Lewis’s politics obscured his genuine sympathy for Arab culture (similarity 0.81)
• Lewis’s scholarship attacked Muslim racial-prejudice and slavery myths and probed Muslim disinterest in Europe (similarity 0.80)
• Islam has remained a dominant force in Middle Eastern life (similarity 0.79)
• Modern Western perspectives can enrich understanding of medieval Middle East (similarity 0.78)