Hajji Khalifa blamed Muslim intellectual negligence for Christian advance

Evidence

Unfortunately, says Hajji Khalifa, what we find in our histories consists “of ridiculous lies and grotesque fables”—a judgment with which few would quarrel. It is necessary, he says, that the Muslim peoples should awake from the long sleep of negligence which has allowed the Christians to advance against them, should learn something about them and thus be enabled to take appropriate action. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 2043

Categorization

• XREF: Parallel to Said’s point about how knowledge gaps become strategic vulnerabilities — here self-diagnosed by an Ottoman rather than imposed by a Western observer.