The Crisis of Islam by Bernard Lewis

Either Lewis is making up a ton of stuff, or this is an incredibly scholarly and insightful analysis of the situation in the Muslim world today. Admittedly, given my paucity of knowledge on the history of such, it would be very difficult for me to catch any mistakes or bad interpretations on Lewis' part, but I really don't think it's a worry. Lewis is admirably non-judgmental of either the Islamic world or the West (as the dichotomy is phrased) in his book.

As for the bare facts about this book, it's a very short overview of how the Muslim world got to be the way it is today, in the broadest strokes of history. More important is what it is like today, as well as its historic conflict with Christendom, and later The West. But the best aspect of this book is not that it gives such history, which is easily available elsewhere, but his explanations of why parties on both sides view each other as they do. He examines the flawed assumption people in the Muslim world have of Westerners, as well as the flawed assumptions Westerners have of Muslims.

He brings up many instances of mutual misunderstanding, as in the Western interpretation of "Fatwah" to mean a death sentence including a bounty. The literal translation is something like "judgement", meaning only a ruling by a Mufti on a point of law. Also, in more general terms, he talks about how Muslims think we view them, and how this mostly does not match the way Westerners and Americans in particular actually do view them.

Lewis does an admirable job of dispelling myths each side holds about the other, and he does it in a way that leaves no room for argument. Although this is a short book, it's well worth it. However, I did have a couple of problems with the writing of the book. Lewis used a lot of Arabic terms, and I find remembering words in a foreign language awfully difficult. He might say it once and come back to it a few pages later (or not at all), and I wouldn't be able to remember what he was referring to. Plus which, the density of the writing made it extremely difficult to quickly process the loads and loads of info he was handing out!

But overall, it's a really good book, and if you want to know not only what Muslims think about us but why, this is the book for you. I realize at this point that my review doesn't explain why the title is what it is, and in short that's because it's difficult to define exactly what crisis he's talking about. It's not merely "fundamentalists" vs. modernists, dictatorships, and what have you, but that there are a lot of problems in the Islamic world, some caused by the Western world, but many caused by their own failure to establish stable governments based on Islam. And since I don't understand the issue much better than that, I'm going to leave it there. So anyway, if you have room in your schedule for a short non-fiction book about Islam, take a chance and read this one.