Bernard Lewis gave a remarkable address on March 7, 2007 at the annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute.
It was a long speech (even the small excerpt below is long), but its hold on the audience was indicated by a bracketed note in the transcript, about two-thirds into the speech. At that point, Lewis, who had already spoken a long time, said “My time is running out so I think I’ll leave other points that I wanted to make.” The transcript then has this note in brackets: “Shouts [from the audience] to go on.”
So he did, and the ending of his speech was compelling. Here is an excerpt that conveys the breath and importance of the history lesson he was seeking to teach:
[T]here are times in the long history of the human adventure when we have a real turning point, a major change — the end of an era, the beginning of a new era. I am becoming more and more convinced that we are in such an age at the present time — a change in history comparable with such events as the fall of Rome, the discovery of America, and the like. . . .
Conventionally, the modern history of the Middle East begins at the end of the 18th century, when a small French expeditionary force commanded by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte was able to conquer
Egypt and rule it with impunity. It was a terrible shock that one of the heartlands of Islam could be invaded, occupied, and ruled with virtually no effective resistance. . . .The dominating forces in the Islamic world were now outside forces. What shaped their lives was Western influence. . . . The
Middle East is no longer ruled or dominated by outside powers. . . . We see with the ending of the era of outside domination, the reemergence of certain older trends and deeper currents in Middle Eastern history, which had been submerged or at least obscured during the centuries of Western domination. . . . signs of a return among Muslims to what they perceive as the cosmic struggle for world domination between the two main faiths — Christianity and Islam. . . . In the Christian world, now at the beginning of the 21st century of its era, this triumphalist attitude no longer prevails . . . . In the world of Islam, now in its early 15th century, triumphalism is still a significant force, and has found expression in new militant movements. . . .
The declaration of war begins at the very beginning of Islam. There are certain letters purported to have been written by the Prophet Muhammad to the Christian Byzantine emperor, the emperor of
Persia, and various other rulers, saying, "I have now brought God’s final message. Your time has passed. Your beliefs are superseded. Accept my mission and my faith or resign or submit — you are finished." The authenticity of these prophetic letters is doubted, but the message is clear and authentic in the sense that it does represent the long dominant view of the Islamic world. . . . The Muslim attack on Christendom . . . has gone through three phases. The first dates from the very beginning of Islam, when the new faith spilled out of the Arabian Peninsula, where it was born, into the
Middle East and beyond. It was then that they conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa — all at that time part of the Christian world — and went beyond into Europe, conquering a sizable part of southwestern Europe, including Spain, Portugal, and southern Italy, all of which became part of the Islamic world, and even crossing the Pyrenees into France and occupying for a while parts of France. After a long and bitter struggle, the Christians managed to retake part but not all of the territory they had lost. They succeeded in Europe, and in a sense
Europe was defined by the limits of that success. They failed to retake North Africa or the Middle East, which were lost to Christendom. Notably, they failed to recapture the Holy Land, in the series of campaigns known as the Crusades. . . . [The Turks] advanced into Europe and in 1453 they captured the ancient Christian citadel of
Constantinople. They conquered a large part of the Balkans, and for a while ruled half of Hungary. Twice they reached as far as Vienna, to which they laid siege in 1529 and again in 1683. Barbary corsairs from North Africa — well-known to historians of the United States — were raiding Western Europe. . . . Again,
Europe counterattacked, this time more successfully and more rapidly. They succeeded in recovering Russia and the Balkan Peninsula, and in advancing further into the Islamic lands, chasing their former rulers whence they had come. For this phase of European counterattack, a new term was invented: imperialism. When the peoples of Asia and Africa invaded Europe, this was not imperialism. When Europe attacked Asia and Africa, it was. As Osama bin Laden saw it, Islam had reached the ultimate humiliation in this long struggle after World War I, when the last of the great Muslim empires — the Ottoman Empire — was broken up and most of its territories divided between the victorious allies; when the caliphate was suppressed and abolished, and the last caliph driven into exile. This seemed to be the lowest point in Muslim history. . . .
In [Osama bin Laden’s] perception, the millennial struggle between the true believers and the unbelievers had gone through successive phases, in which the latter were led by the various imperial European powers that had succeeded the Romans in the leadership of the world of the infidels — the Christian Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the British and French and Russian empires. In this final phase, he says, the world of the infidels was divided and disputed between two rival superpowers, the
United States and the Soviet Union. In his perception, the Muslims have met, defeated, and destroyed the more dangerous and the more deadly of the two infidel superpowers. Dealing with the soft, pampered and effeminate Americans would be an easy matter. This belief was confirmed in the 1990s when we saw one attack after another on American bases and installations with virtually no effective response of any kind — only angry words and expensive missiles dispatched to remote and uninhabited places. The lessons of
Vietnam and Beirut were confirmed by Mogadishu. "Hit them, and they’ll run." This was the perceived sequence leading up to 9/11. That attack was clearly intended to be the completion of the first sequence and the beginning of the new one, taking the war into the heart of the enemy camp. In the eyes of a fanatical and resolute minority of Muslims, the third wave of attack on
Europe has clearly begun. We should not delude ourselves as to what it is and what it means. This time it is taking different forms and two in particular: terror and migration. . . . [T]he Iranian revolution is a real revolution in the sense in which we use that term of the French or Russian revolutions. Like the French and Russian revolutions in their day, it has had an enormous impact in the whole area with which the Iranians share a common universe of discourse — that is to say, the Islamic world. . . .
We have seen in our own day the extraordinary spectacle of a pope apologizing to the Muslims for the Crusades. I would not wish to defend the behavior of the Crusaders, which was in many respects atrocious. But let us have a little sense of proportion. We are now expected to believe that the Crusades were an unwarranted act of aggression against a peaceful Muslim world. Hardly. . . . Crusades were a late, limited, and unsuccessful imitation of the jihad — an attempt to recover by holy war what had been lost by holy war. It failed, and it was not followed up. . . .
Where do we stand now? Is it third time lucky? It is not impossible. They have certain clear advantages. They have fervor and conviction, which in most Western countries are either weak or lacking. They are self-assured of the rightness of their cause, whereas we spend most of our time in self-denigration and self-abasement. They have loyalty and discipline, and perhaps most important of all, they have demography, the combination of natural increase and migration producing major population changes, which could lead within the foreseeable future to significant majorities in at least some European cities or even countries.
But we also have some advantages, the most important of which are knowledge and freedom. The appeal of genuine modern knowledge in a society which, in the more distant past, had a long record of scientific and scholarly achievement is obvious. . . .
Less obvious but also powerful is the appeal of freedom. In the past, in the Islamic world the word freedom was not used in a political sense. . . . The terms they used to denote good and bad government are justice and injustice. A good government is a just government, one in which the Holy Law, including its limitations on sovereign authority, is strictly enforced. . . .
But the idea of freedom in its Western interpretation is making headway. It is becoming more and more understood, more and more appreciated and more and more desired. It is perhaps in the long run our best hope, perhaps even our only hope, of surviving this developing struggle. Thank you.
Last Saturday, President George W. Bush gave a speech at
The story of
Jamestown will always have a special place in American history. . . . That story began on a dock near London in December of 1606. More than a hundred English colonists set sail for a new life across the ocean in Virginia. They had dreams of paradise that were sustained during their long months at sea by their strong spirit. And then they got here, and a far different reality awaited them. On May 13, 1607, 400 years today, they docked their ships on a marshy riverbank. Being loyal subjects, they named the site after their King, and that’s how
Jamestown was born. Today we celebrate that moment as a great milestone in our history, yet the colonists who experienced those first years had little reason to celebrate. Their search for gold soon gave way to a desperate search for food. An uneasy peace with the Native Americans broke into open hostilities. The hope for a better life turned into a longing for the comforts of home. One settler wrote, "There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in the new discovered
Virginia." Looking back, 400 years later, it is easy to forget how close
Jamestown came to failure. The low point came after the terrible winter of 1610. The survivors boarded their ships. They were prepared to abandon the settlement, and only the last minute arrival of new settlers and new provisions saved Jamestown. Back in London, one court official summed up the situation this way: "This is an unlucky beginning. I pray God the end may prove happier." Well, the prayers were answered.
Jamestown survived. It became a testament to the power of perseverance and determination. Despite many dangers, more ships full of new settlers continued to set out for Jamestown. As the colony grew, the settlers ventured beyond the walls of their three-sided fort, and formed a thriving community. Their industry and hard work transformed Jamestown from a distant English outpost into an important center for trade. And during those early years, the colonists also planted the seeds of American democracy, at a time when democratic institutions were rare. On their first night at
Jamestown, six of the leading colonists held the first presidential election in American history. And you might be surprised to know that the winner was not named George. (Laughter.) A matter of fact, his name was Edward Wingfield. I call him Eddie W. (Laughter and applause.) From these humble beginnings, the pillars of a free society began to take hold. Private property rights encouraged ownership and free enterprise. The rule of law helped secure the rights of individuals. The creation of
America’s first representative assembly ensured the consent of the people and gave Virginians a voice in their government. It was said at the time that the purpose of these reforms was, "to lay a foundation whereon a flourishing state might, in time, by the blessing of Almighty God, be raised." Not all people shared in these blessings. The expansion of
Jamestown came at a terrible cost to the native tribes of the region, who lost their lands and their way of life. And for many Africans, the journey to Virginia represented the beginnings of a life of hard labor and bondage. Their story is a part of the story of Jamestown. It reminds us that the work of American democracy is to constantly renew and to extend the blessings of liberty. That work has continued throughout our history. In the 18th century our founding fathers declared our independence, and dedicated
America to the principle that all men are created equal. In the 19th century our nation fought a terrible civil war over the meaning of those famous words, and renewed our founding promise. In the 20th century Americans defended our democratic ideals against totalitarian ideologies abroad, while working to ensure we lived up to our ideals here at home. As we begin the 21st century, we look back on our history with pride, and rededicate ourselves to the cause of liberty. (Applause.) Today democratic institutions are taking root in places where liberty was unimaginable not long ago. At the start of the 1980s, there were only 45 democracies on Earth. There are now more than 120 democracies, and more people now live in freedom than ever before. (Applause.)
America is proud to promote the expansion of democracy, and we must continue to stand with all those struggling to claim their freedom. The advance of freedom is the great story of our time, and new chapters are being written every day, from
Georgia and Ukraine, to Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon, to Afghanistan and Iraq. From our own history, we know the path to democracy is long, and it’s hard. There are many challenges, and there are setbacks along the way. Yet we can have confidence in the outcome, because we’ve seen freedom’s power to transform societies before. In World War II, we fought
Germany on battlefields across Europe, and today a democratic Germany is one of our strongest partners on the Continent. And in the Pacific, we fought a bloody war with Japan. And now our alliance with a democratic Japan is the linchpin for freedom and security in the Far East. These democracies have taken different forms that reflect different cultures and traditions. But our friendship with them reminds us that liberty is the path to lasting peace, and that democracies are natural allies for the United States. Today we have no closer ally than the nation we once fought for our own independence.
Britain and America are united by our democratic heritage, and by the history that began at this settlement 400 years ago. . . . Over the years, these values have defined our two countries. Yet they are more than just American values and British values, or Western values. They are universal values that come from a power greater than any man or any country. (Applause.) These values took root at Jamestown four centuries ago. They have flourished across our land, and one day they will flourish in every land.
Two history lessons — both covering hundreds of years, each providing a broader perspective on the history we are living through now, and together comprising complementary visions of what is currently at stake.