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The general perception, in much of the Middle East, is that the United States is an unreliable friend and a harmless enemy. I think we want to give the exact opposite impression.

Bernard Lewis

Islam explicitly rejects dictatorship and there are no traditions of the Prophet or passages in the Qur’an which clearly give dictators this support.
BERNARD LEWIS

Giving Passages Religious Support Traditions
The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic Law.
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Dignity Human Important Islamic Law
One reason which I find particularly fascinating about Israel is this. There is no such thing as a Jewish civilization. There is a Jewish culture, a Jewish religion, but there is no such thing as a Jewish civilization.
BERNARD LEWIS

Civilization Community Dignity Human Important
You see Christians and Muslims have one thing in common which they do not share with their other religions as far as I know. They claim to be the fortunate recipient of God’s final message to mankind.
BERNARD LEWIS

Christian Common Dignity Human Important Religious Share
These internal clashes in Israel nowadays are in a sense a continuation of a clash between Islam and Christendom through their former Jewish minorities and it works out in a number of different ways. It’s fascinating to watch.
BERNARD LEWIS

Continuation Different Islam Nowadays Work Out
Blaming the imperialists nowadays is obviously absurd, as is blaming the Americans, who obviously don’t have the slightest desire to control anything in the Middle East.
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Blame Blaming Country Desire Dignity Human Importance War
During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved.
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Government Memories Separated State Writing
The Cold War philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using the nuclear weapons they had targeted at each other, would not apply to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran.
BERNARD LEWIS

Country Dignity Human Important Philosophy Prevented War
The general perception, in much of the Middle East, is that the United States is an unreliable friend and a harmless enemy. I think we want to give the exact opposite impression.
BERNARD LEWIS

Country Enemy Treacherous Unreliable
If you look at the movement of refugees, in Vladimir Lenin’s phrase, “the people who voted with their feet,” the movement of refugees until comparatively modern times was overwhelmingly from West to East, not from East to West.
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Christian Islamic Movement People Refugee Voted
The word Islam thus denotes more than fourteen centuries of history, a billion and a third people, and a religious and cultural tradition of enormous diversity.
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Billion Centuries Diversity Enormous People Religious
I see encouraging signs of democracy developing in other places in the Middle East. In Tunisia, in Iraq, and now in Egypt. Tunisia is the one Muslim country that does something for girls and education.
BERNARD LEWIS

Country Democracy Developing Girl Middle Place
The golden age of equal rights in Spain was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam.
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Age Christian Dignity Golden Human Important Rights Sympathy
I mean now you have Muslims in the Muslim world who can compare their situations with people elsewhere and they find that very humiliating.
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Community Comparing Humiliating People Religious Situation
From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.
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Awareness Community Faithful Government Own Religious Stamped State
Muslims are very keenly aware of the history of their community, of the history of that relationship between their community and the rest of the world. And they have had this all through the centuries and are very much heightened by modern communications.
BERNARD LEWIS

Communication Community Dignity History Human Important Mean People Relationship

The general perception, in much of the Middle East, is that the United States is an unreliable friend and a harmless enemy. I think we want to give the exact opposite impression.

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The general perception, in much of the Middle East, is that the United States is an unreliable friend and a harmless enemy. I think we want to give the exact opposite impression.

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Popular Authors

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