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.
BERNARD LEWISOne 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.
More Bernard Lewis Quotes
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One could with equal justification talk about a Judeo-Islamic tradition or a Christian-Islamic tradition. These three religions are interlinked in many signification ways, which marks them off from the rest of the world.
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In the West nowadays, it’s very common to talk about the Judeo- Christian tradition. It’s a common term. The term is relatively modern but the reality is an old one.
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I think confronted with the modern world or with the rest of the world, I think people are becoming aware that the Western and Islamic civilizations have more in common than apart.
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Refugees of all kinds were constantly fleeing from Christendom to the Islamic lands. Jews of course and Muslims of course, but even some Christians and the movement of refugees went overwhelmingly that way.
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The myth was invented by Jews in nineteenth-century Europe as a reproach to Christians.
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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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To accept the story of the Arab destruction of the library of Alexandria, one must explain how it is that so dramatic an event was unmentioned and unnoticed not only in the rich historical literature of medieval Islam.
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The United States is showing minimal and diminishing interest in the Muslim world. They now have to confront their own problems. The old excuses are gone. The old justifications are gone and therefore the anger of people is turning increasingly against their own rulers.
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The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic Law.
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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.
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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.
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And I think there is a growing awareness of this among Christians and among Jews, and even to some extent to some Muslims. That’s happening for obvious reasons.
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It is difficult to generalize about Islam. To begin with, the word itself is commonly used with two related but distinct meanings, as the equivalents both of Christianity, and Christendom.
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We in the Western world make the great mistake of assuming that ours is the only form of good government; that democracy means what it means in the Anglo-American world and a few other places in the West, but not many others.
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Islam does give human dignity, certainly. The point I wanted to make is that it is great foolishness to try to impose our notions of democracy. They have their own traditions.
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