46 Facts About Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis, was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies.

Bernard Lewis was known as a public intellectual and political commentator.

Bernard Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office.

In 2007 Bernard Lewis was called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East".

Bernard Lewis's advice was frequently sought by neoconservative policymakers, including the Bush administration.

Bernard Lewis was born on 31 May 1916 to middle-class British Jewish parents, Harry Lewis and the former Jane Levy, in Stoke Newington, London.

Bernard Lewis became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah.

Bernard Lewis became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982.

In 1936, Bernard Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East.

Bernard Lewis earned his PhD three years later, from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam.

Bernard Lewis studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history.

Bernard Lewis undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplome des Etudes Semitiques" in 1937.

Bernard Lewis returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History.

In 1963, Bernard Lewis was granted fellowship of the British Academy.

In 1974, aged 57, Bernard Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey.

The terms of his appointment were such that Bernard Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously.

In 1966, Bernard Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America, but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East".

Bernard Lewis began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history.

Therefore, Bernard Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers.

Bernard Lewis argued that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization.

Bernard Lewis called the label "genocide" the "Armenian version of this history" in a November 1993 interview with Le Monde, for which he faced a civil proceeding in a French court under the Gayssot Law.

The court ruled that while Bernard Lewis has the right to his views, their expression harmed a third party and that "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide".

Three other court cases against Bernard Lewis failed in the Paris tribunal, including one filed by the Armenian National Committee of France and two filed by Jacques Tremollet de Villers.

Bernard Lewis did not deny that large numbers of murders took place, but he denied that they were a purposeful Young Turk government policy and therefore they should not be categorized as a genocide.

Israeli historian Yair Auron suggested that "Bernard Lewis' stature provided a lofty cover for the Turkish national agenda of obfuscating academic research on the Armenian Genocide".

Bernard Lewis has falsely implied that the Armenians had military and police forces at their disposal, whom they could have called upon, when, in reality, they had no such forces at all.

Bernard Lewis was close to King Hussein of Jordan and his brother, Prince Hassan bin Talal.

Bernard Lewis had ties to the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, the Turkish military dictatorship led by Kenan Evren, and the Egyptian government of Anwar Sadat: he acted as a go-between between the Sadat administration and Israel in 1971 when he relayed a message to the Israeli government regarding the possibility of a peace agreement at the request of Sadat's spokesman Tahasin Bashir.

Bernard Lewis advocated closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw as especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East.

However, another source indicates that Bernard Lewis first used the phrase "clash of civilizations" at a 1957 meeting in Washington where it was recorded in the transcript.

In 1998, Bernard Lewis read in a London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden.

Bernard Lewis writes of jihad as a distinct religious obligation, but suggests that it is a pity that people engaging in terrorist activities are not more aware of their own religion:.

Bernard Lewis criticised Lewis's understanding of Osama bin Laden, seeing Lewis's interpretation of bin Laden "as some kind of influential Muslim theologian" along the lines of classical theologians like Al-Ghazali, rather than "the terrorist fanatic that he is".

Bernard Lewis was known for his literary debates with Edward Said, the Palestinian American literary theorist whose aim was to deconstruct what he called Orientalist scholarship.

Bernard Lewis further questioned the scientific neutrality of some leading Middle East scholars, including Lewis, on the Arab World.

Bernard Lewis knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world.

Bernard Lewis noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism.

Furthermore, Bernard Lewis accused Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East ; neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases.

In 2002, Bernard Lewis wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal regarding the buildup to the Iraq War entitled "Time for Toppling", where he stated his opinion that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers of inaction are greater than those of action".

Ian Buruma, writing for The New Yorker in an article subtitled "The two Minds of Bernard Lewis", finds Lewis's stance on the war difficult to reconcile with Lewis's past statements cautioning democracy enforcement in the world at large.

Buruma ultimately rejects suggestions by his peers that Bernard Lewis promotes war with Iraq to safeguard Israel, but instead concludes "perhaps he loves it [the Arab world] too much":.

In 2006, Bernard Lewis wrote that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon for fifteen years.

Bernard Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of Muhammad from Jerusalem to heaven and back.

Bernard Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world".

Bernard Lewis died on 19 May 2018 at the age of 101, at an assisted-living care facility in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, twelve days before his 102nd birthday.

Bernard Lewis is buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv.