Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA[1] (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies.[2] He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis's expertise was in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West.
This article is about the historian. For other uses, see Bernard Lewis (disambiguation).
Bernard Lewis
31 May 1916
19 May 2018 (aged 101)
British
American
Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm
(married 1947–1974)
2
Historian
- The Jews of Islam (1984)
- Islam and the West (1993)
- What Went Wrong? (2002)
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. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern history.
In 2007, Lewis was called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East".[3] Others have said Lewis's approach is essentialist and generalizing to the Muslim world, as well as his tendency to restate hypotheses that were challenged by more recent research. On a political level, Lewis's detractors say he revived the image of the cultural inferiority of Islam and of emphasizing the dangers of jihad.[4] His advice was frequently sought by neoconservative policymakers, including the Bush administration.[5] His active support of the Iraq War and neoconservative ideals have since come under scrutiny.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
Lewis was notable for his public debates with Edward Said, who said Lewis was a Zionist apologist and an Orientalist who "demeaned" Arabs, misrepresented Islam, and promoted Western imperialism,[12][13] to which Lewis responded by saying Orientalism was a facet of humanism and that Said was politicizing the subject.[14][15]
Lewis was also known for denying the Armenian Genocide. His argument that there was no evidence of a deliberate genocide carried out against the Armenian people by the Ottoman Empire is rejected by other historians.[16][17][18] He said that the mass killings resulted from a mutual struggle between two nationalistic movements, a view that has been criticized as "ahistorical."[19]
Family and personal life[edit]
Bernard Lewis was born on 31 May 1916 to middle-class British Jewish parents, Harry Lewis and the former Jane Levy,[20] in Stoke Newington, London. He became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah.[21] In 1947 he married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm, with whom he had a daughter and a son. Their marriage was dissolved in 1974.[14] Lewis became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982.
Death[edit]
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.[92] He is buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv.[93]