Bernard Lewis, in His Book

Bernard Lewis, in his book The Middle East, undertakes a topic that many western authors have attempted in recent years. Namely, he aims to provide a concise history of the region over the past two millennia; however, his emphasis will be somewhat different than many of his predecessors. He sees one fundamental shortcoming of previous writers as being that they have downplayed the significance of the pre-Islamic rivalry between Byzantium and Persia. With this in mind, Lewis hopes to generate a more tangible link between the Middle East we are familiar with today -- which is vastly different from that of two centuries ago in many ways -- and that of the ancient empires that occupied the region. So, although Islam has succeeded in altering the cultural makeup of the Middle East, Lewis contends that the formation of the Islamic state must be understood within the context of that which came before it.

Additionally, Lewis tackles the driving issue of Western influence upon the Middle East. To him, the most apparent outward indicator of the recent changes in the region is how people dress: "The first, most obvious visible change is in the clothes that he [the stereotypical citizen] wears." (Lewis, 3). Nevertheless, this change must be put into its historical context; this is not the first time that cultural changes, like dress, have come about through outside influences. Lewis notes that this also occurred when the Mongols invaded in the Middle Ages. Lewis also sees many of the current political and social battles in the Middle East as stemming from the divisions created by the colonial powers. So, if there was one pervasive theme that a historian could extract from the history of the region, according to Lewis, it would be dispute and competition between opposing powers.

As the past two hundred years have seen significant changes within the Middle East there have also been alterations to the social order. Lewis writes, "Modernization -- or as many saw it, Westernization -- widened the gap between rich and the poor. It also made that gap more visible and more palpable." (Lewis, 384). One of the pressing difficulties, for today, in the Middle Eastern world is that the social order is organized such that the elite social and political leaders exercise an undue amount of power over the masses based upon their levels of education, and their financial capabilities. The situation, in general, is "that the orthodox majority in every country, consisting of religious leaders with traditional education and the uneducated masses who blindly follow them, are vehemently opposed to any change in the existing way of thinking or living." (Husain, 98). Many are convinced that the only social changes that are reasonable are those that act to restore society to an imagined gilded age. Consequently, those philosophies and values being spread along with the Western businesses and economies are burdened with the perception that they carry along with them fundamental changes to ways of life.

Doubtlessly, this threat is somewhat reasonable with regards to the future; the expansion of western economies is going to bring along with it technological changes that will drastically alter how people in the Middle East live their lives. Still, these changes are primarily economic in their nature: capitalism does not reorganize the social classes, only where they live and what jobs they carry out. The philosophical underpinnings of Western society are so similar to those of Islam such that objections to east/west cooperation -- on both sides -- on the basis of religion are almost ridiculous. Nevertheless, these objections still exist.

This difficulty is emphasized by the apparent contrast between many Middle Eastern governments and those of their Western counterparts. Much of the contrast, according to Lewis, stems from the history of the Islamic state, and the way in which religion itself is at the root of many policies. This has, historically, generated a point-of-view for Muslims that the non-converted portions of the world merely represent untilled locations to seed faith: "These various infidels, the civilized as well as the barbarous, were seen as teachable, as potential recruits to the Islamic world, and this was indeed the fate of great numbers of them." (Lewis, 273). Centuries ago, however, this expansion was much easier because there was no truly cohesive religious force for Islam to contend with in the region. Yet today, Islam itself is being assailed by Western technologies, philosophies, and religions.