“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. It was a German scholar, C. H. Becker, who said a long time ago that the real dividing line is not between Islam and Christendom; it's the dividing line East of Islam, between the Islamic and Christian worlds together on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other. I think there is a lot of truth in that.” PeopleThinkingWorldLongRealChristianTogetherCommonModernIslamWesternIslamicScholar Author:Bernard Lewis
“The word "democracy" is a Western word obviously. It doesn't exist in Arabic. Democratiya is a loan word. 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. Muslims have their own tradition on limited government. Now in Islam, there is a very strong political tradition. Because the different circumstances, Islam is political from the very beginning.” WorldMeanDifferentPoliticalStrongMistakeDemocracyCircumstancesTraditionAssumingIslamWesternVery StrongLoanLimited Government Author:Bernard Lewis
“I think the important point which I've been trying to get across is that Islam, from the very beginning, is strongly, clearly opposed to autocratic dictatorial government. The idea which we so often hear expressed in the Western world, that's how they are, that's how they will always be and they can't do anything else.” ThinkingWorldTryingImportantIslamWestern Author:Bernard Lewis
“In opposing we always talk about freedom in the Western world, Muslims always talk about justice. Very often we mean the same thing. But what we do mean, what in the Western world we call human rights, in the Islamic world, they don't talk about rights. Now they do, but in the past they didn't. It wasn't part of their terminology. But really it's the same thing.” WorldMeanPastJusticeWesternHuman RightsIslamic Author:Bernard Lewis
“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. The Jews were a component basically of two civilizations. In the Western world, we talk about the Judeo-Christian tradition and you talk about the Judeo-Islamic tradition because there were large and important Jewish communities living in the lands of Islam.” WorldImportantReasonCultureCommunityTraditionIslamWesternJew Author:Bernard Lewis
“Islam and Islamic values now have a level of immunity from comment and criticism in the Western world that Christianity has lost and Judaism has never had.” WorldValuesLostLevelsChristianityCriticismIslamWesternIslamicCommentJudaismWestern WorldImmunity Author:Bernard Lewis
