Bernard Lewis: The Iranian Revolution Has Entered Its "Stalinist Phase"

This is from Hugh Hewitt it's a Pew Forum Q&A with Princeton's Bernard Lewis, who for 60 years has helped interpret the world of Islam to the West. In addition to authoring more than two dozen books, including What Went Wrong and The Crisis of Islam, Professor Lewis has advised government officials and policymakers in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Middle East on the intricacies of the relationships between Islam and the West.

It is lengthy, print it and read.......excerpts:

What is never discussed at all — it is never considered — is an offense committed by a non-Muslim in a non-Muslim country. That, according to the unanimous opinion of all of the doctors of the holy law is no concern of Islamic law, which brings us back to the case of Denmark. Does this mean that Denmark, along with the rest of Europe is now considered part of the Islamic lands, and that the Danes, like the rest, are therefore dhimmis, non-Muslim subjects of the Muslim state? I think this is an interesting question, which can lead to several possible lines of inquiry.

And just as the Muslim world was ruled by a succession of caliphs, so the world of the infidels and more particularly the Christian world, which was the main rival, was ruled by a succession of powers, first the Byzantine emperors, then the Holy Roman emperors, then the Western European empires, and — I'm quoting Osama bin Laden: "In this final phase, the world of the infidels was divided between two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United Sates."

......and.....

We think of the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western victory in the Cold War, and some of us credit President Reagan more particularly with that victory. For Osama bin Laden and his followers, this was a Muslim victory in the jihad. And if one looks at what actually happened, this is not an implausible interpretation. It was, after all, the Taliban in Afghanistan that drove the Red Army to defeat and collapse. And, as he put it, "We have now dealt successfully with the more deadly, the more dangerous of the two infidel powers. Dealing with the soft, pampered, and degenerate Americans will be easy."

This impression was confirmed through the '90s when they launched one attack after another and evoked only angry words and misdirected missiles to remote and uninhabited places.

In order to understand what is going on, one has to see the ongoing struggle within this larger perspective of the millennial struggle between the rival religions now, according to this view, in its final phase.

Let us turn to the Shi'a equivalent of this through the Iranian revolution — the word revolution is much used and much misused in the Middle East for virtually every change of power. In fact, it is the only generally accepted title of legitimacy. The Iranian revolution was a real revolution, not just a coup d'etat or a putsch or whatever. It was a genuine revolution in the sense that the French and the Russian revolutions were revolutions. It brought a massive change, social, economic, ideological — not just a change of regime. Like for the French and Russian revolutions in their day, Khomeini had had a tremendous impact everywhere they had a shared universe of discourse, that is to say, the Muslim world. Just as the French and Russian revolutions in their day, and for some time after, had such and impact, so did the Iranian revolution, and it was not limited to the Shi'a world.

I remember being on a tour of Islamic religious universities in Indonesia, which is a solidly Sunni country, and in the student dorms they had pictures of Khomeini hanging on the walls. The Iranian revolution has gone through many phases. It has had its Jacobins and its Gizondins, its Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, its terror. And I would say it's now in the Stalinist phase, and that also has a global impact.


Professor Lewis also had this to say about President Ahmadinejad:


MR. LEWIS: I am inclined to believe in the sincerity of Ahmadinejad. I think that he really believes the apocalyptic language that he is using. Remember that Muslims, like Christians and Jews, have a sort of end-of-time scenario in which a Messianic figure will appear. In their case, in the case of the Shiites, the hidden imam who will emerge from hiding, who will fight against the powers of evil, the anti-Christ in Christianity, Gog and Magog in Judaism, and the Dajjal in Islam, a role in which we are being cast now. And he really seems to believe that the apocalyptic age has come, that this is the final struggle that will lead to the final victory and the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Others in the ruling establishment in Iran may share this belief. I am inclined to think that most of them are probably more cynical and regard it as a useful distraction from their domestic problems and also a useful weapon in their external relations, because he has been doing very well and he seems to be succeeding, for example, on the question of nuclear weapons. And every time they make an advance, we move the point at which we won't tolerate it anymore, and this has happened again and again. Each time, we say, the next step we will not allow. We have shown ourselves to be, shall we say, remarkably adaptable in this respect, and this is no way to win friends and influence people.

I think that the way that Ahmadinejad is talking now shows quite clearly his contempt for the Western world in general and the United States in particular. They feel they are dealing with, as Osama bin Laden put it, an effete, degenerate, pampered enemy incapable of real resistance. And they are proceeding on that assumption. Remember that they have no understanding or experience of the free debate of an open society. Where we see free debate and criticism, they see fear, weakness and division; they proceed accordingly, and every day brings new evidence of that from Iran.

I think it is a dangerous situation. And my only hope is that they are not right in their interpretation of the Western world. I have often thought in recently years of World War II — you were told earlier that I'm ancient myself. The most vividly remembered year of my life was the year 1940. And more recently I have been thinking of 1938 rather than of 1940. We seem to be in the mode of Chamberlain and Munich rather than of Churchill.



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