Leave behind the Left vs. Right bias when examining politics
The West can learn political lessons from the rise and fall of the Muslim world.
Bernard Lewis (31 May 1916–19 May 2018) was a British American historian specializing in Oriental studies. 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 (source Wikipedia).
In 2002, he wrote What Went Wrong: The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East. There, he expressed his views on the milestones that marked the history of the balance of power between both powers.
In the introduction, he explains that during the first thousand years after the advent of Islam, the Muslims made considerable progress in capturing countries, starting with Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, and Portugal. They continue their military campaigns, conquering Constantinople, the Balkan peninsula in Europe, and reaching as far as Vienna. At the peak of its power, Islam represented the greatest military power on earth- its armies were invading Europe and Africa, India, and China.
So, in Lewis’s view, What Went Wrong? The following quotes synthesized his answer:
In the arts and sciences of civilization, medieval Europe was a pupil and, in a sense, a dependent of the Islamic world.
And then, suddenly, the relationship changed. Even before the Renaissance, Europeans were making progress in the civilized arts. With the advent of the New Learning, they advanced rapidly, leaving the Islamic world’s scientific, technological, and cultural heritage far behind them.
For the whole of the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, the search for the hidden talisman concentrated on two aspects of the West: economics and politics, or, to put it differently, wealth and power.
Democracy and Liberalism have been the talisman of the West in modern times. Both are promoters of wealth by attracting talent from Asia, LATAM, and Africa to the US and Western Europe. Extremists from both political fronts are challenging this process. History also shows us that most recognized leaders from the left and right in the West support both platforms to promote growth.
In each of us lies the power and responsibility to support candidates with a vision and principles that overcome the pressures exerted within their parties and from external interests that distract us with fake news.
We owe future generations a defense of Democracy, its institutions, and Liberalism to support advances in technology and science from the best-talented people independent of their origin and race.
Note: I used Grammarly to edit the quotes and content of this article.
