Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis is a British scholar and professor of Near and Middle Eastern history, with a speciality in the history of Islam. Lewis graduated from the University of London and taught there until 1974, when he accepted a position at Princeton University. In 1986 he formally retired, though he still retains a position there as an emeritus professor.

In the wake of the September 11th terrorist attack, interest in Lewis' work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Lewis is also known for his literary sparrings with Columbia professor Edward Said, who critiqued Lewis' supposedly "Orientalist scholarship in his famous 1979 book of the same name.

Trivia

• was fined by a Parisian court after expressing doubt, in a November 1993 Le Monde interview, whether the 1915 Turkish massacre of Armenians qualified as an act of genocide [1]
• his book, What Went Wrong, became a U.S. bestseller after the September 11 attacks

External Links

• Princeton homepage: http://www.princeton.edu/~nes/profiles/Lewis.htm
• Atlantic Monthly: "The Roots of Muslim Rage"
• "Debunking Edward Said" by Ibn Warraq: the section "Said, Sex, and Psycho-analysis" recapitulates the "The Question of Orientalism" chapter in Islam and the West, Lewis' response to Said