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Most Helpful Reviews
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Liked It “Excellent book. It is unapologetic for both sides of the culture divide. In a really short, relatively easy read he goes through the history of Christian and Muslim peoples laying out the ongoing problems since Islam's inception. I have used this book in many papers and recommend it for anyone...” see full review » see other reviews » |
Didn’t Like It “In the end I found the book unsatisfying. While it chronicles the decline of Islamic culture from the sixteenth century to modern times, it offers no compelling reasons for that decline. A lack of a renaissance, or the failure of secularism to advance do not speak to Islam's loss of world power....” see full review » see other reviews » |
Newest Reviews
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“Excellent book. It is unapologetic for both sides of the culture divide. In a really short, relatively easy read he goes through the history of Christian and Muslim peoples laying out the ongoing problems since Islam's inception. I have used this book in many papers and recommend it for anyone interested in understanding current affairs.”
Kim S wrote this review Tuesday, August 4 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“cool. islam went CRAZY”
Joe F wrote this review Thursday, April 30 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Really interesting look at how the Muslim world, which was at one point in history the most scientifically and academically advanced in the world, has seemed to remain, for the most part, trapped in the Middle Ages. A culture that progress has passed by. ”
Jocelyn B wrote this review Friday, March 7 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“In the end I found the book unsatisfying. While it chronicles the decline of Islamic culture from the sixteenth century to modern times, it offers no compelling reasons for that decline. A lack of a renaissance, or the failure of secularism to advance do not speak to Islam's loss of world power. Rather they speak to a western view of the place of religion in social structure. ”
Mad L wrote this review Thursday, December 6 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“This slim volume by the West’s most honored and distinguished MiddleEastern scholar examines the historical reasons for the Islamic world’s decline in power and influence as Western civilization rose to preeminence. It does much to explain the historical reasons for the economic, military, and social state of failure in which much of the Islamic world presently finds itself and that incites their self-destructive resentment.”
Don M wrote this review Friday, October 26 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“A friend recently recommended Bernard Lewis’ The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. Before I could find a copy of it, I found Lewis’ What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East. This short volume (161 pages) provided a very interesting history of Islam from the 1500’s to present day, focusing on the factors involved in Islam’s loss of world power and on Islam’s responses over the centuries to that loss. The nature of the book (a collection of lectures) provides a fairly logical way for the reader to process the information, although a few points are unnecessarily repeated and the scope of some of the later lectures overlaps the first ones a bit. That said, I learned a lot from Mr. Lewis. He covers the subject from a political view, a military view, a religious view and multiple cultural views. Throughout the book, Lewis does a good job of also differentiating between Turkish, Egyptian, Arabian and Persian “versions” of Islam (although his labels are more accurate than this listing). As noted in the Preface, the text was prepared prior to September 11, 2001. That had no impact at all on the value of the book, as it covers a tragic drama of centuries. The book is neither a primer on Islam nor on the Middle East, but a description of Islam’s “fall” and response. For someone whose current knowledge of Islam comes only from religious and anti-religious books, What Went Wrong? was an accessible and interesting book.”
John Crippen wrote this review Friday, October 19 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Muslim loss of civilisational leadership and reteat from modernity is explained by none other than a well known authority BERNARD LEWIS.”
vipingoyal wrote this review Monday, October 1 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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