Is monarchy the answer in the Middle East?

3 July 2010

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Sholto Byrnes talks to Bernard Lewis, our greatest living expert on Islam, who says that what both Afghanistan and Iraq really need is a king

He is, I think, a conservative (his work contains too many nuances and warnings for the ‘neocon’ label to stick), with a great affection for the peoples and religion of the Middle East and a romantic attachment to their past. Far from being a ‘propagandist’ against his subject material, he assigns much of the region’s trouble to the malign influence of Western ideas. He even calls anti-Semitism ‘a comparatively recent import from Europe to the world of Islam’ — and he is Jewish.

‘To hate and persecute people who are different is normal. Anti-Semitism is something different, a tribute to the Jews, a diabolical quality of evil.’ Jews in Islamic lands did have problems, he says, but it was the Christians who were the real threat. Jews were merely considered cowardly by Arabs. He tells an old Ottoman joke: ‘Before they imported European anti-Semitism, at the time of the Balkan war, the Jews in Istanbul wanted to make a contribution. Could they form a Jewish brigade? The Ottomans said yes, armed and equipped them. Then, when they were ready to set out, the Jews said could they have a police escort — because there were bandits on the way.’ He pauses. ‘You wouldn’t call that anti-Semitic, would you? It’s amused contempt, not the idea of a cosmic evil.’

Although he is ‘not optimistic’, fearing for the future of the ‘good Islam’ he respects, he sounds stoical about his own prospects. ‘I’m 94, and all the people I knew are dead.’ To what does he attribute his longevity and vigour? ‘Genes,’ he says. ‘And I have a Scotch before dinner every evening.’

Sholto Byrnes is a contributing editor of the New Statesman.