Sholto Byrnes

Is monarchy the answer in the Middle East?

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

issue 03 July 2010

The name Bernard Lewis provokes very different reactions in different people. For some he is the world’s foremost historian of Islam and the Middle East, the English academic who originally coined the term ‘clash of civilisations’ (as Samuel Huntingdon, who popularised it, freely acknowledged). For some he is a Princeton man, a neocon who celebrated his 90th birthday (four years ago) with Cheney and Kissinger; whose ‘Lewis Doctrine’ was said to have inspired the invasion of Iraq and botched the war on terror.

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