Iakov Levi

On Narrative Historians: Bernard Lewis and the Misunderstanding of Human Motivations

Mar. 11, 2008

I refer to the article One on One: When defeat means liberation published by the Jerusalem Post on Mar 6, 2008

I quote from the article:

in an exclusive interview with the 'Post,' renowned Arabist Bernard Lewis likens what he calls the 'monstrous perversion of Islam' to the evils of Nazism and Bolshevism - and says that where it leads will depend on how the West responds to it […]

Indeed, Lewis's passion for medieval Arabic texts and respect for what he calls "one of the great religions" has not prevented him from being a caustic critic of radicalization among modern Muslims. On the contrary, if anything, his erudition has led him to assert unequivocally that the extremists have perverted their own traditions beyond recognition.

Still, says Lewis, "there are hopeful signs" indicating movement toward change. He cites, for example, his Jordanian friends' reaction to watching Israeli television and seeing Arab Knesset members openly attack the government with impunity. They are at once shocked and envious. Freedom tends to have that effect on those who do not enjoy it. Which is why, Lewis explains, "one of the things that even the most oppressive regimes cannot cope with today is modern communications - the Internet and so on. People know things now in a way and to an extent that were inconceivable in earlier times. They know, for example, how bad things are in their societies, because they see the contrast with the West. And there are more and more people interested in creating open societies."

First on envy.
Bernard Lewis’ Jordanian friend is envious watching Israeli television. However, envy never triggers a positive and constructive behavior. As Melanie Klein has shown, envy triggers a destructive reaction toward the envy’s object. We all have seen once in a while how frustrated children destroy the toys with which they were supposed to play.

Confronted with the impossibility of reaching the object – due to external or internal inhibitions - the frustration triggers a regression to the oral sadistic stage of psycho – sexual evolution, in which the craved object is introjected and destroyed.

Furthermore, if the “renowned Arabist’s” analysis were correct, we should ask why - then - the most ferocious radicalizations of the Islamic world occurred in modern times, when Muslims were firstly exposed to “modern communications - the Internet and so on”. Why now, in our time of open societies and open communications, the psychosis of martyrdom and suicide exploded to such an unprecedented virulence and extent. And concomitantly to “People know things now in a way and to an extent that were inconceivable in earlier times.”

As long as Islamic societies were closed and were not exposed to the West’s ways, they were in an abandoned mood peculiar to the depressive position. Active and militant suicide was triggered by the exposure to the West and its open society. A continuation of such an exposure may only exacerbate the situation and not cure it. If anything, the only cure might be in cutting them off from every contact with the West, especially the Internet and other means of modern communication.

As I wrote in Why Islamic Terror Now

For hundreds of years, and in concomitance with the regression to the depressive position, women had been segregated and secluded with the aim of castigating men’s lust, and preventing it from emerging from the repression. It is no accident, that in periods of success, as in the first Omayyad generations, there was also a relaxation in the Puritan relation to women and in iconoclastic fury, and Islam, at the beginning, had been a relatively tolerant religion. The more they were successful, as in Spain, the more they could relax. With failure, most of it self - induced, the sense of guilt for the lust became unbearable, and intolerance, misogyny, and iconoclastic fury escalated. Until the last half century, the Islamic world was a backward, isolated courtyard of the world, where westerners were personae non - gratae, on the suspicion that they would pollute Islamic Puritan ways. In Arabia, non - Muslims were not even allowed to enter.
Then over the last forty years two things happened: 1) There was a sexual revolution in the West, and then  2) a huge advance in media’s technology, beginning with television and eventually the Internet, and these both brought an unlimited diffusion of images and ways of life. As we use to say: "the world became a small village".
From the late sixties on, mini skirts, bare female bodies, free sexual relations became familiar, and inundated the media of the western world. Today, one cannot even turn on a computer, without been assaulted by nude advertising.
At this point, covering Islamic women and preventing westerners from physically entering Arabia was not enough for maintaining in the repression the very ultimate cause of paternal abandonment and orphan hood: their own lust. Confronted so directly and brutally with the very element they were trying so hardly to repress, the original archaic trauma was activated in full force. What had been dormant, under the mounting tension of a massive exposure to nude and promiscuous images, became urgent and compelling. The tension of a mounting exposure to their own repressed lust triggered the regression from the depressive position into the previous stage of psycho sexual evolution: the schizoid - paranoid oral sadistic stage. The split element in their own psyche - the hatred for the Father projected into the infidels - as it occurs in schizoid - paranoid position, became persecutory, and therefore had to be destroyed. The infidels are accused of having caused, by their own unrestrained lust, the abandonment by the Father. Henceforth, it is only by punishing them that the martyrs of Allah are able to punish their own lust, and regain again the favor of the beloved and missed Father.
As in every schizoid - paranoid position, subject and object are one. Through suicide, the introjected Father is definitely killed and appeased in the same condensation. Being one in the father, in the ultimate Communio of the maternal - paternal womb, definitely solves the unsolvable deprivation of paternal love.

The most common mistake that historians and sociologists do is to project into the group they analyze their own personal or cultural agenda. Westerners - confronted with an open society - would react in the way supposed by Bernard Lewis. However, Muslims are not motivated by the same Ego resolution as westerners are.

Cultures differ from each other not by the basic instinctual needs of the group (the Id), but by the Ego resolutions they adopt when confronted with similar conflicts. Attributing to others our own existential resolutions is a very big mistake.

The problem is that understanding the real motivations of others implies also the realization of the impossibility of changing and resolving them. And journalists, historians and sociologists are paid to offer resolutions. And to offer only those resolutions which are palatable to their audience.

The West assumes that Muslims are interested in prosperity and economic success, like themselves. Therefore, they assume that the source of Islamic terror is to be searched in economic and social backwardness. Appeasing and trying to advance them is the alleged resolution!

In the same way, the Israelis want peace and economic prosperity. Therefore, they assume that the Palestinians are motivated by the same existential agenda. Big mistake! Confronted by the challenge, the answers are always the wrong ones.

The result is bloodshed and misery.

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