An Interview with Professor Richard L. Rubenstein in The World & I, 1991

Now, in the last two centuries, Islam has had a series of cultural shocks. For one thing, Islam was unable to do what the Japanese have done, namely, to meet the challenge of Western modernization. When Islam first entered Europe in the eighth century, it was the superior cul­ture. It had a level of sophistication and cul­ture that was far higher than that of north­ern Europe. For several centuries, the vic­tories of Islam were such that the victories themselves were taken as signs of the supe­riority and the truth of the Islamic faith. Therefore, the shock was all the greater when, starting in the eighteenth century, European countries turned out to be quite different. The way the European countries turned out to be quite different was that they had effectively modernized. They had effectively gone through the Renaissance and the Reformation and the Enlighten­ment, and they had the capacity to devel­op skills and to advance learning in a way that left the Islamic world behind, at least in the area of power.

RUBENSTEIN: The Islamic world fell behind scientifically and culturally be­cause they were so convinced of the supe­riority of their way that they saw no rea­son to adapt to modernization, whereas the European Christian nations were able to adapt to modernization in way that Islam  was not.

If you ruin your culture while moderniz­ing, then modernization has done you no good whatsoever.

This made matters even worse. Not only had the Islamic world experienced de­feats at the hand of the Christian world, whose power was obvious, but this small group of Jews also inflicted military de­feat on them, and for the very same rea­son, which is that the Jews had learned from the Christians how to adapt to mod­ernization in a  way that the Islamic world has not. Basically, had the Islamic world adapted to modernization, then there is no way that the Jews could have won those wars.

I think this was very important to them. At the same time, they saw the 1973 war between Israel, Egypt, and Syria as result­ing in a victory for the Islamic world, al­though in reality it was a stalemate.

As far as the Jews are concerned, I am absolutely convinced that the Mus­lims are not going to rest content simply with a Palestinian state. That will be the prelude to the next move, which will be to make the whole area once again part of the Dar al-Islam, that is, an Islamic pre­cinct, which it had been for centuries. That entails either expelling all the Israe­lis or killing them off.

lam, led ironically by a secular leader, Saddam Hussein, can dominate the Christian West with oil and the high-tech weapons oil can buy.

conflict. It is a continuation of a fight that goes back to Poitiers. If he succeeds, it would be a final reversal of the fortunes of Islam for the last two centuries of humiliation.

religious war, to a holy war. He puts the conservative Arabs, like President Mubarak and the Saudi royal family, in a terribly difficult bind. He speaks the language of traditional Islam. He is making these people into sellouts for the infidel in the eyes of the masses. He has called upon the masses in Egypt and the ordinary people in Saudi Arabia to disobey their rulers and to join in his fight in the name of the ancient rivalry, the Crusades, the Muslim entry into Europe, and all that.

What scares me is the possibility that no matter how much the Iranians hated the Iraqis in their war, the call of fundamental Islam, which Saddam is making now, is one that they are going to hear. So we may have a very, very nasty kind ofconflict on our hands.

poin: All of the Muslims we have spoken to express a certain bitterness at what they see as the lack of evenhandedness in the West. They claim that America, for example, supposedly stands up for the principle of human rights and the rule of law, but that it applies them selectively. It is not applied for example, to Israeli behavior in Palestine, whereas it is applied to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

strength vis a vis the rest of the Arabs, if America had not stepped in, to control the oil supply of Saudi Arabia, to dictate its prices, would have created a world­ wide menace. The issue is: Is America go­ing to allow a power which is entirely hos­tile to control its economic destiny? The Is­raelis were never in a position to do this.

I was not going to take that chance. That does not mean that every Palesti­nian was going to stab me to death, but I could not take the chance. I had to as­sume that there was a potential enemy in every Palestinian because there had been enough stabbings and things like that so that I could not possibly stay at that East Jerusalem hotel.

when they are broadcasting in Arabic. These are promises that I simply take seri­ously.

RUBENSTEIN: If you are talking about people like Sheikh Zaki Badawi, who lives in London and is a very cultivat­ed man, I would say, undoubtedly, he is quite sincere about this. But I think you are going to find that there are a lot of Is­lamic scholars in places like Iraq and Iran who are quite sincere in their particu­lar union of politics and religion, that this is not just manipulation. It is too deeply rooted in history, in their history. They did not conquer as far as they did simply for the sake of material advantage. They conquered on an idea that they have the true faith, that they were giving people the true faith. And very few people whom they conquered and converted ever aposta­sized from their religion. Their political moves always had a religious foundation, and I believe that is still true today.

I believe that they interpret the oil in religious terms. I will also tell you that there is an Achilles heel to this event, and that is that if you are earning your in­come from oil, you are not producing any­ thing. The Japanese are earning their in­ come on value-added production. Once the oil gives out, what do they have? The Japanese, who are producing things, will find something instead of oil. But what will the Arabs have after the oil is gone?

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Richard L. Rubenstein is President Emeritus of the University of Bridgeport. His latest book is Jihad and Genocide (Rowman and Littlefield: 2011).

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