Islam’s Interpreter interviews Bernard Lewis, touching on his From Babel to Dragomans, which examines the dragomans — or translators — who mediated between the rulers of Islam and the West:
In the late sixteenth century, not a single person in England knew any Turkish, and certainly not a single person in Turkey knew any English. They had to proceed by two-stage translation. The intermediate language was Italian, which was then the most important European language for international communication. So texts were prepared in Turkish, translated into Italian by an interpreter employed by the Turkish government, translated into English by a translator employed by the English government, and then the reply would go back by the same route. Seeing the three sets of documents side by side is quite a fascinating experience. It alerted me to some of the problems of diplomacy by translation and interpretation. What was quite clear is that there was a pattern of systematic and deliberate mistranslation. I looked into this problem in later periods and right into modern times, and it’s still there.
His first prescription is better linguistic training:
I think the first thing is better linguistic training. For example, when I listen to the broadcasts from the media people who are in Iraq at the present time, they almost always mispronounce the names of Iraqi towns. One town which has been very much in the news is spelled in Latin letters N-a-j-a-f, and I hear one announcer or newsreader after another, even those who are calling from over there, say Na-jaf’ (emphasis on the second syllable). Well it isn’t Na-jaf’, it’s Na’jaf (emphasis on the first syllable). Anyone who’s ever heard an Iraqi pronounce the name will know that. The fact that this sort of name is systematically mispronounced is really alarming. One wonders who they’ve been talking to.
He makes the surprising point that Westernization wasn’t necessarily foisted on the Middle East by the West:
This process was not mainly imposed by Western imperial rulers, who tend to be very cautious and conservative, tampering as little as possible with the existing institutions. It was done by reformers in the independent Middle Eastern countries. Enthusiastic reformers who recognized the success and power of the Western world and wanted to get the same for their own people — a very natural and very laudable ambition. But often with the very best of intentions, they achieved appalling results.
Modernization centralized power:
In the old order, the traditional Islamic Middle Eastern society was certainly authoritarian, but it was not despotic or dictatorial. It was a limited autocracy in which the power of the ruler, the Sultan or the Shah or the Pasha, whoever he might be, was limited both in theory and in practice. It was limited in theory by the Holy Law — the Divine Law to which the ruler was subject no less than the meanest of his slaves. It was also limited in practice by the existence of strong entrenched interests in society. You had the merchants of the bazaar, powerful guilds. You had the country gentry. You have the bureaucratic establishment, the military establishment, and the religious establishment. Each of these groups produced their own leaders — leaders who were not appointed by the State, who were not paid by the State, and who were not answerable to the State. These, therefore, formed a very important constraint on the autocracy of government.Then came the process of modernization or Westernization, which for practical purposes are the same thing. It enormously increased the power of the central government by placing at its disposal the whole modern apparatus of surveillance and control: first the telegraph, later the telephone; the possibility of moving troops quickly, first by train then by truck or by plane. So the central government was able to assert itself and enforce its will even in remote provinces in a way that was inconceivable in earlier times. The effect of this was to weaken or even eliminate those intermediate powers that limited the autocracy of government.
When people look at the kind of regime that was operated by Saddam Hussein and say, “Well, that’s how they are, that’s their way of doing things,” it is simply not true. I mean, that kind of dictatorship has no roots in either the Arab or the Islamic past. It, unfortunately, is the consequence of Westernization or modernization in the Middle East.
His succinct Israeli history:
The conflict with Israel produced a great sense of failure in the Arab world. Remember that in 1948 there was no Israel, and the Jewish population of Palestine was a little more than half a million. The United Nations in ’47 adopted a resolution for the partition of the former British mandate in Palestine into three: A Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone in Jerusalem. A couple of weeks later the Arab League met, formally denounced this resolution, and resolved to prevent it by any means including force of arms. The Arabs were confident it would be a simple matter; we know that from the literature of the time. After all, five Arab states with armies were attacking a community of just over half a million establishing a new state in the debris of the British mandate.They thought it would be a walkover. It turned out that it was quite the reverse. And that was a cause of terrible humiliation. They were only half successful. They prevented the establishment of the Arab state but not the establishment of the Jewish state, and this, of course, rankled terribly and continues to do so.
Islamic theocracy is actually a new development:
The word secular is a Western term. It has only recently been imported into the Middle East. The idea of Church and State as two distinct institutions which can be either joined or separated is a Western and more specifically a Christian idea. In the past, if you talked to Muslims about separation of Church and State the usual answer you’d get was, “Oh, this is a Christian remedy for a Christian disease”?and therefore of no relevance to them. Now I think that they are beginning to realize that perhaps they have contracted the Christian disease and that it might be a good idea to try the Christian remedy. [What Christian disease?] The mixing of Church and State. That is, when the Church uses the State to enforce its doctrine, and the State interferes in the affairs of the Church. This is what brought on the great wars of religion in Europe. The idea of separation of Church and State was intended to protect both: to protect religion from State interference and to protect the State from religious interference.
[...]
For example, what they have now in Iran, for the first time, is a theocracy — a country which is actually run by the professional men of religion. This is totally unknown in the Islamic past. They now have the functional equivalent of a Pope, Cardinals, and Bishops, and above all, an inquisition that punishes heretics. One hopes that they may in due course have a reformation.