Race and Slavery in the Middle East An Historical Inquiry By Bernard Lewis. New York: Oxford University Press. 1990, 169 pp.

Abstract

This book is based mainly on an earlier small book entitled Race and
Color in Islam that was published in 1971. In this new edition, Lewis
added more chapters and expanded the discussion of some of the material
that he examined in the earlier edition. He mentions that scholarly work
on the topic of slavery received only limited attention from researchers
compared with studies on slavery in the Greek and Roman worlds. Only
a few number of studies of high caliber could be cited.
The main theme of the book, as Lewis states clearly in his concluding
remarks, is that Islam's total racial hannony and ilUlocence is a myth
created, maintained, and idealized by westerners as a rebuke to the actions
of the white man in the Americas and South Africa. Moreover, the
idea found relevance among missionaries in Africa who tried to seek explanations
for their failure in contrast to the success of Islam.
In his analysis, Lewis tries lo distinguish between three distinct meanings
of Islam: 1) Islam as the religion taught by the Prophet and prescribed
in the Qur'an; 2) Islam as a larger body including the traditions,
works, and fatwas of Islamic scholars and jurists. In this regard Islam includes
the Shari'ah as developed over the centuries; and 3) Islam as the
counterpart not of Christianity but of Christendom. Here, Islam means not ...