''What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East '' is a book by

Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near E ...

released in January 2002, shortly after the

September 11 terrorist attack The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

, but written shortly before. The nucleus of this book appeared as an article published in ''

The Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'' in January 2002. The book's thesis is that throughout recent history, specifically beginning with the failure of the second Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, the

Islamic world The terms Muslim world and Islamic world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is practiced. In ...

has failed to

modernize Modernization theory is used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and a partial reading of Max Weber, ...

or to keep pace with the Western world in a variety of respects, and that this failure has been seen by many within the Islamic world as having allowed Western powers to acquire a disastrous position of dominance over those regions.

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The original article (Abstract plus first two paragraphs)Description
by the

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

What Is Wrong with ''What Went Wrong?''
by Adam Sabra, associate professor of Middle East history at the University of Georgia
Book review
by M. Shahid Alam, professor of economics at Northeastern University (A more complete version of this essay, with footnotes and references, has appeared in ''Studies in Contemporary Islam'' 4 (2002), 1:51-78) * Ismail Küpeli
''Was ging schief beim 'Untergang des Morgenlandes'?''
''Eine exemplarische Sichtung der Geschichtsdarstellung von Bernard Lewis''. München, 2007, (Critical book about "What Went Wrong" in German)
''Booknotes'' interview with Lewis on ''What Went Wrong?'', December 30, 2001.
Books by Bernard Lewis 2002 non-fiction books History books about Islam The Atlantic (magazine) articles {{Islam-book-stub

See also

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