Empires of FaithrnIslam and the Academyrnby Philip JenkinsrnAstory long popular in London tells of a foreign visitor losingrnhis bearings while walking along Whitehall and politelyrnasking a passerby, “Excuse me, sir, which side is the Foreign Officernon?” Hearing the visitor’s accent, the Brit despairinglyrnreplies, “Yours, probably.” This story comes to mind when wernread the histories of Western culture and civilization served uprnby many current academics, particularly in popular textbooksrnthat are sold by the millions. Over the last generation or so, thernone thing we can reasonably assume about these works, regardlessrnof the exact topic or period under discussion, is that they arerngoing to be on the other side. If an evil interpretation of Westernrnconduct can possibly be applied to a given event, if a Westernrnachievement can be distorted to expose the sinister and exploitativernside of our civilization, then, without fail, it will berndone. The story of ancient Greece thus becomes a heartrendingrnsaga of slavery and patriarchal brutality; the age of globalrndiscoveries is seen in terms of imperialism and genocide; Christianrnchurches existed to demean women, suppress knowledge,rnand persecute their rivals.rnModern scholars have no wish to repeat the errors of their despisedrnpredecessors, who supposedly served as mindless cheerleadersrnfor Western imperialism and oppression. No, indeed!rnWhy do that when you can be a mindless cheerleader for thernimperialism and oppression of every other civilization on thernplanet? Perhaps it is a perverse scholarly variant on Newton’srnlaw of motion: For every action, there is an opposite and wildlyrndisproportionate reaction.rnThough academics have turned venomously against WesternrnChristian civilization, they certainly have not abandonedrntheir willingness to make moral judgments, to present history inrnPhilip Jenkins is the author, most recently, of Hidden Gospels:rnHow the Quest for Jesus Lost Its Way (Oxford University Press,rn2001).rnterms of heroes and villains. In many ways, contemporary liberalrnhistory looks very much like the most simplistic works of bygonerndays about the glories of civilization, but the civilizationsrnthat are now extolled are, basically, everyone except the West.rnThis means the world of Islam, China, and even the Aztecs —rnperhaps the bloodiest and most ruthless bunch of thugs ever tornbe graced with the word “civilization.” When we see how contemporaryrnacademics have turned so enthusiastically to any andrnall other societies, we might think of George Orwell’s explanationrnof the extreme political ideologies of the 1930’s. In Orwell’srnview, a generation of young people brought up on flagwavingrnjingoism had come to despise their own country, butrnthey still felt a powerful compulsion to express their patrioticrnpassions, and so they transferred their loyalties to more fashionablernnations—to Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.rnTo observe the process of transferred cultural patriotism inrnoperation, we can tiace how scholars over the years have treatedrnthe European Middle Ages. Once upon a time, the MiddlernAges were seen as a magnificent peak of cultural achievement.rnThis was the view epitomized by Henry Adams’ Mont-Saint-rnMichel and Chartres (1904) and popularized in such Catholicrnbestsellers as James J. Walsh’s The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuriesrn(1907). Clearly, a view that at once glorified the West andrnChristianity was going to be a prime target for liberal historiansrnfrom the I960’s on. These skeptics made short work of naive romanticismrnabout an age reputedly characterized by pervasivernfaith and heroic chivalry, a world of saints and scholars. If wernlook at a modern “Western Civ” textbook today, the MiddlernAges are portrayed much differentiy. Instead of the old Eurocentricrnnonsense, the blaring triumphalism, we now know therntruth: Medieval Europe was replete with superstition, class violence,rnand religious bigotry. Fortunately, though. ChristianrnEurope was able to pull itself together through the aid of therngreat Muslim civilization, with its matchless saints and scholars.rnSEPTEMBER 2001/1 7rnrnrn