arabian issues

http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2016/06/the-return-of-bernard-lewis/

BL: It is normal for human beings to judge others by ourselves. We are now in the 21st century of the Christian era. They are in the early fifteenth century of the Muslim era. It is a different religion based on entirely different historical experience, different message, different teaching, and it is therefore a grave error to do what people normally do, and that is judge others by ourselves. It does not work and it is dangerously misleading. If one looks at Islam from within and for that it is necessary to learn at least one Muslim language, something which many Middle East experts, in fact most Middle East experts in the West, for one reason or another are reluctant to do, if one learns he languages and reads what they say among themselves, and understands it in the context of their own history, their own culture, their own background, then I think I is not too difficult to understand what is happening.