Commentary

Commentary is cited in Edward Said’s discussion of modern Orientalist scholarship as the periodical in which Bernard Lewis published “The Return of Islam.” Its significance in the available account is specific rather than institutional: it provides a publication context for Lewis’s writing, which Said situates within a wider critique of how representations of Islam and Arab political life acquire scholarly and public authority.

Publication Context

The evidence identifies Commentary as the venue for Lewis’s “The Return of Islam,” published in January 1976. Said’s references also point to pages 40 and 44 of that article. The citations establish the periodical’s role in circulating Lewis’s work, but they do not describe its editorial policies, readership, organizational structure, or response to the essay.

Lewis and the Representation of Revolution

Said discusses Lewis’s treatment of revolution in a separate essay, “Islamic Concepts of Revolution,” included in a collection edited by P. J. Vatikiotis. Lewis’s argument, as Said presents it, delays discussion of the modern Arabic term thawra until near the end, first examining other terms in historical and religious contexts. Lewis then links thawra to a classical root meaning to rise, including the rising of a camel, and to excitement or rebellion. Said objects that this account diminishes the modern political meaning of revolution and obscures the commitments of people who participate in revolutionary movements.

This analysis supplies context for Said’s references to Lewis’s periodical publication without proving that “The Return of Islam” makes the same argument. More broadly, Said’s criticism is that scholarly descriptions can turn historically situated judgments into apparently settled knowledge. The magazine’s place in this evidence is therefore as a venue named in the record of that debate, not as an independently characterized actor.

Limits of the Evidence

Said’s cited references do not provide enough information to describe Commentary’s history or operations, nor do they establish how the magazine’s editors or readers understood Lewis’s article. The supported account remains narrow: the periodical published “The Return of Islam” in January 1976, and Said names that publication while examining the intellectual and political authority attached to Orientalist writing.