Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, And The Forty-Year Rivalry Unraveled Culture, Religion, And Collective Memory In The Middle East, by Kim Ghattas

It is important to remember that the author is a leftist who thinks of herself as a centrist and who spends this entire book confused about the way that history in the Greater Middle East (and Central Asia) since 1979 disrupted her own view of the inevitability of the advance of leftist culture and the permanence of its gains worldwide. Rather than accept that the gains towards progressive/leftist politics in the 1970s around the world were themselves temporary and often highly at odds with what ordinary people worldwide wanted, the author finds herself bemoaning the loss of like minded people in positions of power and influence worldwide, and finds herself unable to deal with the conservative and even reactionary resurgence that followed the 1970s, a decade she likely views with a period of complacency and general approval because of the advance of leftist causes throughout the world during that period. The fact that she views “what happened” as an explanation of the negative changes that followed in 1979 and afterwards and does not view the leftward lurch of the world in the period from 1968 to 1979 as problematic or troublesome prevents her from gaining the historical perspective that would allow her some insight over the way that progressive politics has come to be increasingly discredited throughout the world, and the way that revolution has led paradoxically to an inability to make progress because it has sabotaged the ability to form widespread consensus within fiercely divided societies the world over.

The author divides her more than 300 page account of the post-1979 rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran over leadership of an increasingly conservative to reactionary ulema into three parts and almost 20 chapters. The book begins with a note on names and spellings that justifies the author’s lack of consistency in transliterating Persian and Arabic (and Urdu) terms and expressions, as well as containing notes on people, maps, and an introduction. The first part of the book looks at the Revolutions of 1979 (I), with chapters on the Cassette Revolution in Iran (1), its optimism about expanding revolution abroad (2), the violent attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca (3), and the darkness that filled the region, including in Afghanistan (where the author, strangely, does not focus on the evils of the leftist turn of the Afghan government and the Soviet invasion in the 1970s) (4). The second part of the book focuses on the competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia for dominance of the Middle East (II), with chapters on the assassination of Sadat after he made peace with Israel (5), the push by Zia in Pakistan to demand the wearing of the dupatta (veil) (6), the violence in Lebanon (7), the view of Shias in Saudi Arabia as being apostates (8), the struggle over control of Mecca (9), various culture wars (10), the black wave of terrorism and violence supported by both Iran and Saudi Arabia (11), and a pessimistic look at the author at the generation of people who had been born in 1979 (12). The third and last part of the book looks at revenge, including a comparison of the violent hostility of Sunni and Shia in Iraq to that of Cain and Abel in the aftermath of American invasion (13), the fracture of Sunni feelings of dominance (14), the surrender of civil society to reactionary Islamism in Pakistan (15), the counterrevolution of Egypt against the win of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 2010s (16), the struggle by Saudi Arabia to put some distance between Sunni forces against Syria and the terrorists of ISIS (17), the weakness of reforming elements in Iran (18), and the murder of a Saudi journalist in Saudi Arabia’s Turkish embassy (19), after which the author concludes with much complaining and hand-wringing about the destruction of so many leftist hopes in the decades since 1979, after which the book ends with notes, acknowledgements, and an index.

The history of nations from Egypt to Saudi Arabia to Iran to Afghanistan to Pakistan, and beyond, ought to be sufficient for leftists the world over to realize that progress is by no means inevitable. Simply because a nation is ruled by those whom leftist elites in the West view as being progressive dictators or enlightened despots does not mean that the changes that they support are genuinely popular with the people that they rule nor that the changes that they push through on traditional societies will endure. It is easy, and good, to wish that people would be able to be free, that women and minorities would be able to live lives of dignity and respect, but it is by no means inevitable that this is how things will work out. The author, almost in spite of herself, points out that male insecurity about the lack of widespread economic opportunity, the ability to own a house or to marry or to make a good living, while one sees the upper class live lives of privilege and plenty, creates a poisonous atmosphere within societies that threatens the well-being of those who enjoy privilege while the majority of people suffer in poverty and shame. Let us not forget that a majority of voters in such nations as Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan, to say nothing of traditionalist Afghanistan, would strongly support their nation’s strong turn to the right. Democracy does not mean a support of liberal or leftist causes, and the author (and other Westerners of her kind) seem to be ignorant of what this means. It is easy to look at the corrupt elites of many nations in the Middle East and to be disgusted with the way that oil wealth and decades of political power have been squandered with the results benefitting ordinary people. There is a reckoning that comes from such waste and corruption, and the author considers that to be a black wave, a historical catastrophe, rather than something which could easily be experienced in Europe and the United States as well, for similar reasons and against similar corrupt elites.