Well, no, she isn’t asking this, as far as I know, but she really ought to ask it. She begins her book, Black Wave, by quoting a question from many in the Middle East: “What happened to us?” I thought it was perfectly clear who “us” referred to and what had happened to them, namely that “us” referred to generally liberal people like herself and that what had happened to them was that the rise of Islamic reactionaries had meant that people like her were being oppressed and even murdered. She details a horrible transformation of the Middle East from the annoying secular dictatorships of the 1950s and 60s into the much worse anti-secular, anti-feminist, and just plain reactionary theocracies of today.
I read this book about a month ago and was quite excited by it because it confirmed what I’ve been saying for years about the Muslim world. I even wrote three posts on it (here, here, and here). I thought everyone on the left should read it because it would show them that Muslims – some of them – are their worst enemies and that therefore they should think carefully before offering them the blind support they have so far been offering. Yet, as far as I can tell, no one who has read it has had their minds changed. No one who has read it has said anything like what I wanted them to say.
Apparently, not only was the Iranian Revolution an event capable of multiple interpretations, but a book about it has the same ambiguity. I’m just not seeing anyone expressing surprise at their new-found knowledge and regret over their past actions.
Instead, people are either missing the forest for the trees or else are seeing a different forest altogether. That is, some have gotten bogged down in the details, and so will ignore the main point. But most have seen it as a book about regimes vying against each other or else Sunnis and Shi’ites vying against each other. Almost no one seems to see it as a book about Muslims destroying the left in the Middle East. And if they do, it’s because this was already part of their worldview. (See here, for example.) As far as I can see, not one person has said that this changes their view on Muslims, the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, Mohamed Morsi, or anything else relating to Muslims in the Middle East. The people who think America is responsible for all awful things in the Middle East can find statements here and there in this book that will confirm their views. Those who think Muslims are fine will see this as a book about regimes and not about Muslims.
So, what went wrong? Why are people missing what I took to be the obvious point? To begin with, there apparently are people in the Middle East who are thanking her for telling the world about the awful things they have experienced, so from that standpoint, this book has been a success for Ghattas. But for those of us who wanted our neighbors to figure out why we are “Islamophobes,” this book fails.
Start with the title of her book. “Black Wave?” This doesn’t help. What does it even mean? Apparently, it is used by progressives in the Middle East to describe the catastrophe that has befallen them. But I had never heard the term before, and I follow these things much more closely than the average American does, so if I don’t know what it means, they are even less likely to know.
Next, the subtitle doesn’t help, either. Here it is: “Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East.” That is an overly long subtitle, and most people will focus on the first few words, which refer to two states in the region. Accordingly, they will read this as being about those two countries. Only those who were struck by the part about Middle-Eastern culture unraveling would read this book and get out of it what I had hoped everyone would, and maybe not even then.
Next, the first sentence of the book asks: “What happened to us?” She explains that what happened was this dreadful rivalry that began in 1979 and how things unraveled. But who is the “us” that she refers to? As I said above, I took “us” to refer to generally progressive people who didn’t want to be ordered about and dominated by ultra-conservative, intolerant, religious fanatics. If you read her book closely, you will see that that is whom she is talking about. But a casual reading will suggest that she is talking about a much wider group, namely the average person living in the Middle East, including those who are doing the oppressing.
Finally, while much of what she writes about is basically Middle Easterners oppressing other Middle Easterners, plenty of people will read into the book that the U.S. is ultimately to blame. She doesn’t do enough to discourage this reading, and even indulges in it herself when she talks about Pakistan.
The result, then, is that almost no readers seem to have picked up on what she is getting at, unless they already know. But that won’t change any minds.
Of course, it could be that I am the one who misread it, that I am the one who ignored the fact that it is just a book that is mostly about this rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, while only incidentally, and maybe even accidentally, about the fate of progressives in the region. In defense of my interpretation, let me give ten statements from the book that indicate quite clearly that one of its important themes, if not the most important one, is the destruction of the left by Muslims:
1. During the hostage crisis in Iran, “Khomeini continued to eliminate the left.” [50]
2. “The 1950s and 1960s were the era of left-wing nationalist politics across the Arab world.” [72; the implication is that later decades were not a continuation of that era]
3. “The purge [in Iran] was everywhere.... The first victims were the royalists ... then came the communists, the leftists.” [77]
4. The Islamists in Egypt were “keen to eradicate the sinful secularism of socialists and communists.” [98]
5. “Across the Middle East, the left in its various shades – progressive, secular, socialist, nationalist – was being beaten into oblivion.” [98]
6. “The left in Lebanon would soon be eliminated ruthlessly, just as they had been in Iran.” [141]
7. “The purge that had first targeted the secular left and other opponents of Khomeini was extending its reach, silencing former committed revolutionaries.” [143]
8. “For years to come, secular, liberal, progressive writers and thinkers [in Egypt] would be hounded, harassed, and assassinated.” [194-5]
9. “Everything [in Pakistan] had shifted to the right.” [250]
10. “The winds of extremism blowing in Pakistan for three decades had carried almost everyone further to the right.” [256]
These statements are perfectly clear. When taken together, they say that the left in the Middle East was being destroyed by Muslims who were on the far right. They are supplemented by many other statements about intolerance, darkness descending, and minds closing; about specific people like Khomeini being reactionaries; and by statements talking about how dreadfully women were now being treated. Here is one example of the latter: “... aggressive, violent harassment of women on the streets” in Egypt and how that had not been true earlier [276]. Here is another: “Women presenters were yanked off [Saudi] television. Newspapers had to blot out the faces of women in any pictures they published. The authorities also cracked down on the employment of women, which had always been theoretically forbidden but tacitly approved” [74]. Here is a third: “Khomeini and other clerics ... were particularly incensed about the greater rights granted to women [under the Shah]” [13].
No one reading this book carefully could possibly miss the author’s point that leftists have been under siege in the Muslim world during the last forty years and that their tormenters were Muslims. Yet, people apparently have missed it.
Everyone is still in denial, and the Muslims win once again.
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