The Contest for the Muslim World

A bo ok about the Middle East titled Black Wave would naturally lead prospective readers to guess that it must be about the impact of oil. This is not the case in Kim Ghattas’s new work (except tangentially), which has the somewhat unwieldy subtitle: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East. The pivot year of her story is 1979 for the unsurprising reason it contains the Iranian revolution, the attempted takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by someone who thought he was the Mahdi, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Together they constitute the Black Wave of which she speaks. The contest between Iran and Saudi Arabia is the driving engine as they compete for influence and leadership across the Muslim world. Read Full Article »