Black Wave Quotes

“People in Europe or the United States often ask blithely, where are the Muslims and Arabs speaking out against extremism and terrorism? It is deeply troubling to expect that all Muslims should apologize or take responsibility for a minuscule fraction of those who share their faith. Furthermore, the question ignores the devastating sacrifices of those who have been fighting intolerance and its violent manifestations within their own countries long before anyone in the West even thought to pose the question.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“For decades, Lebanon had lured not just revolutionaries but also poets, ideologues, artists, and all types of opposition figures and plotters. A weak state was both a blessing and a curse. In Beirut, there was no dictatorship to muzzle opinions—or your guns. The war had made the small Mediterranean country even more of a haven, a live training ground with a casino and restaurants that still served smoked salmon and caviar during cease-fires. There were breadlines and economic hardship, massacres and literary conferences. Every spy agency was in town: the CIA, the KGB, the Mossad.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“Trying to answer the question “What happened to us?” led me to the fateful year of 1979. Three major events took place in that same year, almost independent of one another: the Iranian Revolution; the siege of the Holy Mosque in Mecca by Saudi zealots; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the first battleground for jihad in modern times, an effort supported by the United States. The combination of all three was toxic, and nothing was ever the same again.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote: “It is perfectly true … that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“Every king had tried to put his imprint on the city and the mosque; some were worse than others. King Faisal had been a parsimonious man and the expansion works reflected as much—measured and reasonable, nothing too ostentatious. The current ruler, King Fahd, was a spender who disliked all that was old. He loved glitz and gold. More ancient neighborhoods were being torn down, and Mecca’s classical Islamic architecture was vanishing rapidly. Ugly modern buildings were rising, and more chain hotels were being built to accommodate yet more pilgrims.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“The Saudi-Iran rivalry went beyond geopolitics, descending into an ever-greater competition for Islamic legitimacy through religious and cultural domination, changing societies from within—not only in Saudi Arabia and Iran, but throughout the region.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“In their despair there was nothing left to hold on to but guns and religion.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“Peace died in the homeland of peace Justice succumbed When the City of Jerusalem fell Love retreated and in the hearts of the world, war settled The child in the grotto and his mother Mary are crying, and I am praying. —Fairuz, lyrics from “Jerusalem Flower of all the Cities” (1971)”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“The largest number of victims of jihadist violence are Muslims themselves within their own countries.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“In all 6,236 verses of the Quran, there is not a single verse calling on Muslims to silence blasphemers by force. Not in 1989, when Khomeini called on believers to kill Salman Rushdie, not in 1992, when the Egyptian intellectual Farag Foda was shot in Egypt, and still not in 2011.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“Although our countries have been changed by the hegemonizing influences of both Iran and Saudi Arabia, the headlines in the Western media have always reduced matters of extraordinary depth and complexity to a mere snapshot, which more often than not has catered to an orientalist audience that regards Arab or Muslim cultures as backward and to security-focused policymakers. Over time those two groups have worked to reinforce each other, merging to such an extent that everything was viewed through the prism of the security of the West, especially after 9/11.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“Beyond the headlines about war and death, the region is alive with music, art, books, theater, social entrepreneurship, advocacy, libraries, cafes, bookshops, poetry, and so much more, as old and young push to reclaim space for cultural expression and freedom of expression.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“Sami was nostalgic for the old Mecca, for the simpler times when the mizan, the balance, between modernity and tradition was easier to attain and maintain. His eternal quest for spiritual harmony was constantly disrupted by construction cranes, bulldozers, generators, and loudspeakers, Sami believed in an evolution that respected the continuity, but Mecca’s connections with the past were being physically severed. The future of the sanctuary of Islam was in danger. The aim of his research center was to make further expansions to the mosque and its surroundings more in tune with history, more respectful of tradition. It was a Sisyphean battle.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“If Beirut was the supermarket of the left in the 1970s, where Marxists, communists, Egyptians, Iraqis, and all the Palestinian factions debated and theorized, published and drank in bars arguing over ideas and the fought in the streets, Peshawar was the supermarket of the Islamists in the 1980s without drinking: there the discussions were about Islamic law, fatwas, the war of the believers, the unity of the Muslim nation, and the humanitarian needs of Afghan refugees.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“the Mahdi. Sunni beliefs also allowed for an apocalyptic redeemer whose arrival by the Ka’aba, alongside Jesus, signaled the end of times before the age of righteousness. But unlike Shias, Sunnis did not hold this as a central tenet, nor did they believe the Mahdi been born centuries ago and gone into occultation. He would instead reveal himself as a man from the people with particular attributes spelled out in the hadiths, the records of prophet Muhammad’s sayings and actions, written after his”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“The Ottomans were the first to describe it as Wahhabism, to denote a movement outside the mainstream of Islam, one that seemed intently focused on one man as though he were a kind of prophet.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“There were those Salafists who believed that following the righteous salaf, al-salaf al-saleh, dictated a return to the exact way of life of the prophet.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“At exactly the same time in Saudi Arabia, a similar crisis was unfolding. The Mahdi had seemingly returned from occultation and appeared in Mecca. And he, too, had taken hostages.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“But article 12 of the new constitution declared that Iran’s state religion was still Shia Islam. The Brothers who had visited Khomeini in Iran were deeply disappointed. Khomeini wanted to be a leader on his own terms; he wanted to be separate from the rest. He didn’t want to dissolve himself into a Muslim world that was 80 percent Sunni; he wanted to lead the opposition forever. When it suited him, he would reach out to those Sunni groups that could serve his agenda. Article 154 of the constitution was designed exactly for that, implicitly expanding the jurisdiction of the faqih beyond the borders of Iran. Indeed, the constitution declared that the Islamic Republic of Iran supported “the just struggles of the oppressed against the oppressors in every corner of the globe.” Khomeini’s revolution was just beginning. 7”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“Some of those who would come to oppose Arafat’s leadership would be Palestinian Islamists, like the Hamas movement, and they would look to Iran for support.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“Although one man was Shia and the other Sunni, this was not an obstacle, as those words rarely featured in the politics of that era. The tension that was setting in was between nationalism and religion, between secular activism and religious fundamentalism”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“The victory of the people of Iran did not end with the defeat of the shah. Our hope is to raise the flags of Iran and of Palestine on the hills of Jerusalem.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“Arafat. “Landing in Tehran felt like I was approaching Jerusalem,” said the Palestinian leader. “Iran’s revolution doesn’t belong only to Iranians, it belongs to us too. What you have achieved is an earthquake and your heroism has shaken the world, Israel, and America . . . Your honorable revolution has lifted the siege on the Palestinian revolution.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“It seemed that the duty of the intellectuals was to bring Khomeini to Tehran and hand him over to the mollahs.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“Saudi Arabia and Iran were allies and twin pillars in the US policy to counter the spread of communism and Soviet influence in the region.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“Meanwhile, the CIA was apparently unaware of Khomeini’s thesis about Islamic government and was more obsessed with a possible communist takeover of Iran.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“That same month, Arab honor died too, or so it felt for millions across the region, who watched, incredulously, as Nasser’s successor, president Anwar Sadat, crossed enemy lines and traveled to Jerusalem to address the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Tears streamed down the faces of children as rage burned inside the hearts of men. How could Egypt break rank and betray the Arab and Palestinian cause?”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“The Bazaar had always served as a political force in Iran, agitating against Western competition on its turf, and they often made common cause with the clerics who resented Western influence on Iranian society. That alliance had produced upheaval before, during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“Traditionally in Shiism, the perfect Islamic state can come into existence only with the return of the Mahdi, or Hidden Imam, a messiah-like redeemer and the twelfth imam after Ali, who had gone into hiding, or occultation, in the ninth century. Until the return of this infallible man, governance would be in the hands of the secular state. But Khomeini asserted that the Quran had in fact provided all the laws and ordinances necessary for man to establish an Islamic state”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly approved the Partition Plan. On May 14, 1948, as the last British troops departed, Jewish leaders declared the creation of the State of Israel on the land apportioned to them by the UN plan.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East