Hatred’s Kingdom by Dore Gold
Reviewed by Ben Wolinsky
Islam began in Arabia, that’s a fact I won’t dispute. Saudi Arabia’s
Muslims follow the Wahabi doctrine, that’s a fact too. But according to Dore
Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the UN, Al-Queda may have its roots in
Wahabi Islam, and Saudi Arabia is a jumping off place for terrorism. If
anything in Hatred’s Kingdom is true,
then that country is on a tightrope over the chasm of violence.
Gold starts out with the beginnings of Islam in Arabia, and as we all
know, it was a violent start. Mohammed didn’t exactly give people the freedom
of choice; he converted the people by the sword, not a sermon on the mount. Then
the story proceeds to the 1700’s, when a man named Al-Wahab started a form of
radical Islam that was anti-everything. All forms of art, music, and mysticism
were now forbidden. The Shiite Muslims were considered enemies, and the Sufi,
who had for their music and philosophy, were now considered heretics. According
to Gold, Saudi Arabia and Iran hate each other.
One of the incidents described in this book is the 1982 takeover of the
Great Mosque in Mecca. It was the work of rebels who had a similar ideology to
Al-Queda; no foreign influences, women shouldn’t go to school, and most
prominent of all, there could no kings in Islam. The takeover failed, but the
whole debacle was an omen. There are many in Saudi Arabia (and probably Jordan
as well) who distrust the idea of a king. The Saudi monarch, by the way, is
nothing like Kings of France; on the contrary, he shares the country’s oil
money with the people. He provides for them, so that healthcare and education
are free. Nobody starves in Saudi Arabia. But I have to wonder, is the king afraid
of his own people? Is he buying their trust?
Even though Wahabism didn’t start until the 1700’s, it was nothing new.
The habits of Saudi Arabia predate Islam by millennia, with regards to
lifestyle, law, marriage, etc. Even in the days of the bible, a man would beat
his wife for talking back to him. Women were property of their fathers, and could
be bought, sold, and traded. If you were a man and you spoke to an unmarried
woman, her family would now consider her a whore and would probably kill her. The
so-called “honor killings” of today existed in the book of Genesis, like the
part where Tamar is found to be pregnant, and her father-in-law says “take her
to be burned!” And let’s not forget the part where Lot offers his daughters as
payment. He says “I have two daughters who have known no man, I’ll give them to
you to do with as you please, but don’t harm the men who took shelter under my
roof.” In short order, Lot was going to throw two little girls to a frenzied
mob, to be gang-raped all night long. Not the kind of thing you’d expect from a
“righteous” man.
Wahabism is indeed a violent doctrine, but that doesn’t make Islam a
violent faith. The religion is practiced differently worldwide, and I can name
some examples. In Cape Town, the women and men pray side by side, while
everywhere else, the women pray behind the men. In the East Indies, performing
arts (like their famous shadow puppets) continued long after the natives
adopted Islam, and this sort of thing would be “haram” under Wahabism. Somali
Muslims chop off the hands of thieves, while the Muslims of China wouldn’t even
consider such things. In the 1200’s, when Ibn Batuta visited Samarkand, he saw
a man and a woman walking together in the street, and from the way the woman
was talking to the man, he thought he was her servant. Women in his country
(Morocco) never argued with their husbands in public, unless they enjoyed a
beating. In Mali he praised the men for their clean garments, then raged at the
women who walked around topless! Islam is applied, practiced, and interpreted
differently everywhere you go.
If Wahabi Muslims think that music and art are haram and women are
inferior, then American life will definitely anger them. Take for instance the
US Army bases in Saudi Arabia. You have female soldiers, bareheaded and clad in
tee shirts, carrying guns and driving trucks. Saudi women aren't allowed to do
that. How do you think a Wahabi follower feels when he sees women with guns?
Can he accept that some women are not beneath him? How will he react to his
loss of dominance? Will he accept it and move on, or will he attack the women
with a machine gun?
Something tells me, if Saudi Arabia weren’t desperate for US weapons and
protection, there wouldn’t be any women allowed on those bases, period.
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