Customer Reviews

The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror

5 star:		(11)
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1 star:		(8)

 

 

Having finished this book just as headlines about Saudi charities and U.S. recipients emerged, Schwartz's overview appears timely. His Jewish background and interfaith efforts in the Balkans enrich his study. Too often, Christian readers receive in such journalistic introductions comparisons between their faith and Islam, while Jewish readers are often ignored--it's assumed Israeli issues suffice! Many reviews here have pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of his book already.

I might add that the attempt to pit Wahhabism against Sufi/Sh'ia interpretations does make for a rather unwieldy combination. So much of the book involves Saudi machinations, and so little by balance opens up alternative versions of Islam. Certainly his sympathies are defended, but the book cannot seem to settle for either a sustained exploration of the narrow Saudi ideology or a convincing insider's defense of the expansive Sufi/Sh'ia messages.

Too often, Schwartz seems to rely upon his earlier journalism (and it's not often the Albanian Catholic Bulletin, the Anderson Valley Advertiser [as in that great Boonville brewery!], and the Forward share bibliographical mention). His accounts of the Balkans fragment, and the reader hops with him from noted figure to infamous tragedy without really feeling the depth of the human impact of either war or enlightenment. Likewise, with his Saudi chapters, the destruction committed by the regime against its Sh'ia and other dissident Muslims lacks the telling detail needed for a new reader to this topic to enter fully into what obviously for the author is a heartfelt as well as intellectual issue of the utmost importance. His connecting the Saudi to U.S. academia and think-tanks and mosques is intermittently revealing, but he does not delve in-depth as I expected, say, on Saudi funding of American mosques and centers.

Lacking footnotes: he lists many works in the text but without hardly any citations. One must guess from the authors he cites what texts he has quoted from and as for the page references of 98% of what he mentions, forget it. I do applaud his inclusion of URL's and acknowledge his reliance on Net sources, but since the vast majority of his research listed is from traditional print, his lack of scholarly adherence to convention leaves readers eager to find more having to make more of an effort than is customary to do so. He could have put endnotes in for more than a few of his sources--only a handful appear at the back of the book.

For instance, he notes Khalid Duran's "Children of Abraham: An Intro to Islam for Jews" book and some Sufi sources that I found intriguing. But, again, no exact page or even title citations discourage the reader faced in his works consulted with pages of titles and very little guidance. And, as others have noted on amazon.com, why he plays his evident embrace of Sufism up and down simultaneously dampens his credibility. Surely his example would strengthen and not weaken his claim to have both observed the faith he had studied first without and then within to defend what he sees as its proper form. He isn't a dispassionate academic but an involved pilgrim, and I would have liked to have had Schwartz more throroughly blend the two rather than piece together much of what seem to have been his articles over the past decade.

What could have been included more often? One example: in a few pages on Marin County and John Walker Lindh, he mixed his Bay Area perspective with a take on Lindh that could have become its own book! I look forward to more from Schwartz, and thanks to his own blending of Western analyst, Balkan-languages speaker, and Sufi practitioner, he brings a rare perspective to the topic.

One of the oddest things about this book is its reviews, positive and negative alike. Apparently none of the reviewers have noticed that Schwartz, to the extent one can judge from a plethora of hints in the text (most obviously in the Acknowledgements) is, most likely, himself a Sufi. It is pointless, therefore, to guess whether he is on the Right or on the Left and whether his book is anti-Islamic - it definitely is not. It is, in fact, a polemical tract, and whereas I do not believe the picture of the contemporary Islam he paints is without merit, it is seriously flawed due to his relentless Sufi perspective.

Thus, ayatollah Homeini gets away with a mild rebuke simply because he was a Shiite and pro-Sufi. The author somehow fails to mention that the practice of suicidal martyrdom was not invented by the Wahhabites. It goes a long way back with the Shiites and was widely practiced during the Iran-Iraq war. Iranian revolution, even though not exportable per se because tainted with Shiism, was an idea and an example that went a long way.

Furthermore, Schwartz gives very different treatment to rather similar secular regimes. He professes great dislike for Kemal Ataturk but deals gently with Nasser of Egypt, pretty ugly character. Everything clears up once we recall that Ataturk banned Sufi orders, whereas Nasser who was fighting Wahhabi-like Moslem Brotherhood, left the Sufis alone. And so forth.

The history of Wahhabism and its present day worldwide influence deserve to be widely known, and Schwartz is apparently well served by his Sufi sources. Still, terms like "diabolical" do not belong in a book that purports to retain some objectivity.

To conclude, the title itself is wrong. It suggests that the diabolical face of Wahhabism is somehow balanced by the angelic face of Sufism. No, it is not - and not only because Sufism, thanks to its horizontal structure, is far from uniform and does not possess a hierarchy to speak for itself. Every major religion can possess only one merit in the eyes of those who are not its adherents: it could leave them alone. In other words, it could be either intrusive or ignorable. Islam, whatever its historical deserts, today does not pass this test.

The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror by Stephen Schwartz (Doubleday) The social and political consequences of Wahhabism are shown to have created a climate of intolerance and oppression that has warped the fabric of Islam in Saudi Arabia. Now with an excess of petrol dollars, this Wahhabism gives succor and support to ideologies of hatred and terror throughout the Islamic world. This story needs to be understood as some form of Wahhabism is often at the root of extremist Islam. Another feature of The Two Faces of Islam is that moderate Muslims have strong populist traditions that are assaulted by Wahhabi triumphalist deep pockets. A good read about one important thread in the extremist politics of Islam. Recommended.
The hostility of most of the other reader reviews shows, in my opinion, how polemic breeds extremer polemic. This work is definitely polemical. The central message about the pernicious effects of Wahhabism on Saudi society and politics, as well as its warping effect on liberal democratic tendencies in Islam remain the pillars of good sense upon which this work is constructed. Judge for yourself and do not let the name-callers blind you from learning important consequences of Wahhabi extremism for international terrorism.

While Schwartz's book presents the reader with logical and necessary questioning regarding the Saudi role in the war on terrorism, it's relations and influence in the Middle East, its role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc., I seriously question the validity of his claims against the Wahhabis, a group he depicts as the sole cause of agitation in the Muslim faith and the main opponents in Islam towards the West. All faults in Islam, according to Schwarts, stem from Wahhabism - a movement that he depicts as an organized institution but one realizes it must not be since he never describes its structure, heirarchy, etc. He also fails to clarfiy and elaborate on HOW Wahhabism has managed to exist - he tells why it emerged and how it gained momentum, but then never fully explains HOW it became a transnational movement and WHY people subscribed to it's version of Islam.

Criticisms aside, I must admit the book was an "eye opener" and should be a must-read for all those who think the Saudis are truely US allies.

The author mendaciously presents Ottoman domination in the Balkans as begnign and illuminating. He blithely ignores the genocide represented by the Turkish devshirme system -- the "Blood Levy" of Christian boys kidnapped into the Janissary Corps -- and pretends that the murderous darkness of Ottoman misrule was somehow enlightened (and the resistance to it, notably by Balkan Christians, condemnable). This is propaganda currently designed to facilitate Turkey's entrance into the EU ("Europe"). It poisons the well from which all well meaning people need to learn about the true tragedy of non-Muslim communities ruled by Islam.

Schwartz is right to find two faces of Islam. But he is naive to think that only the face he approves of is the real one. Schwartz is a convert to the beautiful but heretical Sufi branch of Islam. So it is not quite right to portray him as "a Jewish historian."
The book has a sharp tone and makes a strong case for reassessing our ties with Saudi Arabia.
Schwartz does not address that the two faces are found from the very beginning of in the life of the Prophet himself.

I have made a conscientous effort to understand the beginning, middle and present day situation concerning the Muslim faith. This search has involved many books and lots of late night reading, but this particular book, "Two Faces of Islam" is the best yet. It not only identifies Muhammed's express teachings written in the Qur'an, but outlines the beginning of Wahhabism and the Saud family. Because of this book, I can now understand how the teachings of mercy and compassion as taught by the Prophet, have been dissolved by the actions of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and his joining up with the bandits and criminals of the family known as Al Su'ad. I strongly urge all those who seek to understand what we are up against in the United States to read this important book. Statistics are frightening: 30% of Muslims residing in this country are Wahhabi and 80% of the mosques teach violence and death to the Americans. If knowledge is power, then we need this knowledge to discern just who our enemies are and what to do about them. We are in a monstrous crisis.

Mr. Schwartz attempts to convince his readers of an amazing fact about the conflicted nature of the Saudi oil empire, and he is almost convincing. The problem with Schwartz's argument is not so much that there is a dimension to Islam that has pernicious tendencies. Anyone can see that. The problem arises when he downplays the historic fact of Islam's continued reign of terror in one part of the world or another since the 7th Century. By labeling those who know history as Islamophobes, Schwartz defeats what may indeed be an intelligent insight into what really happening in the Islamic world. By contrast, Professor Bernard Lewis (Cultures in Conflict, Islam and the West, The Shaping of the Modern Middle East) and other disinterested Arabists more accurately and dispassionately identify the many faces of Islam through an accurate and scholarly historical approach.
Yes, Mr. Schwartz, the Ottomans welcomed the Spanish Jews, but under the condition that they would be willing to go anywhere they were sent and operate in conquered regions as a source of cash and secret intelligence. Resentment towards the Muslims and Spanish Jews throughout the Balkans as a result of this infiltration and occupation must not be ignored or minimized. What happened there is inexcusable, but is still understandable in light of history. To admit this fact of history would not undermine your basic premise that there is a dangerous element in Islam that must be rooted out if freedom and democratic principles are to survive.
We cannot afford to overlook the betrayals within our borders, as well as those in the Islamic world. Mr. Schwartz is a good journalist to draw our attention to it. He needs to show better scholarship before commenting on the past, however.

This book is not a serious or scholarly piece of work, and I recommend that you not waste your time reading it.

It begins with a description of the life of Mohammed, the origins and spread of Islam, and the creation of various Islamic sects. This is probably the best part of the book, but it is still very poor.

For example, Schwartz never really explains even the basic distinction between Shi'a and Sunni Islam. And Schwartz's overall goals badly tarnish his discussion: He wants to portray traditional Islam as being perfectly pluralist, tolerant, and peace-loving, so as to contrast it with hate-filled, intolerant, and violent Wahhabism. As a result, his description of the Ottoman Empire (representing Schwartz's traditional Islam) is completely uncritical and consequently not credible. For instance, he never even mentions the Ottomans' barbaric and murderous treatment of Armenians and Kurds, to name just two salient examples.

The rest of the book follows a similar pattern: There are Muslims Schwartz likes (especially Sufis), and there are Muslims he hates (Wahhabis, plus others who are not Wahhabis but whom Schwartz describes as "Wahhabized," though he never explains what that's supposed to mean). The "good" Muslims can do no wrong, and the "bad" Muslims are behind just about every act of terrorism committed anywhere on the globe. I know this sounds like it must be a charicature of the book, but it's not. Rather, Schwartz's book is itself a charicature of the complexity of contemporary international affairs.

An example will illustrate Schwartz's appalling sloppiness with evidence. On pages 217-218, he claims that a "manifesto" written by Osama bin Laden proves that Saddam Hussein is connected with bin Laden and Al Qaeda. I found this surprising, because there is, to my knowledge, no proven link between them whatsoever (and I have followed this issue very closely). In fact, it is well known that bin Laden has always hated Hussein and secular rulers like him, that bin Laden had called for Hussein's overthrow, that Hussein hated bin Laden and had brutally repressed Islamic fundamentalists like him, etc. (See, for example, the analysis of this issue in a report by the Carnegie Endownment for International Peace). So I was very curious to see what evidence Schwartz had found in bin Laden's "manifesto" to support his conclusion that, in spite of all that, Hussein and bin Laden were allies.

Here is Schwartz's evidence: In his "manifesto," bin Laden (1) called for an end to the UN sanctions on Iraq, (2) lamented the destruction inflicted on Iraq in the first Gulf War, and (3) also lamented the deaths of Iraqi children that were caused by the UN santions. I'm not kidding--that is the sum total of Schwartz's "proof" that Hussein was an ally of bin Laden and Al Qaeda in their global terror campaign. It's absurd.

The book does contain one interesting thesis: Schwartz claims that for most Americans, the face of violent and dangerous Islamic extremism is Ayatolla Khomeini and the Iranian revolution, while Americans have regarded Saudi Islam as "moderate" because the Saudis are US allies. Schwartz plausibly argues that the reverse is true: Saudi Islam (Wahhabism) is much more dangerous because of its support for a "holy war" without borders, while the Islamic revolution in Iran was really about liberating the Shi'a of Iran from oppression under the Shah, not about waging a larger war beyond Iran (although Schwartz does acknowledge Iranian support for certain Palestinian militant groups). The thesis is interesting and possibly true. But that one interesting point certainly doesn't make this dreadful book worth reading.

If you are looking for an introduction to Islam, or for insightful and well-reasoned discussion of world affairs, please look elsewhere.

In line with its title, the author of this book comes himself across as a bit of a Janus Head: an adherent of Sufism and religious pluralism on the one hand, a staunchly patriotic political conservative, on the other. The Two Faces of Islam is not the work of a detached analyst of political Islam, but an unabashed diatribe against `Wahhabism' and the Saudi role in promoting this strand of Islam. Here lies the main weakness of this book: although Schwartz provides us with many interesting facts and noteworthy observations regarding the rich pluralist heritage of Islam, he is so selective in his argumentation against Wahhabism that it undermines his credibility.

For example, in one and the same chapter, "Sword of Dishonor", Schwartz claims that the US should let Uzbek president Karimov get on with exterminating the Muslim extremists who are terrorizing his country, but that Washington should protest on every occasion against Russia's repression of the Chechens. His argument for this inconsistency: The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Hizb al-Tahrir are of a distinctly Wahhabi signature and thus a menace to Central-Asia's centuries-old pluralist Islam. Therefore they must be routed. What are the guarantees that Karimov will only target `Wahhabis' and leave `Traditionalists' alone? Chechnya's Sufi tradition, on the other hand, has supposedly survived intact and its representatives are in the vanguard of the struggle against a Russian-Orthodox threat. Since the assault on a Moscow theater it can hardly be denied that extremism has also taken root in Chechnya.

Schwartz is so eager to lump all Sunni extremists together that he refuses to believe Bin Laden is anti-Riyadh. It is all a ploy to mislead the West. Yet at the same time he engages in what amounts to an apologetics of Khomeini and the Iranian revolution. Because he was educated as a philosopher and initiated in 'Irfan or gnosticism, the Ayatollah does not fit into Schwartz' paradigm of militant Islam. Instead Khomeini is credited as a "standup guy" who at least makes no secrets about his anti-Western views. Anti-Khomeinism in the West was fed by the Saudis because of their vehement anti-Shi'ism. Schwartz goes even further, Khomeini is implicitly dubbed a tolerant pluralist because he taught philosophy, was mystically inclined and wrote poetry in the same vein as the great Sufis. In furthering the cause of Sufism Schwartz could have selected a more convincing argument.

In making his case against Saudi-sponsored Wahhabism, Schwartz is further hampered by having never visited the Kingdom and the use of secondary sources only. His selection of these is also questionable. It features Said Aburish but not Mamoun Fandy's excellent study of Saudi dissidents. Schwartz reviles explorer and royal confidant Harry St. John Philby although there is no evidence in the bibliography that he has read any of Philby's books or even Elizabeth Monroe's biography. T.E. Lawrence, however, is presented as a pure idealist, while certain studies shed a very different light on his persona, revealing both a deeply disturbed psyche and political duplicity.

This selective use of material also explains his erroneous assessment of the succession question in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar, and former intelligence chief (now envoy to London), Prince Turki al-Faisal, are certainly high profile figures. But in the line-up for the throne the governors of Riyadh and the oil-rich Eastern Province -- one a full brother, the other the oldest surviving son of ailing King Fahd -- figure more prominently, yet their names - and those of some other key contenders -- are not even mentioned.

His report of the Najran uprising in early 2000 fails to notice that the Shi'ites clashing there with security forces are Ismai'ilis (Seveners), while those in the Eastern Province belong to the Twelvers branch. Although the regime does regard the former also as a liability, failing to make the distinction is not only factually incorrect but also a misjudgment of the potential political impact.

In his description of Wahhabism Schwartz lowers himself to the level of outright demonization. While it can hardly be denied that Wahhabism is rife with bigotry, difficult to engage in constructive debate, and generally not conducive to intellectual maturing, an attempt should be made to understand how and under which circumstances it developed, and how it is rooted in Islamic tradition. Whether we like it or not, Wahhabism is a factor of very considerable significance in the Muslim World as Schwartz is admitting by writing a book about it. Instead Schwartz makes himself guilty of what he accuses Wahhabism of: dualism and the inherent demonization of "the Other".

Schwartz qualifies its namesake, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, as a "monster" and calls the inhabitants of Central Arabia "savages", prone to sedition since the time of early Islam. He also implies that Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was bound to dissent due to his affiliation with the Bani Tamim: because the Bani Tamim had once joined the Kharijites, a descendant of the tribe is bound -- a millenium later - to concoct an equally uncompromising form of Islamic revivalism! In an attempt to further soil the Saudis' reputation, Schwartz wrongly represents them as belonging to the Bani Hanifa, a tribe associated with Musaylama, `the false Prophet' active in Central Arabia during the days of the Prophet Muhammad. The Al Saud descend from the eastern Arabian Dur'u and the clan's ancestor Mani al-Muraydi was only in the 15th century invited by the Bani Hanifa to take up residence in Najd .

With his eclecticism and invectives Schwartz has undermined his in itself sympathetic plea for pluralist Islam. Militancy, extremism, and other intolerant forms of Islamic revivalism have rendered the atmosphere in the Muslim world rather insalubrious and Saudi politics have some very unsavory aspects, but Schwartz' approach will do little to clear the air. There are certainly two faces of Islam, but readers would have been better served if the writer had elaborated more on that pluralist Islam instead of this negativist account of what Islam should not be about.