Unholy Alliance: The Agenda Iran, Russia, and Jihadists Share for Conquering the World Hardcover – September 20, 2016

I'm sitting here reading this book now and it's the best background primer you can get on what is happening in today's news, what caused it, and what we can do about it. Any candidate for office would be well-advised to study it carefully for a deeper understanding of his or her own responsibilities. Amply footnoted, it withstands the critique of the skeptic and the praise of the patriot. I bought it for my family and sent it to my friends as a must read for such a time as this.

Not western societies and culture! This well written book by Jay Sekulow simply explains the mortal threat of a Russia- Islamic axis to western civilization. He begins with a concise history of the Middle East from the Ottoman Empire up to today. After explaining Middle Eastern events in the last one hundred years he shifts to Islam and the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

This reading brought back memories of the research I conducted 25 years ago while studying Islam for my war college thesis. Mr. Sekulow in a very short time explains a very complicated subject to westerners who have not been paying attention to world events in the last 40 years. One thing that is absent from this book, which should be included, is the Crusades of the 12th and 13th Century where westerners conquered a peaceful Caliphate of the Levant and it took 88 years to evict them. Page 141 illustrates Khamenei promising Israel's destruction in 25 years from 2009, 88 years!

One of the main points of this book is Islam, a shame culture, very similar to the Japanese Culture prior to WWII. The honor and-shame tactics that drove Japanese soldiers to use kamikaze suicide tactics and a pattern of using suicide attacks rather than surrendering are inherent in this culture which we are witnessing world wide today. Sekulow is warning westerners of the coming movement by the Islamics for -complete world domination. Iran has been entered into alliances with Syria and now Russia to wage war on western allies and Israel. It is interesting the latter a 90% Orthodox Christian country in bed with an Islamic global movement?

This book is required reading to every westerner or people who enjoy personal liberties as a wake-up call for what will come! What will come is a global reckoning chess match with radical Islam that is fast approaching! Sekulow is ringing the alarm, Wake up!

I thought I understood the centuries old conflict in the Middle East. Well, I didn’t. 9/11 opened Americans’ eyes, but we quickly shut them. BIG mistake. Sekulow takes readers back to the very beginning, eons ago, and explains where this conflict was born and why. America, WAKE UP! Your great-great grandchildren need to learn what is taught in this book from their great-great grandparents NOW, or there won’t BE a U.S. of A in 100 years. If this ideology persists: to destroy all Western culture and have everyone bow to one god we don’t believe in (or at least have the RIGHT to choose not to, or the right not to believe in one at all), and follow laws in a book that are ludicrous (not to mention a society that treats women as sub-par humans), then we are truly doomed. Read this book—it WILL open your eyes.

An excellent analysis of the current global chess match. I don't believe there is a more timely book on the market, as the narrative addressed in this book unfolds daily in the newspapers.

On the face of it, this book is an introduction to the Middle East with special emphasis on "Islamic terrorism." The current conflicts involve both acts of individuals and the acts of nations. Nations typically act from worldly purposes different from the religious purposes of individual terrorists. The author wants to show us the cause of the current turmoil and where it is headed. This book is one of a genre, and reading it, you need to consider possible baked-in assumptions. Some readers will find my summaries boring, but I'm dealing with a general introductory book and want to get everything straight.

The author starts with an introductory sketch of Middle East history, beginning in the nineteenth century when, he says, the Ottoman Empire, that great Islamic realm, began to decline, up to the present. (Actually the Empire was declining well before then with the siege of Vienna in 1688.) During World War I, it collapsed entirely; its fate was left to Britain and France, who decided how to be divide it between them. The author's recap covers the history up to today. There are a couple of errors and omissions. The author explains British interest in Arabia as due to oil although there were no oil discoveries there until the 1930s. Also the author could have at least devoted a couple of sentences to the Arab-Jewish disturbances of 1922, 1929, and especially 1937-1939, which did much to create inter-group hostility.

Of course a bare historical narrative does not do much to explain Islamist terror. The explanation is in theology. The God of Islam is very austere. There is no Trinity as in Christianity [to link the divine and the human] and no doctrine of grace or of personal conscience." The impersonal and distant nature of Allah engenders a ritualistic and formal religion in which the individual can have no hope of personal salvation through faith alone. Instead, a Muslim must secure salvation through his works." (p.43) (There is some disagreement on the question of faith vs. good works. The reader may want to look at other sources.) In addition, "Islamic culture is a "shame culture". In a shame culture , individuals are encouraged to take any course of action necessary to avoid public shame, even if it requires secret wrongdoing, because the extrinsic value of honor is more important than intrinsic values of truth, justice, and whether one is actually guilty." (p. 46) Jihad and "martyrdom" (meaning being killed in the act of jihad) are certain ways to get into heaven. (p. 45) All of this is supported by references (the book is saturated with footnotes.)

After a chapter on Sharia (to me irrelevant), the author tackles the question of ex-President G. W. Bush's characterization of Islam as "a religion of peace." The Quran contains multiple verses that command peace -- as well as violence. Muhammad had some followers in the earlier part of his life, in Mecca, and the Quranic verses of that period teach a message of peace and forgiveness; but his life was difficult because Mecca was a center of polytheistic worship. He and his (then) few followers fled to Medina. "He began receiving revelation that taught outward struggle, or jihad with the sword, against his enemies." (p. 83) The question is which time period is authoritative. There is a rule for Quranic interpretation, called "abrogation", that if one verse commands one thing and a later verse commands a contrary thing, the later verse is to prevail. Perhaps we should assume the worst, then; but I'd suggest there is possible ambiguity as to the correct sequence of the Quran.

Th author considers the two main sects of Islam, the Sunni (the great majority, centered in Saudi Arabia and most of the Arab countries) and the Shia (the minority, living mainly in Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain). The course of history over the last thousand years has made the Shia bitter enemies of the Sunni. They are basically the two sides in the current civil war in Syria.

However, the players in the current Syrian conflict can be grouped in four ways -- Syria, nominally Shia (although actually partly Sunni as well, and ruled by another sect known as "Alawites") ; Iran, almost entirely Shia; and a number of Sunni and Shia rebel factions, some of them terrorists of the worst type. And there is Russia. Syria and Iran are fighting for the survival of the current regime while the rebels are trying to replace it. The US has attempted without success to get the parties together and create a new government of "moderate rebels".

Russia has intervened on the government's side with highly destructive airstrikes which have been characterized as war crimes, but which have turned the war around. This is the "conventional war" aspect, in addition to the terror aspect. As I see it, Russia has changed the war into something new. Not counting the US, her GDP is about three times that of the next largest player, Iran. She has an air base in Syria as well as a port, and sells Iran large amounts of advanced weapons. The author entertains what look to me like lurid visions of an expanding Iran but seems a little more modest about Russian ambitions. I think that there will be other Middle East states acquiring nuclear weapons. This book warrants careful reading but with a critical eye.

Fantastic! I LOVED every word and I'm in the process of reading it again. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is interested in what is going on in this chaotic world.

Chief Council again has written a very precise, historically accurate, account of how the Middle East has struggled throughout our lifetime. This is an amazing book specifying why there are so many deep problems in the region.
I expect to be very well informed when I finish.