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Summary: So you think Saudi Arabia is an Ally?
Review: Mr. Gold's knowledge and scholarship, and his ability to bring his readers in touch with today's radical Islam in Saudi Arabia is fascinating. Prior to reading Hatred's Kingdom, I had only a marginal understanding of what Wahabi Islam was and what it had evolved into. You will learn that it should be no mystery why 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. The civilized world will have to deal with its largest threat since Hitler when confronting the terrorist threat personified by these radical, though not fringe, Saudi Islamic elements. In just a few enjoyable hours, the reader of this book will gain a perspective that is typically glossed over or totally ignored in today's media, but which must be understood by many more of us.
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Summary: Blessed murder
Review: Gold delivers a meticulous chronical of the birth and repugnant growth of Saudi Wahabism. The fact that this brutal, inflexible sect consisting essentially of murdering all those who do not adhere completely to its monstrous doctrine can be the state religeon of Saudi Arabia is terrifying.Buy this book. Read it. Then send it to George W. Bush.
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Summary: It was you, Charley. You was my brother...
Review: Hatred's Kingdom by Dore Gold... Currently a political advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Dore Gold takes a hard look at the political and religious activities of the Saudi government in this book. His conclusions could not be more drastic . Considering the fact that fifteen of the nineteen September 11 highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Westerners might want to pay attention. Mr. Gold is almost lawyerly in his presentation of the case against the Saudi Kingdom, maintaining that the Kingdom is a primary financial supporter of terrorist movements throughout the globe. Gold sets out to show how current and past members of the Saudi family channel their oil revenues to a variety of bogus Muslim charity organizations, and how the funds are directed to the support of terror campaigns against Israel, the West, and other targets in the Middle East. The Saudis have been paying the terror tithe, says Gold, for the purposes of keeping themselves in power and to assuage the extremist Wahhabi clerics who share power in the wealthy oil Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Another reason, more obvious, is to keep Osama and the terror bombers and assassins from blowing up the fine department stores, apartment houses, and restaurants in downtown Riyadh. Beginning with a history lesson on the birth and ascendancy of Wahhabism, Mr. Gold proceeds to describe the Wahhabis far reaching influence upon an array of Islamic groups and organizations. Such organizations are numerous, comprising a virtual alphabet soup of ostensible charity, religious, and academic organizations, typically combining legitimate activities with suspect and reprehensible activities like payouts to homicide bombers, and support of terrorist entities throughout the world. This book details the aggressive Saudi rise to power and control over a vast land area previously controlled by rival Bedouin tribesmen. Ibn Saud, first king of Saudi Arabia, made an early bargain with Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, the fanatic prophet of the extreme form of Islam known as Wahhabism. But Wahhab's vision of Islam's traditional form soon pilloried the prophet himself and persecuted most of his companions in pursuing a policy of fanatical 'purity' and separatism which led to many blood baths between rival Muslim factions. Historical and recent battles (the long and bloody war between Iraq & Iran had powerful religious undercurrents) between Shiites and Sunnis factions. Wahhabism claims to represent the 'one true faith, declaring invalid and 'apostate' those Shias, Sufis, Turks and other 'infidels' and 'polytheists' who have held traditionally more tolerant and accepting views of non-Muslims. 'Polytheism', incidentally, means a wide array of activity ranging from celebrating Mohammed's birthday to putting up a picture of your latest rock idol on the wall. Among the extremist views promulgated by Wahhab was the desire to emphasize jihad, or holy war, proposing that war against 'the infidel' be adopted as a sixth pillar of Islam. It was this jihadi outlook which was adopted by Bin Laden's mentors and then by Bin Laden himself and then his followers. It was this dogmatic jihadi mentality which attempts to suppress Muslim tolerance toward other religions and cultures and even toward other Muslims and it is the same religious fanaticism which compelled the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center and the later series of attacks on American soil which occurred on 09-11. Of course, Islamic terrorist history did not begin with the moment Americans first began paying attention to it --one easily remembers the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Egypt, the massacre of the international tourists at the pyramids in Luxor, and so many terror attacks upon Israel that it would be impossible to mention them within the constraints of this review. Suffice it to say that this book shows the influence of fanatic Wahhabi-style attacks back through the previous century and offers substantial proof of Saudi financial support.
One captured spreadsheet from the West Bank city of Tulkarm details how half a million dollars was dispensed by the Saudis to the families of homicide bombers in Israel. But that is one of the strengths of this book. Mr. Gold gives painstaking attention to detail, to documentation and sourcing of his information. The information comes from many sources--from mainstream news sources, captured Israeli army financial documents, and from the intelligence sources from different countries, including the U.S. Mr. Gold does not make idle conjectures or allegations. In the last pages, the reader can read and examine the many documents and publications which build his case against Saudi support of extremist religio-fascist organizations around the world. Clearly, an extremist version of worldwide Islam and a repressive government in the Saudi lands are locked into a deathly embrace, a spell which, if not broken, threatens to engulf the foundations of individual freedom.
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Summary: A Difficult Dilemma
Review: Very interesting, hard-hitting book that brings the reader to a very difficult dilemma: just what do you do about a people that fundamentally believe that they MUST commit jihad (holy war) against the non-believers? This does not refer to Islam as a whole of course, but the growing sect of The Wahhabi established by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab in 18th century Arabia. The author offers an interesting history of the development of this extremist sect and how they infiltrate and influence mainstream Islam and national political leadership. We find that Wahhabism provides the dogmatic foundation that enable groups like Al Qaeda to form and extremist leaders like Osama bin Laden to gather a storng following. This book does not present an uplifting story, but puts a serious problem on the table. Hopefully, this is a problem that can be dealt with.
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Summary: The Saudis Have a Tiger by the Tail
Review: Most Americans are by now well aware that 15 out of 19 of the Islamic terrorists that crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were Saudi citizens. What is less well known is that, despite Saudi claims to the contrary, Saudi Arabia is probably the world's number one exporter of fundamentalist Moslem terrorism. In HATRED'S KINGDOM, Dore Gold details in a quite thorough way how one Moslem country could tell America that we are friends but behind our backs incite its own citizens to become suicide martyrs. The first third of HATRED'S KINGDOM is a minute historical overview of the Wahhabi sect of Islam. This part was slow going since Gold apparently omitted nothing of consequence about the birth and rise of Wahhabism in the 17th century. The final two thirds were most illuminating as Gold describes how the Saudi sheiks have been holding onto power by their fingernails for the last half century. Gold analyzes a thoroughly corrupt society of inbred princes who hide their corruption (rather unsuccessfully) under an all too obvious phony veneer of Islamic piety. Gold sees the Saudi sheiks are financial pragmatists. During the first Gulf War, these sheiks risked incurring the ire of the powerful Wahhabists by allowing Christian, Jewish, and (gasp!) female American soldiers to walk about unescorted. Gold notes the irony of America's victory in Gulf War I. With Saddam Hussein defanged as a threat to the Saudis, the Saudis could now feel freer to support a Wahhabi style terror network stretching from Riyadh to New York. Gold concludes by noting that the United States had better get tough on the Saudis to give up as a support system to radical Islamic fundamentalists. Unfortunately, he adds that there is no practical way to achieve this. As long as America continues to bail the Saudis out of whatever hole they have dug themselves into, the Saudi sheiks will continue to spout words of friendship to us and poison to a new generation of suicide bombers who are even now thinking of those 71 virgins.
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Summary: hating the hate, not the hater
Review: Obviously this book doesn't say that the people of Saudi Arabia are "bad" people. It is just saying that certain ideologies such as "Wahhabism" that construct the national identity of Saudi Arabia are "bad" just as "Nazism" or any other docrine that claims one race superior and another inferior. This is a great book as a companion to other books on the subject (such as the bible). While it isn't the final authority on the subject, it certainly is valuable to anyone that wants to understand how people are taught to hate. This doesn't mean that Saudi Arabians are the only ones taught to hate. Every country as cultural forms of teaching racism. This book is about the hate taught in Saudi Arabia and does a great job. Truth is humility.
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Summary: Removing the veil of Saudi hypocracy
Review: This book shows how the Saudis who have pretended to be America's friends are in fact supporters of America's worst enemies. Only this past week Saudis were once again involved in a terrorist operation action U.S. interests, this latest outrage being in Iraq against their own fellow Muslims, albeit Shiites.
For a very humorous poke in the eye of the Muslims, and Saudis in particular, read Keshner's COCKPIT CONFESSIONS OF AN AIRLINE PILOT. Great flying stories as well.
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Summary: Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global
Review: It is interesting in reading reviews of this book, that the very people who call Israel racist apartheid, boastingly admit that Jews cannot get a visa into Saudi Arabia precisely because they are Jews! Whew! And that's not racist? It's about time people pick up on who is truly racist and apartheid in the Middle East. Israel has an Arab population with Arab representation in the Knesset, while Arab nations are practically "Judenrein": (free of Jews). Nevermind that Medina, one of Saudi Arabia's holiest sites was named Medina (which means nation in Hebrew) and was founded by Jews who were deliberately murdered and fortunate if they were just forced to leave, to run for their lives leaving everything behind. According to Arab propaganda, the fact that Dore Gold cannot get a visa into Israel because he is a Jew is of no consequence! Does this not clearly demonstrate that Saudi Arabia is precisely "Hatred's Kingdom?" How then did Zionism (the aspirations for the Jews to have a homeland in which all religions are respected and practiced freely, and where Arabs even hold political office) end up being labeled apartheid and racist? Has the whole world gone crazy? Why isn't this fact being brought up in the media? Why isn't the U.N. condemning Saudi Arabia for discriminating against Jews and Christians? The aforementioned reviewer as much as admitted that the title of this book is an accurate description. Enough with the turnspeak! I want to thank the reviewer for substantiating Arab hatred and racism to the readers' attention by gloating that Dore Gold cannot know anything about Saudi Arabia because he "cannot even get a visa into Saudi Arabia because he is a Jew!" In my book, that is the epitome of racism and apartheid. The world needs to read this book and demand an end to Saudi Arabia's apartheid and racism, directed at Jews, Christians or any other faith except their accepted version of Islam.
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Summary: Steve Klein
Review: A wonderful resource, full of details and facts and a great reference for the future. Since others have rightly commended the strengths of this book, I would like to point to a couple points Dore Gold makes in his book that are questionable in my opinion, according to my limited knowledge. Mr. Gold begins by arguing that Islam itself is not the problem. "Rather, the problem is the extremists in the Middle East who have manipulated Friday sermons in the mosques, textbooks in the schools, and state-controlled television to one end: to systematically prepare young people to condone the cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians." Sadly this incitement is common-place in mosques throughout the Middle East, in Egypt, Sudan, Iran, Yemen, Gaza and elsewhere, including Saudi Arabia. True, Muslim theologians long ago broadened the meaning of jihad, but the idea that the Islamic mainstream had, in the past, shifted away from the focus on jihad as a universal religious requirement, I think is at best a matter of debate. Dore Gold presents this radically intolerant stream of Islam (Wahhabism) as having broken off from Islam by stressing the older, militant meaning of jihad. Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, essentially attempted to bring Islam back to a belief in the oneness of God (Allah), 'above all (Ibn Abdul Wahhab wrote) a rejection of all gods except Allah, a refusal to allow others to share in that worship which is due to God alone (shirk). Shirk is evil, no matter what the object. The war against shirk (polytheism) became his central preoccupation.' In this, ibn Abdul Wahhab was following what he understood to be pure Islam, for the Koran states, 'Kill those who ascribe partners to God, wheresoever ye find them. Polytheists (mushrikun; that is, those of us here in the west) were his declared enemies," according to Dore Gold. Reads like something the prophet Muhammad himself would have written. Yet, it is reported that followers reject the terms "Wahhabism" and "Wahhabi" as pejorative, believing their strict, 18th century interpretation is the only true Islam. Osama bin Laden and his millions of followers maintain their interpretation is true Islam. In addition to Osama bin Laden and his followers, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Yassir Arafat's Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jiahad, Islamist groups all united in their anti-Americanism, claim to represent true Islam. Much of the "Arab street" supports the view. I'm not prepared to argue with it.
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Summary: Really clear, easy to read, chilling
Review: "Hatred's Kingdom" is an excellent and very logical account of the way in which the Saudi Arabian government and 'ulama have supported terrorism. It explains it very clearly in terms of the roots of Wahhabi Islam that tend to see non-Muslims as polytheists. In some cases, Wahhabis have tended to see even other sects of Islam in these terms. Many people in the West today are aware of the structure of life in Saudi Arabia. Non-Muslims cannot practice or proclaim their religion on pain of death; women are severely restricted both in dress and in opportunities - they are not allowed to drive and must be accompanied by a male relative on a bus or train (though not on flights); and cinema, theatre and Western music are likewise banned. What Dore Gold does in "Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism" is to show very clearly the manner in which Saudi support for terrorism today is rooted in the ideas of Wahhab in the eighteenth century - which called for a return to the Islam of the first Muslims. "Hatred's Kingdom" gives very easy-to-read accounts of what the Wahhabis believed had corrupted Islam since the seventh century and how the Wahhabis believed Islam should be returned to the basic belief in the oneness of God. This, they felt, meant that Judaism and Christianity had to be attacked as unbelief. More often, actually, Wahhabis have seen these religions as polytheism, and have attacked them viciously in their propaganda with quotes from the Qur'an. We see very clearly how the Wahhabi armies of ibn Saud fought the Ottomans over several centuries to gain control of the Hijaz from the Hashmites (who rule Jordan today), succeeding after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The oil wealth of Saudi Arabia in later years meant that the 'ulama and government could carry out Wahhab's original intention of spreading his form of Islam across the whole world, which we see has led to the setting up of large numbers of Wahhabi schools in the West and the conversion of many young people to Islam. Because Wahhabism was/is the toughest and most reliable defence for the US ruling class against socialist revolution in the Middle East, the US government has strongly backed Saudi Arabia ever since oil was found in the Persian Gulf. The crux really is that Wahhabism believes it has an obligation to fight the Dar-al-Harb (non-Wahhabis, especially non-Muslims) regardless of the means used. This explains both why the US trained Osama Bin Laden against the Afghan PDPA in the 1980s and why Osama felt threatened by the placement of US troops on Saudi soil. It also explains why Muslim terrorists believe it is neither suicide nor terrorism to sacrifice one's life as a human bomb if one kills infidels in the process. The book is especially clear at showing why many attempts at modernisation by Saudi monarchs are firmly opposed by the 'ulama and how the 'ulama have considerable control over Saudi politics. Over the last thirty years, the 'ulama have in fact become vocal in their demands for an even stricted Islamic state in Saudi Arabia, and have in fact succeeded in tightening many regulations governing Saudi life. The whole book is clear in showing that Saudi 'ulama aim to spread Wahhabism globally by jihad, and how 'ulama see it as the highest goal of every Muslim to die in a jihad. Indeed, they point out that Wahhabism basically believes that nonbelievers have no right to live whatsoever. 'ulama and Saudi princes thus contribute vast sums of money to fuding such groups as al-Qa'ida, leading to such horrors as the September 11 attacks. Dore Gold points out the only by finding a substitute to lessen dependence on Saudi oil can the US solve the problem its alliance with a state built on an ideology of holy war has created for it since the September 11 attacks. In summary, an extremely clear book that offers a very good understanding of where Muslim terrorism comes from.
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