Saudi Arabia

[fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEW[/blanc][/fond noir]

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Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry that Unravelled the Middle East;
by Kim Ghattas

Wildfire/Headline Publishing Group
Pages: xvii + 378; Price: Rs. 799

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It is mind-boggling to even know how much death, destruction and human suffering Saudi Arabia has rained on the larger Islamic world with an insular religious ideology that has torn apart even the believers.

In a seminal study of the perennially turbulent Middle East, acclaimed Lebanese journalist Kim Ghattas has pinned 1979 as the year when three seemingly unconnected but earth-shaking developments pushed many Muslim countries on a dark, downward slide from which they are yet to recover.

One was the Islamic revolution in Iran that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power, creating a state bent upon exporting rebellion wherever it could; the second was the armed siege of the holy mosque in Mecca in Saudi Arabia; and the third was Moscow