Black Wave

by Kim Ghattas

  Between despair and hope, I ultimately settled on hope. My journey across time and space was both humbling and exhilarating, as it reminded me of the incredible power of those of who continue their relentless, courageous fight for more freedoms, more tolerance, more light. Beyond the headlines about war and death, the region is alive with music, art, books, theater, social entrepreneurship, advocacy, libraries, cafés, bookshops, poetry, and so much more, as old and young push to reclaim space for cultural expression and freedom of expression. Their defiance is a source of hope, their steadiness contagious. Even when they go into exile, they don’t give up. In 2019, the novelist Ahmed Naji was finally able to leave Cairo. The travel ban was lifted, and he traveled to the United States to be reunited with his wife and baby daughter. He continues to write, publish, and provoke. Ebtehal Younes remains in Cairo, the city of her youth, upholding the legacy of Nasr Abu Zeid, who continues to tower over all other thinkers to this day. Now in Berlin, Yassin al-Haj Saleh never stops publishing and speaking about Syria and the greater ills of the region. He also helped launch Al-Jumhuriyya, an online Arabic news platform that is one of the best sources of information and analysis in the region. He continues to hope he will be reunited with his wife, Samira, and their friends Razan Zaitouneh, Wael Hamada, and Nazem Hammadi, all four still missing since 2013. After the trauma of his father’s and uncle’s assassinations, Jawad al-Khoei returned to live full-time in Najaf in 2010. He expanded on his grandfather’s al-Khoei foundation and launched an academy for interreligious studies that includes non-Muslim teachers and students. In Pakistan, the Salmaan family felt vindicated when Asia Bibi was acquitted of all charges of blasphemy and spirited out of the country. The governor’s widow and children believe that perhaps the wave of intolerance has begun to recede. In Lebanon, Badia Fahs continues to poke holes in the aura of Hezbollah with her writings and by speaking out against the stranglehold of religion on the community. From Brooklyn, Masih Alinejad continues to spearhead the ever-growing campaign against the mandatory veil in Iran, which is turning into a war of attrition against the state. These people are the past and the future and they aren’t alone. They are but a sample of a large majority, one which given the opportunity and the space will seize the occasion to rise against the forces of darkness that have impoverished the region economically. In October 2019, such a moment came in Lebanon and Iraq with extraordinary protests against corruption and poverty, but also against sectarianism. Hundreds of thousands demonstrated in both countries, almost in unison, for weeks on end, from Beirut to the Sunni city of Tripoli in the north to Shia Nabatiyeh in the south, from Baghdad to Karbala and Najaf. With music, dancing, and even a DJ, with flowers, humor, and poetry, they let out a cry for life, braving bullets and beatings. The protestors declared their unity, across all social and sectarian divides, against those in power. In Iraq, Iran was the direct target of the ire of the protestors for days, and even Shia clerics joined the marches to denounce Tehran’s influence, while some protestors scaled the walls of the Iranian consulate in Karbala to hoist the Iraqi flag on its roof.

  In trying to answer the question at the heart of the book, I attempted to render this region in all its diversity and cultural vibrancy, to remind those who look in from the outside that the headlines of today’s insanity are not a reflection of who we are—they never have been. Although our countries have been changed by the hegemonizing influences of both Iran and Saudi Arabia, the headlines in the Western media have always reduced matters of extraordinary depth and complexity to a mere snapshot, which more often than not has catered to an orientalist audience that regards Arab or Muslim cultures as backward and to security-focused policymakers. Over time, those two groups have worked to reinforce each other, merging to such an extent that everything was viewed through the prism of the security of the West, especially after 9/11. Even now, as cities like Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria struggle to overcome the emotional and physical destruction wrought by ISIS, even as whole communities like the Yazidis, a Kurdish ethnic minority, have been decimated by genocide and rape at the hands of ISIS militants, even as Bashar al-Assad continues to kill, torture, and bomb his people, the headlines in the Western media seem focused almost exclusively on the Europeans and Americans who joined the ranks of the militants, on whether they should be allowed back home or stripped of citizenship and what should happen to their wives and children.

  People in Europe or the United States often ask blithely, where are the Muslims and Arabs speaking out against extremism and terrorism? It is deeply troubling to expect that all Muslims should apologize or take responsibility for a minuscule fraction of those who share their faith. Furthermore, the question ignores the devastating sacrifices of those who have been fighting intolerance and its violent manifestations within their own countries long before anyone in the West even thought to pose the question. Far too many progressive minds in the wider Middle East have been left to fend for themselves for decades, as they and their countries were bludgeoned to death by forces of darkness, forces, such as Zia in Pakistan, that most often served Western interests. The largest number of victims of jihadist violence are Muslims themselves within their own countries.

  In focusing mostly on the actions of Iran and Saudi Arabia and the multitude of local players, I did not intend to absolve America for the many mistakes it has made and the deadly policies it has often pursued. From invasions to coups and support for dictators, America’s actions have fed and aggravated local dynamics. President Trump’s decision in May 2018 to withdraw from the multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran, and the additional sanctions he imposed on the country, dramatically raised tensions in the region, almost bringing it to war. But Saudi Arabia and Iran have agency; they make decisions based on their interests and drive the dynamics, too. This endless self-reinforcing loop of enmity cannot easily be broken.

  There are big geopolitical pieces of the puzzle, such as negotiations to end the war in Yemen, or curbing Iran’s influence in Syria. But many of the people I spoke to, those who have not taken sides with either Iran or Saudi Arabia, believe there is no way to defuse the paranoid, vengeful insecurity of Saudi Arabia and to curb the militant ardors of those who feel threatened by Iran’s expansionist designs without first altering the nature of Iran’s regime. Nobel Peace Prize–winner and Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi believes the regime can no longer be reformed and has suggested a UN-monitored referendum to change the constitution and remove the position of Supreme Leader. Removing the article about Iran being the defender of the oppressed everywhere could also help defuse anxiety about Iran’s designs. Meanwhile, many Iranians and Shias will continue to see Saudi Arabia as the enemy as long as it does not moderate anti-Shia rethoric and teachings in the kingdom. Outside its borders, Saudi influence continues in the form of money spent on mosques and teachings that hone close to the kingdom’s understanding of Islam. Seventeen million Muslims are expected to visit Mecca in 2025, and the kingdom should reintroduce the diversity of teaching in Mecca to reverberate a kinder, softer tone out of the heart of Islam. None of this is on the horizon under the current leaders, but it’s not impossible. Saudi and Iranian leaders found their way to détente once before. Before it was weaponized in the years following 1979, the Sunni-Shia schism lay mostly dormant.

  I started this project with the full awareness that the extremist partisans on either side of the Saudi-Iran divide would find fault with everything I wrote—or perhaps they would pick apart the sections that depict them and applaud passages about their nemeses. I did not write this book for them. I wrote it for peers and colleagues and a wider audience of readers who want to understand why events in the Middle East continue to reverberate around the world. I wrote it for those who believe the Arab and Muslim worlds are more than the unceasing headlines about terrorism, ISIS, or the IRGC. Perhaps above all I wrote it for those of my generation and younger in the region who are still asking, “What happened to us?” and who wonder why their parents didn’t,
or couldn’t, do anything to stop the unraveling. I hope the book provides them with some clues and helps them find a better path forward, separate from the one imposed by the leaders of Iran and Saudi Arabia. As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote: “It is perfectly true … that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”

  NOTES

  The page numbers for the notes that appeared in the print version of this title are not in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for the relevant passages documented or discussed.

  1: Cassette Revolution:

  The history of Lebanon’s Shia: Condensed from A. Hourani, “From Jabal ‘Amil to Persia,” in H. E. Chehabi, ed., Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006).

  The struggle opposed two visions: Condensed from F. Ajami, The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 139.

  “I have words harsher than bullets”: Ibid., 145.

  He once drew huge crowds: N. Blanford, Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel (New York: Random House, 2011), chapter 1.

  paying homage to Christ: Ajami, Vanished Imam, 134.

  Some historians dismissed: Condensed from Ajami, Vanished Imam, 144–49.

  You could buy them from fat men: H. E. Chehabi, “The Anti-Shah Opposition in Lebanon,” in Chehabi, ed., Distant Relations, 187.

  Hundreds of young Iranians: Ibid., 184.

  Marzieh, the daughter of a cleric: A. S. Cooper, The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran (New York: Henry Holt, 2016), 372.

  the British High Commissioner reported: H. Samuel, United Nations Document: An Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine, 1 July 1920—30 June 1921 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1921), https://www.un.org/unispal/document/mandate-for-palestine-interim-report-of-the-mandatory-to-the-league-of-nations-balfour-declaration-text/.

  a majority in Jerusalem: Palestine Government, Palestine: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922, available online at https://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/yabber/census/PalestineCensus1922.pdf.

  Husseini explained: Author interviews with Husseini, May 2016 and January 2018.

  “there is no point”: B. Moin, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), 143.

  “what sin I have committed”: Ibid., 147.

  he delivered in Persian: Ibid., 153.

  “This is the juice of a sick mind”: Cooper, Fall of Heaven, 205.

  Husseini did not bring up: Author interviews with Husseini, May 2016 and January 2018.

  He had met Khomeini: Cooper, Fall of Heaven, 194–96.

  if he were not a Muslim: L. Secor, Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran (New York: Riverhead Books, 2016), 14.

  “A futureless past is a state of”: Ali Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shari’ati (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 107.

  He was inspired by Frantz Fanon: Secor, Children of Paradise, 13.

  a discourse for emancipation: S. Saffari, Beyond Shariati: Modernity, Cosmopolitanism, and Islam in Iranian Political Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 10.

  “offspring of the Exalted Leader”: A. Taheri, The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (Washington, DC: Adler & Adler, 1986), 184.

  Shia cleric Sayyed Hani Fahs: K. al-Rashd (presenter), “Sheikh Hani Fahs” [television series episode], Memory Lane, RT Arabic, February 8, 2013.

  the shah was in the middle of a banquet: Cooper, Fall of Heaven, 387–88.

  The meeting, organized by the anti-Western Libyan leader: Condensed from Ajami, Vanished Imam, 182–87; Cooper, Fall of Heaven, 386; K. Bird, The Good Spy (New York: Broadway Books, 2015), 205.

  “The Call of the Prophets”: M. Sadr, “L’Appel des Prophètes” [The call of the prophets], Le Monde, August 23, 1978.

  Sadr was planning to travel: Condensed from Ajami, Vanished Imam, 182–87; Cooper, Fall of Heaven, 386; Bird, Good Spy, 205.

  One of Sadr’s traveling companions: The Imam and the Colonel (documentary), Al-Jazeera, July 24, 2012.

  Sadr had asked him: Author interview with Hussein al-Husseini, Beirut, January 2018.

  Khomeini’s zealots had already burned: Cooper, Fall of Heaven, 376.

  described as “a holocaust”: Ibid.

  Thousands of Iranians had stayed: R. P. Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), 375.

  The crowd of mostly men: Cooper, Fall of Heaven, 399–403.

  he had decided to go into exile: Ibid.

  a popular, progressive: Ibid., 410.

  “a frail and crazy old man”: M. R. Pahlavi, Answer to History (New York: Stein and Day, 1980), 163.

  Mohsen Sazegara was one of the youngest: All details of Mohsen Sazegara’s story are based on an interview with the author in Washington, DC, March 2018; Iran and the West: From Khomeni to Ahmedinejad: Part 1, BBC television broadcast, July 20, 2009; and D. Patrikarakos, “The Last Days of Iran under the Shah,” Financial Times, February 7, 2009.

  had cultivated relationships: Cooper, Fall of Heaven, 196–97.

  the house’s redbrick garage: E. Sciolino, Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran (New York: Free Press, 2000), 48–52.

  “spend the rest of his days”: Cooper, Fall of Heaven, 449.

  Khomeini had been admonished: Ibid., 424.

  Khomeini never again discussed: Moin, Khomeini, 195.

  “The Shah is holding the oil”: Reza Baraheni, God’s Shadow: Prison Poems (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976).

  described as political spirituality: M. Foucault, “À Quoi Rêvent les Iraniens?” Nouvel Observateur, October 16–22, 1978.

  “Khomeini was a moderating influence”: Cooper, Fall of Heaven, 469.

  a “Soviet onslaught”: Embassy Jidda, “Saudi Press Comment on Iranian Situation: Arab News Discusses Shah’s Probable Departure,” Wikileaks Cable: 1979JIDDA00015_e, dated January 2, 1979, http://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1979JIDDA00015_e.html.

  Crown Prince Fahd expressed Saudi support: “Al-Fahd: We Are with the Legitimate Rule in Iran,” Al-Riyadh, January 7, 1979.

  Members of Sunni Islamist movements: A. Mansour, “Witness to an Era with Youssef Nada” [television series episode], In Shahed Ala Al-Asr, Al-Jazeera, August 2002.

  On January 16, 1979: Cooper, Fall of Heaven, 487–89; W. Branigin, “Bakhtiar Wins Vote,” Washington Post, January 17, 1979.

  wild scenes of joy: J. C. Randal, “Dancing in Streets,” Washington Post, January 17, 1979.

  2: Today Tehran, Tomorrow Jerusalem

  Tickets were issued for $500 each: Sciolino, Persian Mirrors, 47.

  “Ayatollah, would you be so kind”: Ibid., 55.

  Reza Pahlavi, the exiled shah’s son: Patrikarakos, “Last Days of Iran under the Shah.”

  playing the role of the shah: Moin, Khomeini, 2.

  Confident of his relationship with God: Ibid., 52.

  “It seemed that the duty”: Ibid., 200.

  Bakhtiar tender his resignation: J. Buchan, Days of God: The Revolution in Iran and Its Consequences (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 219.

  “no reason to stay”: Author interview with Mohsen Sazegara, Washington, DC, March 2018.

  Walking back to the hotel: Ibid.

  “Ayatollah Khomeini is right”: Ibid.

  as though Khomeini were the Mahdi: Moin, Khomeini, 199.

  “I will decide the government”: Iran and the West: From Khomeni to Ahmedinejad, Part 1 [Television broadcast], BBC, July 20, 2009.

  Sadeq Khalkhali, once a pupil of Khomeini: Buchan, Days of God, 228, citing Khalkhali in Khaterat-e Ayatollah Khalkhali (Tehran: Nashr-e sayeh, 2000), 277.

  Safavi and his devotees: M. Prazan (director), La Confrérie, Enquête sur les Frères Musulman
s [The Brotherhood: an investigation on the Muslim Brotherhood] [documentary], 2013, quoting Ladan Boroumand.

  The devotees turned to Khomeini: Moin, Khomeini, 223.

  “Revolt against God’s government”: Ibid., 204, citing Khomeini, Sahifeh-ye Nur (Tehran: The Institute for Publication of Imam Khomeini’s Works, 2008).

  The executions began: Ibid., 207.

  “I killed over 500 criminals”: N. Fathi, “Sadegh Khalkhali, 77, a Judge in Iran Who Executed Hundreds,” New York Times, November 29, 2003.

  In PLO offices in Lebanon: E. Cody, “PLO Now Dubious About Iranian Revolt It Once Hailed,” Washington Post, December 15, 1979.

  early hours of February 17: G. Khoury (presenter), “The Scene: Sheikh Hani Fahs” [television series episode], Al-Mashhad, BBC Arabic, September 18, 2014; further details from An-Nahar front-page reportages by Nabil Nasser, February 18–22, 1979.

  this was a triumph: Embassy Beirut, “Pro-Khomeini Demonstrations in Lebanon,” Wikileaks Cable: 1979BEIRUT00977_e, dated February 19, 1979. http://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1979BEIRUT00977_e.html.

  “Can you believe that the Palestinian revolution”: Associated Press, Yasser Arafat Hails Iranian Revolution, video, available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65xpvmCsm-c.

  “The victory of the people of Iran”: Quotes translated from Arabic in An-Nahar reportages by Nabil Nasser, February 18–22, 1979.