All books featured in this new section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the ­Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2020, pp. 69-70

Book Talks

Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion and Collective Memory in the Middle East by Kim Ghattas

When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ascended to power in Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution that deposed Reza Shah Pahlavi, Saudi Arabia was largely relieved. The Kingdom had a good working relationship with the ousted shah, and feared the possibility of the revolution’s leftist forces consolidating power and installing an imposing communist regime in Tehran. As a fellow pious and conservative Muslim, they surmised that Khomeini, though a Shi’a, shared a worldview eminently reconcilable with the one espoused by Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi religious elite.

It quickly became clear, however, that Riyadh dramatically misread the situation. Khomeini was no ally; rather he was intent on usurping Saudi Arabia as the sole Islamic authority in the region. The Kingdom’s response to this sudden existential threat was swift and far-reaching, transforming the politics, culture and events of the entire Middle East, and unleashing what journalist Kim Ghattas calls a “black wave” across the region. 

In her new book, Black Wave, Ghattas explains not only the origins of the Saudi-Iran conflict, but also how this conflict led to a fundamental reshaping of religious identities and everyday life throughout both the Sunni and Shi’i worlds. 

“The Saudis became determined to position themselves as the sole defenders of the Muslim faith, at all cost, and on every front, from education to politics, from culture to the battlefields,” she writes. This meant supporting mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan, investing deeply in religious education throughout the Muslim world and reshaping its own domestic religious laws. The result was the rapid spread of a deeply conservative brand of Islam throughout the region.

“The title [of the book] came from Youssef Chahine, the Egyptian movie director who said that there had been a ‘black wave’ coming from Saudi Arabia and from the Gulf generally to cover women in black, with the abaya and niqab in Egypt,” Ghattas said at the Feb. 5 launch of her book at Washington, DC’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In a similar vein, women in countries with close ties to Iran, such as Lebanon and Iraq, began donning the Shi’i chador.

Ghattas’ book emphasizes the regional consequences of the Saudi-Iran rivalry,  but she also explores the domestic ramifications of their enmity. 

While Iran experienced a sudden and dramatic cultural change—from the secular shah to the fundamentalist ayatollah—Ghattas said Saudi Arabia’s transition to a deeply conservative society was much less dramatic and perceptible. Before 1979, there were liberal strains within the country’s conservative religious code, she noted. Women, for instance, appeared unveiled on Saudi television, and there were some cinemas in the country. Such liberties began to progressively disappear after 1979, as the country’s religious establishment was given a green light to impose their interpretation of Islam by a Saudi leadership that, according to Ghattas, “wanted to protect its throne and needed the clerics on their side.”

Many in Saudi Arabia did not realize the profoundness of what was happening at the time. “When you’re in the thick of it, it’s hard to understand the trend lines,” Ghattas said. “They thought it was temporary, they thought it would end, they thought this would not hold for long.” 

Reformist Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has openly lamented the post-1979 cultural shifts and views his liberalizing policies as a way to reclaim Islam from ultra-conservative factions. His efforts have been met with wide support from his citizens, but Ghattas cautioned that conservative elements within the country are displeased with the fast pace of change. “People are excited, but people are also troubled,” she said. “And I do think it’s possible there will be a backlash, because you can only keep the lid on those who oppose such movement for so long.”

The crown prince’s efforts—as well as the defiant youth movement against religious rule in Iran—are emblematic of a desire among many of the region’s citizens to reclaim a degree of separation between mosque and state. “I do think that the ‘black wave’ is receding generally in the region,” Ghattas said. “I do think that young people don’t want to be hostage any more to the ghosts of 1979.” 

As was the case in the build-up to 1979, Ghattas emphasized that critical turning points are often only evident in retrospect. Her book is thus not an effort to predict the future. Rather, she hopes her work clarifies the fateful events of the past so as to inform the decisive decisions being made today. “My book helps put together all those pieces of the puzzle, to understand how it started and why we got to where we are today, and where are the key turning points,” she said.

—Dale Sprusansky