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Kim Ghattas Biography

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“Every king had tried to put his imprint on the city and the mosque; some were worse than others. King Faisal had been a parsimonious man and the expansion works reflected as much—measured and reasonable, nothing too ostentatious. The current ruler, King Fahd, was a spender who disliked all that was old. He loved glitz and gold. More ancient neighborhoods were being torn down, and Mecca’s classical Islamic architecture was vanishing rapidly. Ugly modern buildings were rising, and more chain hotels were being built to accommodate yet more pilgrims.”

ArchitectureModernityMecca
Book:Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East
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“Sami was nostalgic for the old Mecca, for the simpler times when the mizan, the balance, between modernity and tradition was easier to attain and maintain. His eternal quest for spiritual harmony was constantly disrupted by construction cranes, bulldozers, generators, and loudspeakers, Sami believed in an evolution that respected the continuity, but Mecca’s connections with the past were being physically severed. The future of the sanctuary of Islam was in danger. The aim of his research center was to make further expansions to the mosque and its surroundings more in tune with history, more respectful of tradition. It was a Sisyphean battle.”

TraditionIslamModernityMeccaWahhabismMasjidil HaramMasjidilharamKaaba
Book:Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East
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“If Beirut was the supermarket of the left in the 1970s, where Marxists, communists, Egyptians, Iraqis, and all the Palestinian factions debated and theorized, published and drank in bars arguing over ideas and the fought in the streets, Peshawar was the supermarket of the Islamists in the 1980s without drinking: there the discussions were about Islamic law, fatwas, the war of the believers, the unity of the Muslim nation, and the humanitarian needs of Afghan refugees.”

IsisAl QaedaAfghanBeirutIslamistPeshawar
Book:Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East
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“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.”

SecurityIranMiddle EastSaudi ArabiaPoliticIslamist
Book:Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East
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