Understanding the Volatile and Dangerous Middle East by Steven Carol Reviewed by David Isaac
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/
Mark Twain famously said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” So distorted is the news coverage about the Middle East today, you’re better off uninformed. Whether in the media or academia, treatment of the topic drips with anti-Israel bias and historical ignorance. Dr. Steven Carol’s new book Understanding the Volatile and Dangerous Middle East is a necessary antidote. The purpose of the book, according to Dr. Carol, is to “combat the mistaken beliefs, misrepresentations, and outright fabrications that have been perpetrated to the present.” He achieves his object in this impressive work, a nearly 1,000-page volume (with historical maps the author himself made) covering virtually every aspect of the Middle East, from the Arab-Jewish conflict to the history of the Kurds, Sharia law, Islamic culture, and more.
Understanding the Volatile and Dangerous Middle East succeeds both as a reference work and an entertaining read. Even those knowledgeable about Middle East history will learn from this book. For instance, did you know that the secret signal for Egyptian forces to seize the Suez Canal was “Ferdinand de Lesseps” – the name of the chief engineer in the construction of the canal? Egyptian President Nasser embedded the signal in a speech he gave at Mansheyya Square in Alexandria on July 26, 1956. He repeated it “fourteen times in the space of 10 minutes,” Dr. Carol relates, which is amusing as it suggests Nasser didn’t trust his forces to get the message.
It isn’t surprising that the book is filled with such tidbits for Dr. Carol has spent a lifetime studying his subject. The author of six books, including Middle East Rules of Thumb, he will be most familiar to Arizona residents, where he has taught at the high school, college and graduate levels and is the official historian of the Sunday radio program “The Middle East Radio Forum.” He is also Middle East consultant to the Salem Radio Network.
The author’s section on Israel is first-rate, including an overview of Jewish ties to the Land from ancient times. There’s a strong section on population exchanges throughout history where Dr. Carol zeroes in on the double standard applied to Palestinian Arab refugees compared to the vastly greater number of those displaced in other conflicts. Carol also explains the true nature of the conflict: “It is not the ‘occupation’ of various territories that is the issue, but rather the Arab/Muslim pre-occupation with destroying the Jewish state, no matter what borders it has.” All of this will be familiar to readers ofOutpost, but sadly not to the wider public.
The book is refreshingly un-PC, which becomes apparent right from the start when Dr. Carol opens with a list of basic principles. Here are just a few examples: “In the Arab/Muslim culture, pride, dignity and honor outrank truth on any scale of political values”; “The Arab/Muslim world views their history as starting in 622 C.E. Anything that happened before is an irrelevant myth”; and, “In the Islamic Middle East, the rational desire for peace is often perceived as weakness – a despised trait in that culture.”
It’s in his analysis of Islam and Muslim culture that Dr. Carol is particularly cutting. He describes Islam as a “global totalitarian, supremacist and imperialistic ideology,” which seeks to impose Shari’a law on the entire world and holds “an undiminishable hatred” of the West. He offers a detailed analysis of Islam’s treatment of women and children, its attitude toward non-Muslims, who are Kafir, an Arabic word (or its plural equivalent) that appears 134 times in the Koran. The Koran describes the Kafir as “the vilest of creatures,” and “the worst of beasts.” Dr. Carol says “The treatment of unbelievers is an integral part of the ideology of Islam.” Anything may be done to them, says the Koran, the Sira and the Hadith. They can be cursed, terrorized, robbed, raped, enslaved, and murdered.
The author also includes an interesting section on the nature of Islamic charity, or Zakat, which differs markedly from the Western notion of charity, which gives regardless of age, sex, color or creed. But given Islam’s view of the kafir, it’s not surprising that Muslims will not give to charities that help unbelievers. These include the Indian tsunami victims, and the earthquake victims in Haiti, Chile and Nepal. Palestinian Arab suicide bombers are another story. There Muslims give generously.
The kafir for whom Muslims retain a special hate is the Jew. The author demonstrates how this hatred is often taken to absurd lengths, such as the banning of the film Snow White because there was a horse named “Samson.” Syria wanted the horse’s name changed to “Simpson,” which Disney refused to do. Movies filmed in Israel are also banned. Schindler’s List was banned because it “depicted Jews and Israel in a favorable light.” Dr. Carol provides a list of artists the Arabs boycott, from Elizabeth Taylor to the pop band Black Eyed Peas (perhaps because they included the terms “mazal tov” and “L’Chaim” in one of their songs?).
Understanding the Volatile and Dangerous Middle East (available on Amazon) does a real service. Marshaling overwhelming evidence like a club, Dr. Carol bashes the politically correct humbug that surrounds discussion of the Middle East. This volume should be the centerpiece of high school and college curricula, required reading for State Department bureaucrats, and on the desk of every journalist and academic who deals with the subject.
David Isaac is producer/director of a Zionist history site, Zionism101.org.
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