RaveLondon Review of BooksKim Ghattas’s book shows, however, that similarity can be as dangerous as difference. Discussing the involvement of the Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, she notes that his ‘ways were also the ways of the Islamic Republic, hunting down its dissidents everywhere, imprisoning and torturing women, instilling fear in its neighbours’. Ghattas, a Lebanese-born reporter for the BBC and the Financial Times, also presents a series of more admirable individuals, such as the Iranian scientist and revolutionary Mostafa Chamran, who lived in Lebanon for a number of years among a Shi’a community ‘in harmony with their Sunni and Christian neighbours’, until those powerful factions started radicalising sectarian differences for political gain ... In the course of her analysis, Ghattas adds support to themes that appear in Louër’s work: the frequent alliance of Iran and Saudi Arabia; the absurdities of the Wahhabi purists who banned table football because it involves the use of statuettes, and tinted contact lenses because they suggest feminine wiles; and growing polarisation generally – in Pakistan, half the respondents in one poll said that Shi’a aren’t even Muslims ... Ghattas doesn’t blame the intellectuals she cites, but her account has the unintended effect of portraying them as the losers ... Ghattas puts her faith in a younger generation. Two-thirds of the region’s population are under 30; and half of those under 15.
