Kim Ghattas

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

From the transcript of her interview with Fareed Zakaria:

ZAKARIA: So explain where "Black Wave" comes from?

GHATTAS: That is where the way it was the cinema director, an Egyptian Cinema Director Youssef Chahine, who first used the term in the '90s as he was complaining about the fact that Egyptian women were donning the Saudi style Niqab the Face Veil and the Black Abaya.

But it is the rise of a trend that is dark, that is joyless, and that you can trace back to that year, 1979, when these two countries started to use all the tools at their disposal, including religion, to try to rally the masses to their side. And they also heightened sectarian differences and turned them into sectarian divisions and violence.

ZAKARIA: So explain what happens in 1979? Why is this a pivotal year?

GHATTAS: Well, 1979 is the year of the Iran revolution when Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran from exile it's the year when Saudi Zealots take hold of the Mosque in Mecca and lay siege to it for two weeks throwing the people that were more are killed the Zealots are put to death. It's also the year when the Soviet's invade Afghanistan and it is the first modern day jihad in our times, an effort backed by the United States. These three invasions...[read on]

Visit Kim Ghattas's website.

--Marshal Zeringue