Desert Conundrum
Two vastly different takes on the puzzle that is Saudi Arabia.
Reviewed by F. Gregory Gause III

PRINCES OF DARKNESS
The Saudi Assault on the West
By Laurent Murawiec, Rowman and Littlefield. 305 pp. $25.95

ALWALEED
Businessman, Billionaire, Prince
By Riz Khan, Morrow. 416 pp. $26.95

Are these two books about the same country? The first depicts Saudi Arabia as a violent, benighted place whose ruling family is pursuing a decades-long plan to subvert American power. The second is the authorized biography of the richest man in Saudi Arabia, a member of the ruling family, who is portrayed as the consummate mix of “East” and “West” — a man who can bridge cultures and repair the torn U.S.-Saudi relationship. Unfortunately, neither is a reliable source about politics and life in Saudi Arabia today, nor does either book shed much light on the fascinating, difficult issues involved in relations between Riyadh and Washington.

Laurent Murawiec had his 15 minutes of fame in August 2002, when his briefing on Saudi Arabia before the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board (a group of outside experts and former officials) was leaked to this newspaper. Murawiec portrayed Saudi Arabia as the “kernel of evil” in the Muslim world, the source of the jihadist movements metastasizing there and thus directly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. His recommendation: To defeat terrorism, take the “Saudi” out of Arabia. This book, translated from the French original published in 2003, is an extended elaboration of his PowerPoint slides.

Murawiec raises serious issues here but does not treat them in a serious way. The official Saudi interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism, is a narrow, puritanical and intolerant reading of the faith. Saudi oil money, both governmental and private, has played a central role in spreading the Wahhabi interpretation through the Muslim world. Wahhabism is one element in the toxic ideological and political mix that produced Osama bin Laden and his jihad against the United States. But in his zeal to indict the Saudis for everything that has gone wrong in the Muslim world (and beyond), Murawiec loses all sense of proportion. He twists facts, distorts history and ignores contrary evidence to hammer away at his target.

F. Gregory Gause III, an associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont and the author of Oil Monarchies. writes these reviews on two “new” books on Saudi Arabia, published in The Washington Post’s “Book World”. Gause, whom my office sponsored as a speaker in Saudi Arabia in 2002, is definitely knowledgeable about Saudi Arabia. His take on the books can be trusted.

Gause politely passes up mentioning that Muraviec’s Defense Policy Board briefing created a firestorm when it was published. It was so wrong in so many ways that it did damage not only to Muraviec, but also to Richard Perle, then heading the Board, who was seen as the motivation behind the presentation. It put an early and serious dent into the idea of “Neo-Con” as a viable political philosophy.