The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror

by Stephen Schwartz

In this informed, compelling exploration of Moslem beliefs and of the sectarian conflicts within the community, a Jewish historian paints a sympathetic portrait of mainstream Islam and exposes the centuries-old roots of Osama bin Laden’s extremism.

The difficult, protracted war against terrorism has raised unsettling questions about the nature of Islam and its influence on America’s declared enemies. In The Two Faces of Islam, Stephen Schwartz, who has devoted years to the study of Islam, explains its complex history and describes the profound philosophical and religious differences that distinguish traditional beliefs from the radical sects that have sprung up over the past fifteen hundred years. He focuses on Wahhabism, the puritanical sect to which Osama bin Laden belongs. Founded in the eighteenth century by a radical cleric, this intolerant “Islamo-fascist” sect became the official creed of the Saudi Arabian state and has been exported to Moslem countries from the Balkans to the Philippines, as well as to Islamic communities in Western Europe and the United States.

By setting the current upheavals within an historical and religious context, Schwartz demonstrates that Osama bin Laden and his followers are not really fighting a war against America. Rather, they are engaged in a revolution within Islam itself–a movement that parallels the turmoil within Christianity during the sixteenth century. Schwartz not only exposes the collusion of the Saudi Arabian government in the spread of radical Islam (which makes them at best reluctant allies of the West), he shows that the majority of Moslems have little sympathy for the Wahhabis and that many openly denounce their motivations and goals.

A riveting narrative that never smacks of propaganda, The Two Faces of Islam is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand who we are fighting, what our enemies believe, and who our friends in the Moslem world really are.


From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Islam, Nonfiction, Religion, Middle East, Politics, History

336 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2002

Reviews

[Brett C · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book explains how the Wahhabi school of thought in Islam rose into existence and came into power in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The author includes an introduction about Islam and then expands on modern issues on a larger scale. The author talks about the historical figure Lawrence of Arabia, oil and cash flow in Saudi Arabia, and the power of Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Wahhabism came about in the 18th century that took on a more puritanical and orthodox interpretation of Islam that is considered very strict. Recent movements such as al-Qaeda and ISIS have adopted intolerance to other views, religions, and leniencies in Islam itself (the wearing of the hijab, growing a beard, etc).

The author then attempted to show how Wahhabism has infiltrated the American public. These doctrines have been delivered under the guise of outreach and bolstering the muslim communities to include a large percentage of American mosques, Islamic centers, and even inside the US prison system. I would recommend this for government or military personnel looking to expand their knowledge on the ongoing issues in the Middle East. Thanks!

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating examination of perhaps the most puritanical version of Islam in the history of that religion. Schwartz gives an informed, highly readable account on the history of this highly legalistic interpretation of Islam, and its impact on both on Saudi Arabia and on Muslims of other cultures around the world.

[Mikey B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately I found this book to be flawed. It was published in 2003 so obviously much has changed since. The invasion of Iraq with its disastrous consequence is one example.

The premise of the book, as per the author, is that Islam is divided into two groups – the traditional sects of Islam (the good) – and Wahhabi Islam (the evil).I find this too simplistic; the author promotes all others branches of Islam as being benign and accommodating. I do agree with the author that Wahhabism is fanatical and evil (essentially anti-human, as for one example it prohibits music). The author provides us with the history and growth of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. The infusion of petro-dollars in the 1950’s allowed for the tremendous growth and expansion of this fanaticism into many branches of Islam. Mosques around the world have been built and infected by this cult. It financed and promoted the development of al-Qaida – and is undoubtedly behind ISIS. The author explains well the dangerous and hypocritical game the Saudi state is playing with the Wahabbis. And as he states this illusion extends to the oil companies and the United States (as well as the other importing oil countries) who keep insisting on referring to “our friends in Saudi Arabia”.

The first eighty pages of the book are a theological history of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. There is considerable name-dropping and any religious scholar is simply revered by the author. He avoids the continuing problems in the Muslim world like the repression of women. The civil status of women in Muslim countries is markedly lower than in all other countries. This is not brought up in this book.

Most puzzling, was the authors’ veneration of Ayatollah Khomeini and the state of Iran. The Ayatollah is presented as being an accommodating and benevolent dictator. He says that Khomeini, unlike bin Laden , was a religious scholar as if this implies that he is entitled to be the leader of Iran. This leader, for example, sent thousands of young children to die as suicide martyrs in Iraqi minefields. A few years after Khomeini came to power many in Iran felt the wrath of his puritanical zealotry.

The author constantly changes topics throughout, with name-dropping, and weird sentences abound like this one (page 235)
“Bin Laden was not a major strategist; he was an opportunistic improviser in the style of Hitler or Stalin.”

He does not discuss Pakistan and fails to mention that it was the major conduit of arms to Afghanistan during their struggle with the Soviet Union. Pakistan created the Taliban – with the aid of Saudi Arabia. Pakistan is a source of radical Islam and madrassas flourish, inculcating young minds with fanatical Islam.

To the authors’ credit, it must be acknowledged that journalists are not allowed entry into Saudi Arabia. It is quite possibly, aside from North Korea, the most isolated country on the planet – and the foremost repressive theocratic dictatorship.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1385147.html

The two eponymous faces are fanaticism and moderation; the book's subtitle is 'Saudi fundamentalism and its role in terrorism', and the whole thrust of the book is to expose Wahhabism and its linkage with the Saudi monarchy as a driving force in Islamic terrorism worldwide. The tone of the book is offputtingly polemical at times, but there were a couple of good sections - Schwarz is pro-Shi'ite, so his take on Iran is much more sober than one usually gets from US sources; and his account of the failure of Wahhabism to make much headway in Bosnia or Kosovo is almost comical. However, he has a painfully unconvincing page on Iraq (I guess to try and exploit the 2002 market) and also numerous other surprising asides - that the Yugoslav wars might have been planned from the Kremlin, or that Trotsky's assassination was the most famous terrorist act of the 20th century (the latter particularly surprising from someone who knows Sarajevo as well as Schwartz does).

However, despite the weaknesses of the argument, the case is well made that if the US is actually serious about fighting terrorism through regime change, there are worse places to do it than Saudi Arabia. Also Schwartz's call for more intense monitoring and intervention by US authorities in their own domestic Islam religious and educational discourse is probably well-founded, and it has to be said that the recent incidents of home-grown extremism in America rather prove his point. But I would be interested to read a more sober and detailed account of the relationship between Wahhabism and Saudi money; the indications are all there but the details didn't quite join up for me.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't decide between 2 and 3 stars, really. I appreciated a lot of the information in the book - particularly in the first few chapters. Then, after that, something happens and it just doesn't have the tone of a book that was well-researched. There seems to be a lot of opinion thrown in and sometimes I didn't know exactly what was the author's views on something and what was a fact. Not a bad book at all, but I think there are probably stronger, better-research (or maybe better-delivered) books on Wahhabis out there.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud From Tradition to Terror by Stephen Schwartz (Doubleday 2002) (297.814) (3837).

I am not in any sense of the term a religious scholar. I am, however, curious, and my curiosity drove me to this book in an attempt to gain a more nuanced understanding of the culture and world view of the followers of Islam.

The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud From Tradition to Terror is an odd volume of rhetoric which was published within a year of the 9/11/2001 World Trade Center terrorist bombings in New York. The book purports to distinguish between the various factions within the Islamic faith and community, and it focuses upon comparing the traditionally-mainstream Sunni-Sufi branch of Islam with the ultra-conservative Shi’a (or Shiite) community. (The author styles the former branch as moderates and the latter as fanatics. For the sake of perspective, Osama bin Laden was a Shiite.)

This book is neither a simple screed condemning Islam nor is it an academic treatise on the various religious divisions within the Islamic faith and community.

This later approach - that of a scholarly analysis - is the one the author purports to adopt. However, the book soon devolves into an argument condemning the fundamentalist Shiite (or “Wahhabi”) sect in the most strident terms, and it fingers the Saudi Arabians as the ultimate puppet masters behind the Shiites.

While the author thoroughly airs his case, I found the book to be informational but not informative. Granted, the book opens with a detailed factual analysis of the origins of the various forms of Islam. However, the book soon devolves into something approaching a political diatribe against the Shiites and the Saudis.

The author so thoroughly condemned the Shiites that his arguments raised red flags for me. Stephen Schwartz’s arguments may be exactly right, but his strident and continuous attacks against one group made this reader suspicious of the author’s motives, his veracity, and of those in power who promote his perspective.

The saving grace of this book was its detailed descriptions of the Sufis and the various forms of the practice of “dhikr.” Sifting out those nuggets of information alone was worth the time invested in reading this volume.

My rating: 7/10, finished 8/1/2023 (3837).

[Corinne Wasilewski · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book itself was a bit of a slog to get through -- dense prose with names that were hard to keep straight, but, the content was informative and often times shocking. The idea that Wahhabi-Saudi hyprocisy is the biggest threat to the stability of Saudi Arabia was a new one to me. I also appreciated the comparison of Wahhabism to Stalinism and Nazism as a totalitarian ideology that sees the world in rigid, binary terms. In the case of Wahhabism we have the "house of war" and the "house of peace". The section on the Wahhabi lobby and its entrenchment in Islamic affairs in the US was truly terrifying. I questioned the writer's statistics but found they were supported by sites on the web (ie. 80% of American mosques are run by Wahhabi imans directly subsidized by Saudi Arabia). Made me wonder why the US travel ban doesn't include Saudi Arabia.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A HISTORICAL SURVEY OF HOW SAUDI ARABIA CAME TO SUPPORT RADICALISM

Author Stephen Schwartz wrote in the Preface to this 2002 book, “Westerners until now have known almost nothing about the deep conflict that presently rages over the soul of Islam, a struggle to determine its future which is, at the same time, a controversy over its past… When President Bush and other Western leaders assured their publics that terrorism is at odds with true Islam, and were echoed by the Islamic establishments in any Muslim and non-Muslim countries, they were both right and wrong. The strain of Islam that encouraged bin Laden and his followers represents neither a majority of Muslims nor traditional Islamic values. But nor is it a matter of a simple hijacking of the faith.

“The extremist face of Islam, which justifies violence and stirs hatred, reflects rich and powerful interests. That face is possessed by the ideology known as Wahhabism, a ‘death cult’ that is the official religious dispensation of the Saudi kingdom and which the Saudis… have spent decades… exporting to the rest of the world… Yet no history of the Wahhabi cult has been written for a general audience; it is high time to correct this omission… With this book I have tried to present a fresh view of Islam… but equally rejecting the simplistic, ‘crusader’ polemics widely seen in Western intellectual life today. Mainstream Islam restored to its past power, traditional and pluralistic, will generate new, fruitful contributions to humanity… It is imperative that we find reliable Muslim allies in this war… and understand their cultural differences as well as their similarities.” (Pg. xiii-xiv)

He states, “Islamic history reflects this permanent contradiction between consensus and fundamentalism… Consensus maintained that belief, however imperfectly an individual might adhere to it, must not be questioned… belief alone is sufficient for salvation, while fundamentalists declared that faith must be judged in terms of outward conduct. Keepers of the Consensus recognized that human beings are unpredictable in their deeds and may better be judged by their intentions. The fundamentalists became puritan fanatics, treating all who strayed from their norms as unbelievers worthy of extinction.” (Pg. 43)

He observes, “The Ottoman Empire has fatal weaknesses. Yet the deadliest challenge to its rules would come not from the artillery of Christian princes but from a fundamentalist movement among the Arabs. The apocalyptic, militaristic, and totalitarian cult called Wahhabism would shed the blood of many fellow Muslims before eventually hurling a murderous challenge to the Judeo-Christian world.” (Pg. 65)

He outlines, “The essence of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s preaching came down to three points. First, ritual is superior to intentions. Second, no reverence of the dead is permitted. Third, there can be no intercessory prayer, addressed to God by means of the Prophet of saints… Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s followers ascribed a human form to God… An anthropomorphic view of God had hitherto been considered scandalously heretical in Islam.” (Pg. 69) Later, he adds, “Unfortunately, most Western writers on Islam have taken Wahhabi claims to represent reform against the alleged decadence of traditional Islam at face value. Because the Wahhabis rejected ostentatious spirituality, Western observers have seen the movement as analogous with the Christian Reformation.” (Pg. 76)

He recounts, “The Saudi society of the 1930s had been subordinated to Wahhabi religious command, but the country’s population did not submit uniformly, notwithstanding the reports of Western apologists who reproduced Wahhabi claims that they held the enthusiastic and loving allegiance of an overwhelming majority.” (Pg. 109) But later, he adds, “Yet the fact remains that the Wahhabi core of the Saudi state had survived unchanged since its creation. The kingdom cleaved to fundamentalist doctrine under which women were generally confined to the home, and when in public had to cover themselves completely, in excess of the recommendations of traditional Islamic jurisprudence… At the same time, Wahhabi-Saudi dependence on Western technology and finance, and ultimately, on the sword of the unbelievers---the military forces of Christian America---for their security, inevitably sowed profound instability in Saudi Arabia.” (Pg. 124)

He records, “Equally alarmed by the Iranian Revolution, Saudi Arabia soon found a weapon against it in the person of Iraqi dictator, Saddam Husayn… In 1980, the Saudis backed Saddam in a war of aggression against Iran that would last nine years… Even when the war turned into a disastrous bloodletting for Iraq, the Saudi kingdom moderated its rhetoric but continued supporting Saddam against the Iranians.” (Pg. 149)

He says of the Bosnian war, “News of Muslim women and girls raped in Bosnia stabbed to the heart of every Muslim in the world. The repetition of these reports in global media generated feelings of fear, helplessness, and outrage. The complicity of Christian Europe in the nightmare aggravated these feelings… To Muslims, Bosnia had the impact of a holocaust, in the heart of a Europe that had claimed no such genocide would ever happen again within its borders… [Europe’s] own contribution to this anger---represented by European passivity n the face of the Bosnian horror---is rarely, if ever, acknowledged.” (Pg. 172)

He asserts, “The ideological division of humanity into ‘two worlds’ has been promulgated on different bases: Wahabism applied a religious distinction, Communism, and class standard, and Nazism a racial criterion. But in all cases, fanatics… sought to split their own societies between the virtuous, entitled to hold power and property, and the virtueless, condemned to disappear… Finally, all three of the totalitarian collective illnesses, Wahhabism, Communism, and fascism, represented the stunted, underdeveloped, and deformed modernism of backward societies attempting, by a forced march, to catch up and surpass the more advanced and prosperous cultures.” (Pg. 177)

He points out, “In the wake of the atrocities of September 11, American and other Western commentators asked a perplexing question. The aim of three previous wars fought by the United States and its allies had been to rescue Muslim or Muslim-majority peoples from aggression. The Gulf War saved Kuwait from Iraqi invasion, the 1995 intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina halted Serbian attacks on Muslims, and the NATO campaign against Serbia four years later prevented the expulsion from Kosovo of two million Kosovar Albanians, of whom at least 80 percent were Muslims. Western intervention also saved the Iraqi Kurd. Why then should so many Arab Muslims hate America? Had they forgotten these acts?” (Pg. 195-196)

He explains, “by the end of the 20th century there was to all outward appearances a flourishing and diverse American Muslim community. Indeed, before September 11, Islam was often described as the fastest growing faith in America. However, the great weakness of American Islam was its lack of tradition---the continuity of scholars that, elsewhere in the ummah, has stabilized the community and, with varying results, has guarded it from excesses and extremism. In addition, its public religious institutions were underdeveloped, if only because the community had been so small and scattered… A ’Muslim establishment’ did not exist in America until the mid-1980s when Hamas, the Wahhabi organization fighting Israel, decided to open a political front on U.S. territory: a ‘Wahhabi lobby.’ … Above all, their Wahhabism was visible in their central, obsessive promotion of a rejectionist stance against Israel and their unwavering apologetics for suicide terrorism.” (Pg. 227-229)

He notes, “Although CAIR asserted that its objective was to prevent ‘stereotyping and inaccuracy’ in the depiction of Muslims, its real aim was not to protect American Muslims from harmful prejudice but to prevent Islamic moderates … from conducting an open religious dialogue with American Christians and Jews. The reason is simple: Such a dialogue would reveal to the American public the important truth that the great majority of the world’s more than one billion Muslims do not support Wahhabism.” (Pg. 236)

He points out, “According to [Shaykh Hisham] Kabbani and other dissenters, 80 percent of American mosques are run by Wahhabi imams directly subsidized by Saudi Arabia. This, however, does not imply that ordinary Muslims are enthusiasts of Wahhabism. Khalid Duran is doubtless correct in arguing that no more than 20 percent of American Muslim congregations support Wahhabism.” (Pg. 240)

He summarizes, “The question is not whether Saudi Arabia is a friend or a foe, but whether the Saudi regime can survive, and whether we should conspire with the Wahhabi-Saudi establishment to continue propping it up… Western policymakers must ponder the question: Whither Saudi Arabia?” (Pg. 273) He continues, “Difficult as it may be for our leaders to say so in public, it is clear that Wahhabism-Saudism is part of the ‘axis of evil’---and possibly the most dangerous part. (Pg. 281)

He concludes, “After September 11, the people of the United States, and of the West in general, were deluged with images of the evil face of Islam---the face of Wahhabism… But the other face of Islam waited patiently, seemingly hidden, but no less present, the face of pluralism and coexistence, of Sufis preaching love and healing, of scholars seeking new routes for the Islamic imagination, and of millions upon millions of ordinary Muslims around the world looking confidently toward a world of prosperity and stability… For Westerners to miss such an opportunity would be worse than folly; it would be suicide. In defeating terror, let us therefore clasp the hands of traditional Muslims, and recognize in them our cousins, our sisters, our brothers.” (Pg. 286-287)

This book will be of great interest to those studying Saudi Arabia, and contemporary Islam.

[Abu Kamdar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slow, poorly written and extremely biased.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely an interesting story, even if slow and very academic. Written post-9/11 but pre-Iraq, Schwartz argues that the strict Wahabbi denomination of the Saudi ruling class has been a detriment to pluralistic Islam in the 20th century, and the US alliance with the Saudi monarchy, incorrectly seen as a staunch and moderate force in the Middle East, has been detrimental to the war on terror and to America's standing in the region. He gives lots of examples of export of extremist idealogy from Saudi Arabia into other recent conflict zones, such as Bosnia and Chechnya. I'm not sure how these accusations face up to scrutiny from other academics - it's the first I've heard of any of them - but I'd be interested to learn more. Schwartz criticizes the post-9/11 Bush administration as having missed the opportunity to engage moderate facets of Islamic communities - abroad as well as in the US - and to distance ourselves from Saudi Wahabbism. He doesn't do this from a liberal standpoint - he later stood with the "neocon" movement in supporting the invasion and occupation of Iraq - but seemingly from a more pragmatic, less ideologically motivated platform.

[Nia Vestal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads too much like a conspiracy book than a book that should be based on hard facts. The author presented questions that made me think and I liked that. But too much information is unvalidated even when looking through the notes and bibliography. I kept coming back to the question of what would motivate a Jewish author to write a critical history of Islam at America's back door. Most intelligent readers could answer this question without reading the book. The book was an interesting read but as far as factual information, I would not recommend this to a reader who wants to learn an unbiased view of Islam. This is very much a biased account of religion and history, but then again, most sources are. The author does point to links with the Americans and Saudi along with hammering the point that Wahhabism is not a traditional sect of Islam for Westernized countries who may believe this is true.

[William Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schwartz disseminates the historical and geopolitical influence of Islamic sects: Shi’a, Sufi, and Wahhabism. Through a polemic and iconoclastic tone, The Two Faces of Islam details the pernicious influence of Wahhabism Islamofascism, a destructive distortion of the more pluralistic foundations of Islam. Whilst, at times, Schwartz appears unbalanced in his appreciation of Islam more broadly, their general claims – we ought to be actively concerned by Wahhabism, refocusing our efforts against Saudi Arabia rather than Iran, and galvanising anti-Wahhabism sentiments across the majority of the Islamic world rather than general anti-Islamic politics – are convincingly made. Overall, essential reading for those experiencing a singularly myopic impression of Islam.

[Kevin Q · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hes good. Dude is a Sufi who wrote a history of POUM hes going to have an interesting take on this.

[Michael Connolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author does a good job of describing the cruel Wahhabi sect within Islam. As an alternative, he recommends the gentler form of Islam, called Sufism. Unfortunately, he does not go into much depth in his description of Sufism. Elsewhere, I have read that Sufism is a mixture of traditional Islam with shamanism from Central Asia. This would explain why Sufism is found primarily in the northern range of Islam, and not in Arabia. So it appears that the author's thesis that radical Islam is a perversion of Islam is not true. The Wahhabis and Salafis represent the true essence of Islam, and moderate Islam is Islam that has been "cut" with less severe beliefs that originated outside of Arabia.

[Tanner Butterfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential book giving history of modern sunni radicalism. This is the best book on modern islam i have ever read. Wahabi islam is almost as old as america. It is essential to know how radical islam is spreading its propaganda across the world. All other forms of islam like sufi and shia are being oppressed. This book is a must read.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would recommend reading the first four chapters to anyone interested in basic knowledge of Islam in historical perspective. The rest of the book gives the author's point of view that I myself don’t agree with entirely and I would think others would debate as well alot of it as well.

[Dale Amidei · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative summary of the origin of the divisions within one of the world's great religions. Vital reading for anyone seeking to understand the current conflict between democracy and theocratic fascism.

[Allen Bolinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

An in depth look at the history of Islam. It dispels the idea that Islam is a monolithic religion and explores and explains different sects, practices, and ideology of its followers. I feel it greatly enhanced my knowledge of the subject.

[Seth Bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's very informative, but very dry. The last two chapters really went where I wanted it to go, but the writing style in general is a bit bland. It is, however, still worth reading.

[Lisa Branch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Knockout. Read sample from any book sales website. Describes how radical islam isn't Islam. Describes how traditional Islam radicalized to a call for destruction.

[Danmcgohan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative.