It's Gene W. Heck's When Worlds Collide: Exploring the Ideological and Political Foundations of the Clash of Civilization, published a few weeks ago by Rowman & Littlefield.
According to Daniel Pipes:
Gene W. Heck has an impressive biography, being "a senior business development economist operating in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Mideast. Prior to joining the private sector, he was a member of the United States Diplomatic Corps, with postings to the U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He also serves as adjunct professor of government and history with the University of Maryland."
Pipes goes on to detail some of the key points of the book:
* There is nothing bellicose about the Koran, which is no more aggressive than the Old Testament.* Islam's theological differences with Judaism and Christianity are "surprisingly limited."
* The Shari‘a is completely consonant with the Hague and Geneva Conventions.
* Jihad frequently means "the unending struggle of the devout to be good Muslims."
* The Wahhabi movement is innocent of aggressive intentions.
* Today's troubles go back to the efforts by Western intelligence agencies to further their own interests by sponsoring Islamist organizations – notably British backing for the Muslim Brethren in Egypt and American backing for Islamist groups in Afghanistan.
* Al-Qaeda is basically a Muslim Brethren offshoot.
* "Anglo-American democracy" is exactly what the Muslim world does not need; theocracy is the ticket.
* If Westerners want to help Muslims, they should send them money.
And:
Disclaimer: Heck mentions me (along with Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or, David Littman, and Ibn Warraq) as one of those who decry "present perceived religious suppression, presumed political discrimination, and alleged civil rights violations in certain Middle East states wherein Islam today is practiced." Well, yes, I guess I am guilty of decrying those perceived, presumed, and alleged problems.
I am honored to be in that company, but the adjectives that Pipes notes here -- perceived religious suppression, presumed political discrimination, and alleged civil rights violations in certain Middle East states -- raise Heck's book to the level of the risible. If it weren't already there for the assertions that "there is nothing bellicose about the Koran, which is no more aggressive than the Old Testament," and that Islam's theological differences with Judaism and Christianity are "surprisingly limited," and that "the Shari‘a is completely consonant with the Hague and Geneva Conventions," and "Jihad frequently means "the unending struggle of the devout to be good Muslims." For detailed refutations of all of those, see my book Religion of Peace?.
Just when I thought I have seen everything...
"Gene W. Heck has an impressive biography, being "a senior business development economist operating in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Mideast. Prior to joining the private sector, he was a member of the United States Diplomatic Corps, with postings to the U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and Jordan."
I wonder who approached him first? Was it the Saudis? The Kuwaitis? Qatar? If this was during the Cold War, he would be considered a spy or a communist. Now these types can operate in plain sight. Being paid enormous sums of money and receiving funding to write Doublethink books like this.
How could any rational person actually believe this drivel? Well, if the unread and uninformed are told something over and over, it may well believed. Considering the current state of things, it looks as though many do enjoy the consumption of such tripe.
It is very difficult to not be pessimistic about the future of Western Civilization...
" Today's troubles go back to the efforts by Western intelligence agencies to further their own interests by sponsoring Islamist organizations – notably British backing for the Muslim Brethren in Egypt and American backing for Islamist groups in Afghanistan"
....BAAAALOOONEY....Muslim troubles go back at least 1400 years, long before America was even born and long before there were western intelligence agencies as we know them today....the goals of Islam are the same today as they were 1400 years ago.....some people just don't get it...
Lots of people are fact proof.
One more example of the Old Song on the Old Victrola, one more example of Money Weapon (Saudi Division) at work. Gene Heck signed his name to the book; he may even have written part or all of it; its contents, of course, are merely His Master's Voice. Is he metempsychotically channeling Philby Senior, or Leopold Weiss ("Mustafa As'ad")? Or psychotically channeling the well-paid deliberate hallucinations of assorted ex-diplomats and Western intelligence agents, who "seen their opportunities and they took 'em" with all that Saudi and other Arab money sloshing about the capitals of the West, and whose representative figure may be Raymond Close, former C.I.A. station chief in Riyadh, who retired early to go into business with two Saudis, one of them a former Saudi intelligence chief.
A recent post on the theme:
September 7, 2007
Fitzgerald: Stop the Saudi lobby
A Jihad Watch reader recently noted: “When Israel attacked Iraq’s nuclear reactor in July 1981, John West (Ambassador to S.A. 1977-1981) sent a letter to the House of Foreign Affairs Committee asking that punitive action be taken against Israel. As ambassador, West provoked major controversy when he facilitated the contracting of a private public relations firm by the government of Saudi Arabia to lobby for the sale of F-15’s.”
John C. West's old friend Crawford Cook was, at West's urging, hired by the Saudis. On the campus of the University of South Carolina, at some "Center" named after Ernest Hollings (himself a big promoter of the Saudis, as he was a denigrator of Israel), you can find the names of both "John C. West" and "Crawford Cook."
But then there is James Akins, in a class by himself. He was the American ambassador to Saudi Arabia during that critical year 1973, and finally had to be fired even by Kissinger for his blatant behavior. Imagine what James Akins sent back to Washington about OPEC and the quadrupling of oil prices. Do you think he warned anyone that this was dangerous, given what Saudi Arabia was like, because much of that money was likely to be used abroad to promote the spread of Islam? Do you think James Akins -- who still insists that Israel "deliberately" attacked the U.S.S. Liberty during the Six-Day War, which at this point, after the release of the Israeli pilots' tapes, no one except convinced antisemites could possibly maintain -- warned Washington about the future uses of that oil money?
What about Raymond Close, who was C.I.A. station chief in Jeddah, or was it Riyadh, from 1970 to 1977, again during the critical years when policy toward newly-rich Saudi Arabia might have been differently crafted if accurate information about the attitudes of Saudis toward Infidels had been accurately conveyed? Close took early retirement and then immediately went into business with two well-connected Saudi businessmen, one of them a former Saudi intelligence head. When do you think he started getting those job offers from the Saudis -- after he retired, or before? And he then went on to be involved in the banking scandal (was it the BCCI? I can't remember) and various arms transfers, and then of course continued writing about American foreign policy and the need to jettison Israel and be grateful to Saudi Arabia for all it has done for us, and is trying to do. For all I know he continues this to this day, from his home in Princeton. Just a few years ago another contact and sympathizer of his got him a gig as a "Stimson Fellow" at Yale -- these people are all over the place.
And then there is Eugene Bird, that "patriot," that genuine American "patriot," who cares only for the National Interest. That is why he heads up something called the "Council for the National Interest," which somehow has enough money to pay for full-page ads in The Times, and more than once, and which pushes a policy of denouncing...the "Israel Lobby" and offering suggestions identical to those of the Saudi government.
And there are so many others, of both parties -- Fred Dutton, the former Kennedy apparatchik. A dozen different Washington lobbying firms. This also includes everyone who ever got an expensive present from Prince Bandar, who dropped off a Jaguar as a token of his affection for Mrs. Colin Powell. The ostentatiously upright Powell apparently thought that was just swell. He never apparently thought he should refuse to accept it. Yet it not only looks bad, it is bad.
Has Congress taken it upon itself to make such names as "Raymond Close" and "James Akins" and "Eugene Bird" and others well known to the American public? Has Congress asked to see what information was sent back to Washington in 1973, during the quadrupling of oil prices, by both Akins and Close? It hasn't? Why not?
If that information is not made public, and the recipients of Saudi and other Arab largesse not publicly revealed, then what will prevent the Saudis, in the next decade, from spreading their wealth around in exactly the same ways, to exactly the same effect? We cannot take away all their money -- though we can severely limit what they can send to this country to pay for mosques and madrasas where literature preaching hate for Infidels has been found (see the report of the Center for Religious Freedom). But we can subject to close and critical scrutiny those who have in the past received such Saudi and other Arab financial support, directly and indirectly, as a complement to making it illegal to receive sums above, say, $50,000 a year from any foreign country, and to make sure all loopholes are closed and the moral hatches battened down. The American government and the people it presumes to protect can't take much more of this.
[Posted by Hugh at September 7, 2007]
Good grief, another useless dhimmi!
The simple fact that we were ignorant of Islam and we supported anti-Soviet Muslims will continue to be used by people like G W Heck to distort history.
Yes, we used Mulsims against the USSR in Afghanistan, but it was misguided effort to thwart Soviet domination of the region and to help the "poor down trodden" Afghani peasants. Carter thought he was helping true freedom fighters in the mold of Paine and Washington, one of the top three or four misjudgements of the last century.
Islamania's differences with Jews and Christians are amazingly small? What a relief-had the differences been great we might be seeing things like Jews and Christians being killed in all sorts of ways all over the world for the last 1400 years.
Heck's book may be the worst of the year but since we have three months to go I wouldn't be shocked if someone manages to top it. Anyone know if Karen Armstrong or Iran's president will be coming out with a book before the end of the year?
The scary thing is, Heck actually believes what he says and writes. The ability of people to buy into the "Big Lie" is amazing.
I wonder if the IRS is aware of his "royalties."
"Good grief, another useless dhimmi!"
Actually, not quite so useless, to the Islamists, that is. His dumb book will delude even more people who want to be dhimmis and will be championed as a real schoolarly work as opposed to those by that Islamophobe Robert Spencer. Never mind the fact Mr. Spencer's work is grounded in fact and what Muslims really believe. Don'tcha know Islam means peace?
A few words to summarize my opinion: WOW and "might as well tell a whopper".
"Good grief, another useless dhimmi!"
No, not a dhimmi. Traitor come to mind. Lord Ha Ha of Arabia.
Heck, he sounds like an idiot.
Might be hard to classify this book. You really could not put it in the non-fiction section. Fantasy would be a better choice than fiction. Nope just sell it as is, a paid political advertisement.
With his experience, there simply is no excuse for Heck writing this book -- he couldn't be ignorant of the facts, unaware of the truth of the situation, or buying into the prevalent lie that Islam is peace and tolerance. This is intellectual prostitution -- which has considerably more dire consequences than the other kind. It's unbelievable what people will do for money...
Bookmarks!
"Don't believe the whitewash of Islam."
"Learn the Truth at www.Jihadwatch.com"
----------------------------
WHAT TO DO WITH BOOKMARK:
1. Enter Bookstore
2. Find "Dhimmi" book (i.e. "When Worlds Collide: Exploring the Ideological and Political Foundations of the Clash of Civilization" by Gene W. Heck.)
3. Open front cover and insert FREE bookmark.
$$$$$$$$
"worst book of 2007..."
"Giving" by Bill Clinton is the rival that comes immediately to mind. A paean of praise, and a book of hope, and a book that will add to the tens of millions of dollars that the grasping Bill Clinton has so frenetically amassed since leaving "public service." No doubt a few hundred copies were inscribed "with hope" or "thanks for giving" or "you[re one person who didn't need this book" or "thanks for all you've done and I am sure will continue to do" by the author himself, and sent out en masse to all of his new, true-blue friends, each with a minimum worth of tens of millions of dollars, and several being billionaires, and all of them allowed to feel that all's right with the world as long as they, are in some way, "giving."
Only one question: how much of the tens of millions of dollars that Clinton has grabbed, and how much of the milliins he hopes he will make from "Giving," will he, Bill Clinton, actually "give" to someone not named Clinton?
That's what Youth Wants To Know.
Oh I hate to say I was right but...
He is a Republican! A GOP-ROPer! Another example of the ROP using the free trade-world economy route into the GOP. We can add Mr. Heck to the D'Souza-Norquist axis.
Here is a list of other Mr. Heck's works..
Charlemagne, Muhammad, and the Arab Roots of Capitalism (Studien Zur Geschichte Und Kultur Des Islamischen Orients) by Gene W. Heck
Building entrepreneurial Michigan: A development strategy for the 1990s : executive summary by Gene W Heck (Should be renamed: Dearbornistan!)
Building Prosperity: Why Ronald Reagan and the Founding Fathers Were Right on the Economy by Gene W. Heck (He has to link himself to Reagan so he can get GOP cred)
Its all there...I guess you can make history anything you want it.
Is it possible sincerely to believe all the assertions Heck makes? One shouldn't attribute motives one can't know, but for the guy to make all those assertions, doesn't he almost have to be in the pay of Saudi Arabia or other Muslim powers, or else be a Muslim himself? I ask that as a genuine question, not as a veiled assertion.
At the Walter de Gruyter publisher site it says of
"Charlemagne, Muhammad, and the Arab Roots of Capitalism (Studien Zur Geschichte Und Kultur Des Islamischen Orients) by Gene W. Heck
"Gene W. Heck explores the role of Islam in precipitating Europe’s twelfth century commercial renaissance. Determining that Europe’s medieval feudal interregnum was largely caused by indigenous governmental business regulation and not by shifts in international trade patterns, he demonstrates how Islamic economic precepts provided the ideological rationales that empowered medieval Europe to escape its three-centuries-long experiment in “Dark Age economics” - in the process, providing the West with its archetypic tools of capitalism."
Oh momma...
This Gene W. Heck really seems to be a loyal Republican and even an admirer of Ronald Reagan. He served as a U.S. Army Military Intelligence Officer for many years, with U.S. Army reserve tours in Ethiopia, Turkey, and Jordan. Not your usual multicultural Leftist at all.
My guess is that this Dr. Heck is more like a "Brent Scowcroft Republican," proud of his links to the Saudis and other Arabs and who became personal friends with them during the Cold War against Communism.
"BOOKMARKS"
Leaving a small message inside books like this one is something easy to do and very effective!
Oh yes, another apologist for the iCult… snooze. What the Heck, just say the shahadah and get on your knees to Makka, get it over with, slave.
We’re not fooled anymore, this Saudi slave dhimmi is on a short leash, so just ‘taqqiyya’. Ho hum, snoozsss…
I'm going to change my posting by saying that we did not use muslims in Afghanistan. We helped them defeat the Soviets. The Soviets lost and we also lost by ignoring the post Soviet civil war.
Apropos of the preceding comment regarding Heck's book on the "Arab Roots of Capitalism," see another piece by Pipes at
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F79F2C0C-F8F2-443E-B4E6-A691308A72AE
It's about another book that argues that "Islamic economics" is an Islamist construct dating back only to the 1940s.
"The Shari‘a is completely consonant with the Hague and Geneva Conventions."
I don't recall the latter advocating killing gays and adulterers.
Also, I doubt mohammed's cold blooded murder of hundreds of men and boys after the siege of medina would pass the Geneva Convention test. Hitler's Einzatzgruppen test maybe.
Here is where the elite of the "the United States Diplomatic Corps" are now trained: [Saudi] Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The State Department FSO ranks are infested with these Saudi sycophants worldwide now, thanks to the brilliant stroke of propaganda genius that funded this institution in the very heart of the modern version of Justinian's Augusteum.
I find it nearly impossible to believe that one man can support all those points that Pipe's alluded to.
This goes way beyond "worst book of 2007".
* If Westerners want to help Muslims, they should send them money.
Good idea. So they can buy up all our stock exchanges and our port facilities.
I think we're sending them plenty of dough already..
IMHO we should "nationalize" the stuff they're buying over here. Payback for their nationalizing the oil investments we had over there..
Gene W. Heck is a bit too obvious even for a hooker.
A sensible prostitute does not flaunt her obligation and attachment to her pimp in front of potential johns and suckers. It's just not good business practice.
I would wish the man ill fortune, but after becoming what he seems to be now, it's hard to imagine a worse fate to wish upon a creature.
Certainly he must be beyond the reach of shame.
I hope the jihaddis get him.
Can anyone quote for me a single line in either the old or new testament that commands beleivers to kill, subjugate or forcefully convert unbeleivers?
Can anyone give an example of a christian sect blowing up another christian sect for their differences in their religions lately?
So far I haven't been able to find an example of either.
Yoo Hoo! westerners WAKE UP!
He plagiarized his title from both a 1950's sci-novel by Philip Wylie (exactly the same), and a varient in the more recent:
"Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of the Global Order".
An unoriginal thinker.
And an unoriginal liar.
greatcomet - that sounds absolutely mad.
To see the difference between medieval Western and Muslim methods of government and their fruits, read, for instance, James Parkes, 'Whose Land?', which spends many chapters recounting the ruinous effect of centuries of Muslim misgovernment, rampant corruption, banditry, extortionate taxation, and incessant warfare upon the Christian, Jewish and Muslim peasants, merchants and artisans of the land of Israel aka 'Palestine'.
From the time the Arabs invaded prosperous, thriving and civilised Byzantine 'Palestine' in the 630s, it was all downhill until 1917. Except for one brief interlude, under the Latin Crusader Kingdoms, about 100-150 years from 1095. The harsh truth is that those supposedly barbarian 11th century feudal knights were demonstrably BETTER at government - at keeping things running, holding things together, and protecting peasants, merchants and tradesmen from bandits - than ANY of the Muslim rulers roundabouts. Muslim visitors were worried that Muslim peasants living under the Franks, comparing their prosperity with the misery of their fellow Muslims under Muslim despots next door, might even be tempted to apostasise...
Basic law and order, good government is the precondition for a healthy economy. Peasants can't grow food if they are being constantly robbed and trampled on by marauding warlords and bandits and taxed beyond their capacity to pay. Neither can tradesmen trade and craftsmen make stuff, if the roads are not safe.
After the Franks were driven out, everything collapsed and went on collapsing. So: seems to me the Muslims had nothing to teach re. government and economics.
I haven't yet read a detailed account of the way things went on the ground in North Africa, Egypt, Spain, the Balkans, India, Persia, under Muslim rule, but I'll bet it was the same story of the long downhill slide. NOT a good economic or political model, at all, at all.
I think R&L has another book in a similar vein that's either just recently been published or will be published soon. Check out their web-page for more details.
I doubt that this book has a large press run--R&L is a medium-sized press that primarily publishes academic books.
I agree with everyone above that the guy is clueless, but I'm not sure how great of an impact the book will actually have. I have not seen it in my local BN, but I have seen Robert's book, which is doing very nicely......