The Spiders of Allah
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407041148
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 400
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The Spiders of Allah

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EBook
1 Sep 2010
Paperback
1 Mar 2010
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An extraordinary and timely book that takes The God Delusion debate onto the streets of the Middle East.

The bloodshed perpetrated in the name of religion in the world today is nowhere more obvious than in the Middle East. Whether we are talking about hardcore Zionist settlers still fighting ancient Biblical battles in the hills of the West Bank or Shiite death squads roaming the lawless streets of Iraq in the aftermath of Saddam; whether it's the misappropriation and martyrdom of Mickey Mouse by Gaza's Islamists, or a US president acting on God's orders, James Hider sees the hallucinatory effect of what he calls the 'crack cocaine of fanatical fundamentalism' all around him.

As James Hider travels around the Middle East, from Israel to Gaza, to Iraq ­and then back to Jerusalem, he takes his doubts about religious beliefs to the very heart of the world's holy wars. He meets terrorists and their victims, soldiers and clerics, ordinary people and extraordinary people. The question in the back of his mind is: how can people not only believe in all this madness, but die and kill for it too?

This timely book casts an unflinching yet compassionate eye on the very worst and most violent crimes committed in the name of religion and asks questions that the world needs to answer if we are to stand a chance of facing our own worst demons.
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407041148
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 400
Categories:
Share…

About the author

James Hider

James Hider first visited the Middle East as a kibbutz volunteer while still a teenager. He is currently The Times' Middle East bureau chief, based in Jerusalem.

Praise for The Spiders of Allah

At once a terrifying insight into the 'crack-cocaine of fanatical fundamentalism' and a blackly humorous narrative of a foreign correspondent's growing sense of bafflement and alienation

Chris Ayres, author of WAR REPORTING FOR COWARDS

Hider's voice is incisive and rich in the human detail that only first-hand experience bestows. An essential work for anyone wishing to understand the swirling machinations of Iraq, its people and its war

Antony Loyd, author of My War Gone By, I Miss it So

James Hider offers a new voice in the literature of the Middle East: His is delightfully fresh and very funny. It takes a brave and confident writer to take on so many taboos but Hider does it with the confidence that comes from years in the field and from a deep, authoritative historical and cultural knowledge of Israel, Iraq and the region

Matt McAllester, author of BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS OF THE DAMNED

This sort of informed but subjective account of the frontlines of conflict in the Middle East is not simply rubbernecking, it's required reading

Time Out