James Hider and 'The Spiders of Allah'

On Saturday The Times carried extracts of the new book, The Spiders of Allah, by James Hider, our Middle East Correspondent. This book is different from most war memoires. It is one for the 21st century, of and for its time.

An atheist, James writes about the three monotheistic religions whose followers are creating mayhem in the Middle East. He is over here at the moment promoting the book, and so I shot this video of him in Kew Gardens this morning, its birdsong and sounds of children playing a deliberate contrast to the war-torn environment in which James normally finds himself. Below are some extracts from the opening chapters of his book, to be published on Thursday this week, which might be of interest to readers of this blog. Particularly fascinating is the epilogue, about a theory that the Palestinian peoples are in fact Jewish by origin. They kept the land but lost the faith, while the diaspora kept the faith but lost the land. Recently, genetic analysis has given some credence to this belief. Read it all here. .

The book opens with James lying in a hotel room in Baghdad, where he is watching 'Saw', a terrorism horror movie where to escape death a man has to saw off his own foot and then shoot his friend, but which still has nothing on the real-life beheading movies James has to watch in the line of duty.

James Hider writes:

'It occurs lying here, that's all that religions and movies are: a series of often gory stories, fables told to take the poor, isolated individual sap out of himself for a little while, let him forget he is all alone in the universe, while sitting there in the flickering lights of the darkened temple or movie theatre. In religion, we're all extras in God's everlasting extravaganza. In Hollywood, we're just the audience. And therein lies the problem, I think: two narratives competing for the same audience... After all, what religion these days has the razzle dazzle to compete with Hollywood and its Computer Generated Imaging miracles? Well, now one of them does: only the new epics and the endless snuff movies of this purported faith are audience participation, open to anyone, any time. Not for profit, but for god.'

The book opens with hm on 9/11, in a minibus heading from Tel Aviv where he had just landed to Jerusalem. He just got out of New York in time. The bus radio played news of the attacks. An American settler on the bus, originally from Brooklyn, responded: 'Thank Gawd, now America will understand what we're up against.'

In Jerusalem, he liked to go to a gay bar, Laila's, because it played the best dance music. Occasionally one of the ultra-orthodox haredim would show up, dressed in black, and 'watch in fascination as the little Palestinian boy gyrated on the stage. The Jewish man was married with ten children, and would discuss god and religion and being attracted to other men with the Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, as the crowd of gay and straight dancers pounded the dance floor. Laila's was one of the few places where Jews and Palestinians were still able to come together, the tug of sexual unorthodoxy briefly overriding the pressure of religious conformity.'

In Gaza, he finds the same mentality across all religious groups. An al-Aqsa leader says of his suicide mission victims: 'Our martyrs wil be in heaven, inshallah, and theirs will be in hell.' James points out that similar sentiments were shared by US troops in the first Gulf war: 'Kill them all, let God sort them out.' The phrase, he points out, dates from the 13th century crusade against the Cathars when the Pope, unable to tell the difference between true and and false, decreed: 'Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet.' Or: Kill them all, God will know his own. This is based on 2 Tim 2:19, The Lord knoweth them that are his.

James is confounded by the varieties of religious belief. In Iraq he worked with a translator, Mohanned, a well-educated anaesthetist from a top hospital, who believed in genies, because djinn are mentioned in the Koran. In the US, he writes, a nation born of the Enlightenment, one poll showed 92 per cent of people believe in a personal god. 'Little wonder then that Iraqis, battered and persecuted and cut off from the outside world, believed just about anything.'

The book is in effect a litany of death, a reality anaesthetised by religious faith.

© James Hider 2009. Extracted from The Spiders of Allah by James Hider, to be published by Doubleday on January 15 at £12.99. Copies can be ordered for £11.69 with free delivery from The Times BooksFirst on 0845-271-2134

Comments

[Bro. Ronald]

Dr. Irene Lancaster;
Wonderful story regarding the author and your meeting. As a Biblical student of facts; I'd be very much interested in this gentleman's views on Islam..Judiasm...Christianity. All 3 intersect at Jerusalem which is a divine plan of Our Lord. Peace!

[assemblyofgoodchristians]

The only reference to "Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet" is found in Caesar of Heisterbach. It was never uttered by a pope of Rome. It is attributed to the commander of the crusade against the city of Béziers, Papal Legate Arnald Amalaricus, Abbot of Citeaux.

The term "Cathars" derives from the Greek word Katheroi and means "Pure Ones". They were a gnostic Christian sect that arose in the 11th century, an offshoot of a small surviving European gnostic community that emigrated to the Albigensian region in the south of France.The medieval Cathar movement flourished in the 12th century A.D. throughout Europe until its virtual extermination at the hands of the Inquisition in 1245.

Thank you!

Brad Hoffstetter
Communications Division
Assembly of good Christians
http://www.cathar.net

[Robert Easter]

Tragic, though, that one would take Paul's "The Lord knows them that are his" and link it to an incitement to murder!

[Fr. Van Windsor]

Was he on the bus?

[irenelancaster]

Last year, I rang James up and mentioned your name, Ruth.

James immediately invited me to lunch in Jerusalem and asked me if I could shed any light on his theory about the Palestinians and Jews.

From talking to him, I had no idea if he was religious or not. However, he was most respectful of me and my Jewish religious views and bought me a kosher meal, without even checking if I kept kosher or not.

He seemed to have a bit of a tartar for a landlady (she phoned in the middle of the meal), so I tried to point out to him that when some Israelis get him down, I'm Israeli as well.

Recently, our synagogue in Manchester hosted a talk about the Cohanim and their ties to Israel, which go way back. Remembering his interest, I contacted James about it.

He contacted me immediately from his holiday abroad to thank me for the info and to invite me for a meal in Bethlehem.

I hope that one day I can take him up on it.

James may be an atheist, but I found him quite respectful of religious beliefs. Being an agnostic, at least, is quite a respectable position within Judaism, for as Maimonides says: 'We only know what God is not'.

[j]

An atheist with insight...who'd have thought it? ;)

[Fr. Van Windsor]

O what a wicked web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."