Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy

Commentary Magazine, February 1997, Joseph Shattan
The Hidden Hand is a remarkable work of scholarship. Daniel Pipes, the editor of the Middle East Quarterly and a specialist on Arab affairs, has pulled together an enormous body of writing from a broad array of sources--journals, memoirs, speeches, and sermons--to illuminate a salient aspect of Middle Eastern political reality: the pervasive belief in Muslim and Arab society that conspiracies and secret dealings--a "hidden hand"--lie behind much of what happens in the world, and that these explain the relative superiority of Israel and the West. The Hidden Hand contains a rich inventory of similarly wild conspiracies that never were. But it is far more than a compendium of paranoid ideas. It raises, and proceeds to answer, a number of crucial questions. Why are the countries of the Arab world and Iran so prone to this style of thinking? Why do most of the conspiracies in circulation seem to center on the allegedly nefarious doings of Zionists and imperialists? And, finally, do the political leaders who spin such tales of intrigue actually believe in their own spurious words? As Pipes puts it, "conspiracy theories obstruct modernization itself," and prevent the inhabitants of the Muslim world "from achieving the advancement they crave." In this enlightening study, Pipes shows just how deeply the problem lies, and how thorough-going a mental revolution will be required to address it.


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A useful and fascinating exploration of how conspiracy theories and theorists influence the apparently paranoid politics of the Middle East. Pipes (Editor, Middle East Quarterly) reaches past the absurdities to enter the mind of conspiricism uncovering a history dating back to the Western traditions of the Crusades, accounting for much of the region's problems including political extremism, violence, and lack of modernization. The author's research and personal anecdotes foster a greater understanding of Iran's, Iraq's, Israel's, and other countries' perplexing political cultures. Includes maps. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.


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