Review: The Spiders of Allah

Published 30 August 2009 in the Winnipeg Free Press:

The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War
By James Hider
St. Martin's Press, 324 pages, $19

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Giant spiders, some the size of dinner plates or even as large as chairs, vexed and attacked U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Capable of running 40 kilometres per hour, the terrifying arachnids had poisonous bites that killed quickly but painfully.

Clearly, the eight-legged freaks were sent by Allah to aid the resistance against the infidels occupying Mesopotamia.

So went an urban myth spread by Muslim clerics and warriors in 2004, and retold in British journalist James Hider's new book.

The Times of London's Middle East bureau chief has covered conflicts in the region for several years. He has travelled in Iraq with U.S. marines and met with Palestinian suicide bombers.

The "hook" for The Spiders of Allah, what sets it apart from many other war correspondents' recollections, is that Hider is an atheist reporting from hotbeds of faith-fuelled violence.

This book is at its most entertaining when Hider serves up wry observations on the "crack cocaine of fanatical fundamentalism" and offers insight into what drives fanatics in the Abrahamic religions to commit mass killings.

U.S. soldiers in Iraq, sent there by a president who said God told him to overthrow Saddam Hussein, liked to use an unflinching motto: "Kill them all, let God sort them out."

The leader of a Palestinian "martyrs' brigade" justified suicide bombings in Israel similarly by declaring "our martyrs will be in heaven, and theirs will be in hell."

Both sayings seem to have their origin in a 13th-century pope's decree during a crusade against French heretics.

Some prisoners who protested that they were not heretics were no doubt lying to save their own lives. The pope's response was to have all prisoners killed, since "God will know his own" and admit the true believers to heaven.

"That in turn was a bloodthirsty interpretation of the Biblical scripture, 'The Lord knoweth them that are his,'" Hider writes.

An Iraqi insurgent gives a straightforward explanation for what he does: Islam's holy book "says if the infidels invade an Islamic country, you must fight."

That explanation sums up how religion keeps deadly conflicts going at full tilt across the Middle East. Scriptures and clergy tell believers war is the way to go.

Hider sees little hope for peace as long as sizable, determined populations -- Islamic jihadists, Christian fundamentalists and stubborn Zionist settlers among them -- get all or most of their worldview from scriptures. The fanatics will continue to lash out at the wicked "others" and resist modernity and harmony.

The book falters a little (but just a little) in its 30-page chapter on how U.S. troops eventually defeated insurgents in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

Hider's detailed description of the military nitty-gritty in the battle for Fallujah, dramatic as some may find it at times, does nothing to help us understand the religious dynamic that is at the book's core. It is, in fact, a bit tedious.

But all in all this is a good read that has a few tablespoons of Hunter S. Thompson gonzo (as the Ralph Steadman-esque cover art might lead you to expect) and a dash or two of the smart cynicism that fellow atheist Christopher Hitchens has perfected, all in a clear and accessible writing style one would expect from a good newspaper reporter.

You might say Hider's good book gets this reviewer's blessing.