Dr. Jack’s Reading Recommendations for May, 2003

I could not suggest more strongly that you read Bernard Lewis’ latest book, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (Modern Library, 2003).  Its compact 164 pages contain an abundance of revelations. 

We are so often told, for example, that a basic cause of the hatred radical Moslems feel for the West is the Crusades.  Yet, Mr. Lewis explains, the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099 was largely ignored by the main Moslem powers in nearby Damascus and in Baghdad.  After Saladin retook the city in 1187, the Moslem world forgot about it for 700 years, until it became the focus of Jewish immigration.   Rage and humiliation over the Crusades is a very modern bellyache.

Every liberal boffin and pundit from those infesting the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to Robert Novak could benefit from grasping Mr. Lewis’ observation that the Palestinian issue is “the licensed grievance.”  Far from being “the key to peace in the Middle East,” the “Arab-Israeli problem” is merely a useful deflection and scapegoat for Arabs who have little or no political and economic freedom in their own countries and whose governments grant little or no permission to complain about it.

You’ll find dozens of similar revelations here, all lucidly and concisely expressed.

If you want a clear grasp of why Saudi Arabia is such a fount of Moslem terrorism and radicalism today, read Dore Gold’s Hatred’s Kingdom:  How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism (Regnery, 2003).  Saudi Arabia is the worst religious dictatorship on this planet, controlled by a heretical Islamic sect called Wahhabism (named after its founder, Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, who established a mithaq or covenant with a tribal leader, Mohammed ibn Saud in 1744, to create a Saudi political-religious state).  Billions of Saudi petro-dollars have enabled the Saudi state religion to spread its message of hate and intolerance to mosques and medressahs (religious schools) throughout the world — including 80% of the mosques in America.  As former CIA Director Jim Woolsey says, “If you read one book to understand the roots of al-Qaeda’s fury, it should be this one.”

As we focus on foreign threats to our freedom, let’s do so on domestic threats as well.  One of the greatest comes from the left’s relentless assault on the morality of capitalism.  Enron-type corporate scandals fuel endless denunciations of business and businessmen, and assertions that “business ethics” is an oxymoron.  It is of the most critical importance that this fury be prevented from achieving its goal: to serve as a rationale for more government control over our lives and possibilities to prosper.  This requires a moral defense of the morality of capitalism.  Two philosophy professors have done just that in A Primer on Business Ethics, by Tibor Machan and James Chesher (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). 

For Machan and Chesher, business is an honorable profession.  It is “the specialized, professional dimension of human commerce, and as such has its moral foundation in the virtue of prudence.”  The authors apply this concept to advertising, financial services, management, employment, corporate ethics, and public policy.  What they have to say about insider trading (they’re for it) and bribes/kickbacks (it depends) are solid eye-openers.  This book should be required reading for all college professors teaching business classes, not to mention their students.

All three of these books are available at Amazon.com.