The Ayatollah in the Cathedral by Moorhead Kennedy. New York: Hill and Wang, 1986. ix + 241 pages.

Abstract

"The Ayatollah in the Cathedral," to borrow the term coined by Thomas
Kuhn, is a book that opens the gateway to paradigmatic tranformations in the
theory of international relations and the art of effectively handling foreign
affairs. Dr. Kennedy was one of the 50 hostages who went through the 444
days' ordeal in Iran. He gives a detailed account of the events witnessed and
experienced by him as a hostage.
The traumatic psychological impact of being a hostage in a revolution is
not easy for others fully to understand as outsiders; still the reader is able to
see that there were many occasions when Dr. Kennedy, as a hostage, thought
that his death was imminent.
A mediocre author would easily have made his story of captivity a "best
seller' by capitalizing on hatred and by saying what the domestic opinion
makers in the United States want to hear. Instead, Dr. Kennedy defies this
common heritage of American scholarship on the Middle East. In this book,
he emerges as a serious thinker with an outstanding ability to analyze the facts
with scientific objectivity. What makes this book a remarkable multidisciplinary
masterpiece is Mr. Kennedy's professionally skillful and scientific
analysis of the process and factors that shape U. S. foreign policy at the
State Department; the weaknesses of U. S. foreign policy in the Middle East;
the causes of the U. S. failure to understand the Third World in general and the
Muslim world in particular; and an alternative to U. S. foreign policy making
that would ensure mutual respect and trust not only in the Middle East but in
the Third World in general, thereby restoring the effectiveness of the United
States as a world leader.
This book is unique and pivotal in the area of international relations
because Dr. Kennedy attempts to provide an alternative approach for U. S.
foreign policy. This approach would enable policymakers to protect U. S. interests
while at the same time winning mutual trust in the Muslim world; goals
which, under present policy, seem to be mutually exclusive.
The basic flaw in American foreign policy making, as pointed out by Dr.
Kennedy, is that "our analyses of over-seas problems are too often based on
abstraction - what the problem should be rather than what really is. We indulge
ourselves in the luxury of seeing what we want to see and denying what
we do not want to see." (p. 196). Elaborating on the dangers of this approach
to foreign policy, he says: "The problem is not professional but cultural. And ...