America will not win its war against terrorism until it does something about ideological hatred pouring out of the Middle East, particularly out of Saudi Arabia and Wahabbism, says Daniel Silva, best-selling author of The Messenger.

Saudi Arabia's relationship to terrorism and America's deeply important relationship with Saudi Arabia are subjects that have been pulling at Mr. Silva for years, he says. His conclusion? A large chunk of the Washington establishment is bought-and-paid-for by Saudi money. And the Saudis are not innocent. Instead, they are complicitous with terrorism despite their protests to the contrary, he says. Using a litany of research findings from which he created his fictional world, Mr. Silva believes that it is only a matter of time before other Osamas and other networks of terrorists rise up.

Difficult questions about the morality of going out and fighting terrorists are a core issue of our time, Mr. Silva believes.

Setting his novel in the midst of what he believes is a conflict of Biblical proportions (no irony intended) came at a heavy cost. (He distances himself from extremists preaching a potential "End of Days" scenario.)

Personally and through his main character, Mr. Silva had wrestled with fundamental human ethical questions:  Can a problem somehow be solved by killing or eliminating terrorists as a group or even more pointedly, by killing individual terrorists? What happens to the killer or killers or to the country itself that feels compelled to climb into the gutter and fight with people who murder innocents. Can one justify an eye-for-an-eye?

We're not going to get out of this kind of present day moral dilemma, he affirms, until we acknowledge the reality of the Saudi role in the Middle East and in the rest of the world, their complicity in terrorist activities and recognize the consequences of their actions.

Mr. Silva came to his troubling conclusions as he does in preparation for all of his novels -- by doing his homework. He read more than 50 books of history about Saudi Arabia and Islam. And he used his considerable access to people in his hometown of Washington, DC, where he is deeply plugged into government from the very highest levels to those in the news business to people who work in intelligence.

His first responsibility to his readers and his publishers, Mr. Silva says, is to spin a good story, write a good thriller. That said, he doesn't have much fun doing that unless he's dealing with serious ideas and issues.

Yes, he has the luxury of manipulating reality, but Mr. Silva concludes that by creating a set of characters and placing them in compelling situations he can serve a broader message with his fiction. And he has come to believe, there are larger truths in the world that fiction like his novels sometimes can get at better than nonfiction we call "The News."

 

 

[This Program was recorded July 31, 2006, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.]