Currently reading: The Spiders of Allah

Just a few thoughts on what I've read so far of journalist James Hider's book about covering conflicts in the Abrahamic religions' birthplace.
One highlight for me is his comparison of Israeli democracy to the "deeply chauvinistic" democracy of classical Athens (pp. 18-19).
A litte later on (pp. 25-26), there's a brief education on the concept of "kill them all, let God sort them out." Apparently, it dates back to something a 13th-century pope said. The phrase was a slogan for U.S. troops in the 1991 Gulf War, and Palestinian militants have expressed the same ruthless sentiment in different words.
Then there's how an Iraqi man used the Koran to explain his decision to take arms against the U.S. occupation of his country (p. 84): "It says if the infidels invade an Islamic country, you must fight."
This book isn't "extraordinary" (as the back cover declares) but it is interesting and written in the sort of brisk, accessible style that I expect from a newspaper reporter.