It is, says Alawi, just the latest move in a series of state-endorsed acts of cultural vandalism, urged on by the hardline wahhabist sect, which perceives historic sites and the veneration of the prophet as encouraging sinful idolatry.
Alawi says this wilful destruction of Islamic heritage is no accident: it is driven by state-endorsed wahhabism, the hardline interpretation of Islam that perceives historical sites as encouraging sinful idolatry.
Rather, the idolatry results from the limitations the constitution places on the federal government.
Despite its title, it makes rather a good case for market economics; what it rails against is "free market idolatry".
On the morning of this Ashoura, for instance, a Kuwaiti sheikh, Hamed al-Ali, posted on his website a letter condemning the rite as "the world's biggest display of heathens and idolatry".
THE FORBIDDEN IMAGE: AN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF ICONOCLASM.By Alain Besancon.University of Chicago; 440 pages; $40 and £25.50KISS a snapshot and you commit an act of idolatry.
The "dominant drift", he complained, was towards "idolatry of the system".
But it is worth saying that an obsession with literal detail, no less than bowing down before a statue, can easily become a form of idolatry.
He observes what he calls the "idolatry of money" in some places and hungry children in others.
Why?Such beliefs are rooted in Islam's horror of idolatry, and generally of anything that could come between man and God, or compromise the uniqueness and indivisibility of God.
The Koran does not specifically condemn representative art, but it has a lot to say about paganism and idolatry; and Islam is correspondingly wary of anything that could become an idol or detract from the worship of God alone.
