This text relies on field work and the analysis of more than 100 taped sermons by Saudi Islamic activists, examining their personal backgrounds, their rhetoric, and their strategies in its examination of internal Saudi dissent. Mamoun Fandy traces the evolution of Islamic opposition in Saudi Arabia, focusing on the Gulf War and its aftermath, and scrutinizing the works of Safar al Hawali and Salman al-Auda. He also documents the history of the Shi'a Reform Movement and its leader, Sheik Hassan al Safar, of Mohammed al Mas'ari and his Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, of Sa'd al Faqih and the Movement of Islamic Reform in Arabia, and finally the radical Usama bin Laden and his organization. By analyzing the Saudi opposition's use of modern technologies of communication and discussing the ways in which supposedly fundamentalist thinkers have been influenced by global debates and events, this title aims to contribute to the theoretical debate on domination and resistance in the current age of globalization and postm The book is suitable for departments of politics, international relations, Middle East and Islamic studies.

Amidst the roil of war and instability across the Middle East, the West is still searching for ways to understand the Islamic world. Stéphane Lacroix has now given us a penetrating look at the political dynamics of Saudi Arabia, one of the most opaque of Muslim countries and the place that gave birth to Osama bin Laden. The result is a history that has never been told before. Lacroix shows how thousands of Islamist militants from Egypt, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries, starting in the 1950s, escaped persecution and found refuge in Saudi Arabia, where they were integrated into the core of key state institutions and society. The transformative result was the Sahwa, or “Islamic Awakening,” an indigenous social movement that blended political activism with local religious ideas. Awakening Islam offers a pioneering analysis of how the movement became an essential element of Saudi society, and why, in the late 1980s, it turned against the very state that had nurtured it. Though the “Sahwa Insurrection” failed, it has bequeathed the world two very different, and very determined, heirs: the Islamo-liberals, who seek an Islamic constitutional monarchy through peaceful activism, and the neo-jihadis, supporters of bin Laden's violent campaign. Awakening Islam is built upon seldom-seen documents in Arabic, numerous travels through the country, and interviews with an unprecedented number of Saudi Islamists across the ranks of today’s movement. The result affords unique insight into a closed culture and its potent brand of Islam, which has been exported across the world and which remains dangerously misunderstood.

Making sense of Saudi Arabia is crucially important today. The kingdom's western province contains the heart of Islam, and it is the United States' closest Arab ally and the largest producer of oil in the world. However, the country is undergoing rapid change: its aged leadership is ceding power to a new generation, and its society, dominated by young people, is restive. Saudi Arabia has long remained closed to foreign scholars, with a select few academics allowed into the kingdom over the past decade. This book presents the fruits of their research as well as those of the most prominent Saudi academics in the field. This volume focuses on different sectors of Saudi society and examines how the changes of the past few decades have affected each. It reflects new insights and provides the most up-to-date research on the country's social, cultural, economic and political dynamics.

This book traces the politics of the Shia in the oil-rich Eastern Province of Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia since the nineteenth century.

Few books on Saudi Arabia deal with primary sources in examining internal Saudi dissent. In contrast this study relies on field work and the analysis of more than 100 taped sermons by Saudi Islamic activists, examining their personal backgrounds, their rhetoric, and their strategies.

The story of a grassroots political movement that flourished throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Dissenters are often portrayed as selfish and disloyal, but Sunstein shows that those who reject pressures imposed by others perform valuable social functions, often at their own expense.