http://madawialrasheed.org/index.php/site/index/ en a.dilli@btinternet.com Copyright 2010 2010-07-07T03:41:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_228/ /index.php/site/english_228/#When:03:41:00Z Olivier Roy The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East, Hurst and Company, London 2007, trans. Ros Schwartz, ISBN 978-1-85065-894-8 paperback, pp 159+index Six years after 9/11 French sociologist Olivier Roy produced a collection of essays to explain what went wrong with American policy in the Middle East. Building on a long career spent studying, analysing and interpreting religious and political trends in parts of the Muslim world and Europe, Roy’s recent book builds on complex but lucid theoretical position and sound methodological skills, both enable him to carve for himself a  sound academic niche and emerge as an authority on current social, political and religious developments that are today not confined to specific countries or regions but are themselves globalised. Roy’s The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East  is a short collection of essays that captures a long scholarly engagement with Islamism, social movements, globalisation, and political development. Unlike some of the French academic literature on the Muslim world that has emerged since the 1970s, most of which has been grounded in dogmatic secularism  and  revulsion towards  the new Islamist social movements, Roy offers a nuanced and sophisticated analysis of  sociological and political trends that are here to stay for the foreseeable future. After ongoing military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and now in Pakistan, and possibly in Somalia and Yemen in the near future, the world that America imagined would move towards democracy, stability, prosperity, and security is still far from materialising. In fact, it seems that the neo-conservative vision of the Great Middle East had stumbled in many regions and resulted in what Roy describes as chaos. The rationale behind Bush’s military strategy summed up as ‘whole sale and rapid annihilation of the enemy’ failed miserably to deliver the desired outcome. Book Reviews 2010-07-07T03:41:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_227/ /index.php/site/english_227/#When:03:38:00Z Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 By Thomas Hegghammer Cambridge University Press 290pp, ISBN 978-0-521-51858-1 Hardback ISBN 978-0-521-73236-9 Paperback How could Jihadi violence break out in a country seen as the historical heartland of Islam and ruled by a state that boasts about its many Islamic credentials? Thomas Hegghammer unpacks the paradox of Jihadi militancy in an Islamic state.  The book is based on fieldwork in Saudi Arabia, and an impressive collection of biographies and written sources from well-known internet al-Qaida websites. Its ten chapters trace the evolution of militant Islamism and its later containment by the Saudi authorities. Since 9/11 scholars and security specialists searched for plausible explanations to account for Jihadi militancy at the local and global levels. Wahhabi radical theology, Western foreign policies, socio-economic deprivation, dictatorships in the Muslim world, and more recently the internet, are often cited as causal factors.  In a global world, it has become difficult to isolate local conditions from global contexts.  Hegghammer introduces his own hypothesis. Saudi Pan-Islamism, ‘a macro-nationalism, centred on the imagined community of the umma’ is the primary explanation for the brief outburst of violence in Saudi Arabia. As an orientation, pan-Islamism is mainly linked to the oil boom of the 1970s, when sympathy with the suffering of other Muslims became a new source for Saudi legitimacy, activism and engagement with the Muslim world. This engagement came to fruition in 1979, when Saudi Arabia joined Western powers to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It was an opportunity to direct Saudi Jihadi effervescence outward. The suffering of the umma on the periphery of the Islamic historical centre proved to be a successful recruitment slogan to draw Saudis, recently tamed by the luxuries of the new oil era, into the Afghan Jihad. Book Reviews 2010-07-07T03:38:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_206/ /index.php/site/english_206/#When:17:00:00Z News And Views 2009-11-21T17:00:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_188/ /index.php/site/english_188/#When:18:15:00Z Religiously Motivated Violence in the Contemporary World     Madawi Al-Rasheed and Marat Shterin (Eds) From India to Iraq, from London to Lahore, the relationship between religion and violence is one of the most bitterly contested and casually misrepresented issues of our times. This groundbreaking volume brings together expert perspectives from a variety of fields to probe it. It seeks to shift analytical focus on to the contexts in which violence is expressed, enacted and reported. Ranging from Islam to Buddhism to new religious movements in the West, Dying for Faith offers a comprehensive and highly original account of a complex phenomenon that has so far attracted sensational media coverage but scant academic attention. Madawi Al-Rasheed is Professor of Anthropology of Religion at King’s College London. Marat Shterin is a Lectuer in Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College, London. News And Views 2009-04-24T18:15:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_180/ /index.php/site/english_180/#When:17:25:00Z Since the 1970s, Islamic fundamentalism, later on coined political Islam or Islamism, was constructed in the high towers of academia as a field of enquiry if not the field par excellence. Tens of monographs, surveys, in-depth studies and histories of the main Islamist movements appeared in all European languages. From the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to Pakistan’s Jammati Islami, the diversity and similarities of these movements were captured.  The local contexts were analysed and their ideological pamphlets were collected and interpreted. Scholars constructed the biographies of their leaders and activists. Knowledge of local languages in the Muslim world, together with vigorous in depth fieldwork enhanced the analysis and dissemination of knowledge about one of the strongest political, religious, and social trends in the world of Islam in the three last decades of the twentieth century. By the 1980s, the inability of most of these movements to reach power and take the state, with the exception of the Islamic republic of Iran, prompted scholars to announce the ‘failure of political Islam’. Others argued that Islamism has had important long lasting impact on Muslim societies, regardless of its ability to seize power. This impact will continue to shape the moral, political and social contexts of many countries from North Africa to Asia. Book Reviews 2009-03-03T17:25:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_165/ /index.php/site/english_165/#When:02:34:00Z   Kingdom Without Borders is the first book to explore the driving forces behind Saudi Arabia's new era of expansionism. Having established a far-reaching political and religious influence, as well as an impressive media empire, Saudi Arabia has become a kingdom without borders, holding both local and international actors in a tight embrace. This phenomenon has yet to be seriously-instead of sensationally-studied. In this volume, contributors soberly reassess the changing nature of state and society, considering not only the multiple leaders who have risen within Saudi Arabia in recent years but also, thanks to a second oil boom, the consolidation of outside forces that now threaten to subvert the state. Bringing together leading scholars from Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and Asia, Kingdom Without Borders combines both a top-down and grassroots approach to examining the country's growing regional and international influence. Contributors also trace the impact of Saudi Arabia on the religion, economics, and politics of Yemen, Lebanon, and the United States, linking the transformation of local contexts to the external actors of globalization. With a thorough investigation of the history and contemporary manifestations of Saudi expansionism, Kingdom Without Borders presents a unique opportunity to view Saudi Arabia's power project within the interrelated realms of local politics, religion, and media genres. News And Views 2008-10-25T02:34:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_152/ /index.php/site/english_152/#When:20:50:00Z Global Jihad is a constructed category, perpetuated in the discourse of academics, think tank consultants, politicians, policy makers, terror experts, and journalists on the one hand, and Jihadi ideologues and sympathisers on the other hand. The first group identify a global menace that requires the mobilisation of governments, military strategists, civil society activists, and media campaigns across the world to justify the global War on Terror. The second group endeavours to mobilise Muslims across cultures, nations and geographies in the pursuit of deterritorialised battles that nevertheless take place in specific localities, ranging from world financial centres, train stations, discos, expatriate residential compounds,  tourist resorts,  shrines, mosques and markets. Focusing on the contradictions and tensions within the Saudi Jihadi project is the subject of this short exposition(i).  I will argue that Saudi Jihadis represent  post-national non-state actors who draw on the rhetoric of the global Jihad, yet they remain immersed in the locality of Saudi Arabia.(ii)  Rather than selecting famous contemporary Jihadi ideologues, this paper draws on the messages of less known Saudi authors of jihadi texts to demonstrate the centrality of the local in the global project. The first author Faris al-Shuwayl wrote about the priority of local Jihad: the other Lewis Atiyat Allah glorified the global project. Both seem to exhibit the tension between the local and the global. Contesting the local state In al-Shuwayl and Lewis Atiyat Allah’s writings, the first Saudi state (1744-1818) is glorified as dawlat al-tawhid, the state of monotheism, a political entity unbounded by defined territorial boundaries, unrecognised by the international community, and uncontaminated by international treaties and legal obligations. The first state is a local political configuration that defied regional and international contexts and promised to make true Islam hegemonic.  They regard this state as a revival of the state of prophecy where the community was subjected to divine law. Membership was determined not by recognised frontiers but by submission to the rightful Imam, whose authority over distant territory was recognised by paying zakat, receiving his judges, and performing Jihad under his banner. In the first state, unity was expressed in belief in one God, applying his rule and swearing allegiance to his political authority on earth. oth al-Shuwayl and Lewis Atiyat Allah regard the main agent of this state to be Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab rather than Muhammad ibn Saud; the former was the interpreter of God’s words while the latter was the executive force that enforces these words.  This state had no name apart from dawlat al-tawhid, state of monotheism, a deterritorialised polity pursuing the ultimate message of Islam, subjecting the individual to the sovereignty of God. As such, this state cannot be confined to man made borders, cultural and historical factors, ethnic and linguistic considerations or any other attributes common in defining the modern nation state. As such it was the ideal Muslim state that rebelled against blasphemy, religious innovations, and man-made law. The collapse of this state in 1818 at the hands of Ottoman troops temporarily sealed the fate of dawlat al-tawhid whose advocates impatiently waited for its revival in the twentieth century. Research Interest 2008-04-29T20:50:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_143/ /index.php/site/english_143/#When:19:46:00Z Madawi Al-Rasheed Inaugural lecture The lecture will take place in the Great Hall, King’s College, London, Strand Campus at 5.30pm on Tuesday 12 February 2008. Synopsis Saudi royalty sanctions official Wahhabi discourse for obvious political reasons. This religious discourse is responsible for closing channels of political debate and delaying the emergence of calls for political reform and participation in the country. Together with state repression, this discourse enforces interpretations of religious texts that call upon pious Muslims to consent to political authority and show ultimate obedience to rulers. This discourse also prohibits any public criticism of rulers and criminalises (in a religious and political sense) discussion of their policies. Dominant Saudi religious interpretations create "consenting subjects" rather than free citizens who engage in public affairs. I will demonstrate that official Wahhabi discourse is responsible for mystifying the world under the guise of religion. Official Saudi religious scholars consolidate a specific religious discourse to ensure the emergence of an acquiescent society. This discourse facilitates regime efforts to domesticate and discipline the population without resorting to excessive use of force, a practise that other Arab regimes have mastered under the umbrella of the modern state. The role of religious discourse is often ignored in academic research, in particular political science perspectives, on Saudi Arabia. This research usually privileges the influence of oil revenues within the framework of the rentier state as a mechanism consolidating the tradition of political acquiescence. Yet the sum total of religious interpretations that are propagated by a large religious bureaucracy are equally important as factors contributing to this acquiescence that the population exhibited throughout the twentieth century. There is no doubt that the redistributive state that transforms oil revenues into services and consequently loyalty owes its survival to the intersection of politics and the economy. However, there are subtle ways that veil relations between rulers and ruled and mystify this relationship. Wahhabi religio-political discourse offers a mystifying umbrella. News And Views 2008-01-23T19:46:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_141/ /index.php/site/english_141/#When:13:15:00Z The establishment of an Allegiance Committee, a closed circle of senior Saudi princes last year and the nomination of its members in December 2007 are desperate attempts to save the House of Saud, not from Jihadi violence, reformers’ pressure or external threats, but from the hazards of demography and natural aging. News And Views 2007-12-31T13:15:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_133/ /index.php/site/english_133/#When:20:58:00Z A shorter version of this chapter will appear in Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds.) The War  for Palestine: rewriting the history of 1948 War . 2nd edition  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007 Non-Saudis initially wrote the modern history of Saudi Arabia. Although chronicles, private papers, and primary sources existed inside and outside the country, until very recently Western and Arab historians produced modern Saudi historiography. Saudi Arabia was one of the latest countries to establish modern history departments and research centres. It was only in the 1960s that the ‘modern’ Saudi historian emerged after the profession was dominated by ulama who played the double role of religious scholar and chronicler. Up to the 1960s, the past was theological rather than historical, a reflection of the predominance of historical narratives propagated by religious scholars.  It was only after the first oil boom of the 1970s that the Saudi government turned its attention to systematically producing the great historical narrative that most Arab regimes had already produced and propagated to consolidate the nascent nation states that emerged in the post World War II era. Unlike in other Arab countries, and with the exception of one or two Saudi historians, modern Saudi historical research centres relied on Arab scholars, who were either seconded from their own academic institutions or had settled in the country. Even then, and because of serious human resource shortage, Saudi school and university history text books, and even the religious curriculum, were often written by Arabs, mainly Levantine and Egyptians who were entrusted with the task of narrating Saudi Arabia. The narration was meant to establish and enforce two important state legitimacy narratives, one reflected the need to legitimate the state internally, the other reflected the need to legitimate the state externally in the Arab and Islamic contexts. The establishment of King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives in Riyadh (known as al-Dara) in1972 marked the beginning of institutionalised official historiography, after a long period of laisser-faire approach to narrating the past. The role of this research centre in shaping historical imagination became paramount. In the 1980s  an ambitious government scheme materialised in  sending at least thirty Saudi students to various American universities to write PhD dissertations on Al-Saud and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, thus establishing modern Saudi historiography. The role of such students and that of al-Dara reached a climax with the 1999 centennial celebrations that coincided with the publication of hundreds of history books, foreign memoirs, translation of foreign testimonies, and official letters and sermons by King Abdulaziz ibn Saud (1876-1953) hereafter Ibn Saud, all marking ‘one hundred year of development, prosperity and political wisdom’.i The publication of selected documents and letters from various archival sources marked the beginning of documenting Saudi history from an official point of view.ii  Research Interest 2007-10-30T20:58:00+00:00