Professor Madawi Al Rasheed

Contesting the Saudi State Islamic Voices from a New Generation Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, November 2006A prince is always compelled to injure those who have made him the new ruler, subjecting them to the troops and imposing the endless other hardships which his new conquest entails Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince

Outsiders often refer to Saudis as Wahhabis or Salafis. In the twenty-first century Saudis themselves do not agree on the meaning of these terms. Contemporary Saudis debate religion and politics in traditional and novel public spaces, thus violating a well-established taboo. Under the influence of mass education, printing, new communication technology and global media, Saudis engage in formulating opinions that can generate both consent and contestation of official religio-political discourse. Modernity, together with state and oil wealth, consolidated official Wahhabi religious interpretations, especially those that generate social conservatism and political acquiescence. Yet the same forces that allowed this discourse to become hegemonic are now responsible for its contestation. Drawing on a plethora of classical religious sources, contemporary interpretations and interviews, this book presents an ethnography of consent and contestation. It highlights the fluidity of the boundaries of religious and political debate and the overlapping categories that dominate our thinking about so-called official, moderate and radical Islam. The book examines how state-initiated global religious flows develop their own momentum once they travel to distant locations. Bridging the gap between religious text and context, the author offers an understanding of the subtle ways in which states and citizens manipulate religious discourse for purely political ends and how this manipulation generates unpredictable reactions whose control escapes those who initiated them.