http://madawialrasheed.org/index.php/site/index/ en a.dilli@btinternet.com Copyright 2011 2011-11-21T07:33:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_299/ /index.php/site/english_299/#When:07:33:00Z The Saudi trinity: oil, God and security Source: http://www.bitterlemons-international.org/inside.php?id=1455 Madawi al-Rasheed With the winds of the "Arab spring" still blowing across the region, internally Saudi Arabia seems to have put in place three safeguards against the turbulence. Lavish economic handouts worth more than $70 billion were promised in February to absorb discontent. A package of economic, social, health and educational benefits was meant to absorb immediate frustration at lack of housing, jobs, health facilities, and welfare services. The regime promised more employment opportunities in two relevant sectors: the religious bureaucracy and the security services. The first absorbs the increasing number of graduates who cannot be employed in the private sector. The second strengthens the increasing militarization of Saudi society. But this was still not enough. Religiously-sanctioned obedience to rulers had to be re-invoked to remind the constituency of a godly obligation. From the minarets of mosques, religious functionaries of the regime preached sermons in which they reminded their audiences of the obligation to obey God, the Prophet and the al-Saud rulers. They warned against demonstrations, civil disobedience and open criticism of the leadership. They glorified the current leadership for its adherence to Islam, and warned against chaos. They vehemently denounced Shiites for their agitations in the Eastern Province, where oil is abundant. Any call for demonstrations was depicted as a Shiite Iranian conspiracy against a pious Sunni nation. They called on the believers to support the rulers, much needed at a turbulent moment. Increasing sectarianism within Saudi Arabia is a reflection of an on-going cold war with Iran. News And Views 2011-11-21T07:33:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_293/ /index.php/site/english_293/#When:15:00:00Z Book Review In the Time of Oil. Piety, Memory and Social Life in an Omani Town. By Mandana Limbert. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.In the Time of Oil explores local social change in Bahla,  a small town in the interior of Oman. This change is brought about by the 1970s oil boom and the development of the Omani state under Sultan Qabus, commonly believed to be the ‘author’ of the Omani renaissance. Endowed with new oil revenues, Sultan Qabus tried to integrate the Omani periphery, which had been the political centre of a rival Ibadhi imamate in the interior into the newly consolidated state of 1971. Assisted by a new bureaucratic elite, mainly Omani returnees from East Africa, he brought development plans and modernisation projects to the heartland of the country, historically associated with the vanished conservative Ibadhi imamate. Unlike other oil states of the Gulf region where the promise of an oil utopia enforced the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes, this book shows how in Oman, development discourse fostered mysteries, miracles, surprises and deferred dystopias. Because the new social and economic development was entirely generated by sudden oil wealth (the miracle), the new prosperity is seen as a fleeting moment, hostage to a memory of poverty and austerity and an uncertain future. News And Views 2011-10-21T15:00:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_292/ /index.php/site/english_292/#When:14:59:00Z Book Review Hanan Kholoussy For Better, For Worse: the Marriage Crisis that Made Modern Egypt. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010, pp. 188, bibliographical references, index, ISBN 978-0-8047-6960-0 pbk. Published in Middle Eastern Studies 2011-10-21As a self-conscious group with its own economic mode of production, normative worldview, consumption patterns and styles of being and behaving, spokesmen of the middle classes often frighten society with stories about men not marrying, the disintegration of contracted marriages, and the break up of the nuclear family. Shunning away from marriage among urban men of this class is guaranteed to create a cross-cultural, almost a universal anxiety associated with elevating a personal choice into a political and national agenda that announces not only social ills and  psychological turbulences but also communal disintegration and the withering of the nation as a whole. Such urban anxiety does not often find echoes among the traditional old peasantry or their equivalents among industrialised agricultural communities.  Book Reviews 2011-10-21T14:59:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_291/ /index.php/site/english_291/#When:14:54:00Z Book Review The Arab Revolution. The Lessons From The Democratic Uprising, by Jean-Pierre Filiu, London: Hurst and Co. Paperback, ISBN 978-1-84904-159-1, 195 pages Published in Times Higher Education Supplement 29 September 2011-10-21It may be premature to draw lessons from the on-going Arab revolutions but Jean-Pierre Filiu, an expert on the politics of the region, identifies ten such lessons before the dust has settled. As such, the analysis is swift, relying on the author’s previous knowledge of the region and observations of current events. There is no grand theoretical framework to understand the uprisings, nor an attempt to see them through the prism of long duree historical process. As a result, the book is a cross between a sophisticated journalistic account and policy recommendations. Book Reviews 2011-10-21T14:54:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_282/ /index.php/site/english_282/#When:11:19:00Z The Arab Spring has successfully removed three autocrats from the stage, while others may be on their way out. But it has brought three regional powers face to face, each competing to shape the outcome of the revolts in pursuit of its own national interest. Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are struggling either to contain the revolutions or model them in their image. All three seem to be competing in search of lebensraum, or a sphere of influence, where they aspire to create living spaces for ideologies, influence, capital, and military outreach. News And Views 2011-08-27T11:19:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_270/ /index.php/site/english_270/#When:03:36:01Z This is the first of two "Free Speach Radio News" interviews with Professor Madawi al-Rasheed looking at the political situation in Saudi Arabia. The second interview will focus on the campaign in Saudi Arabia for women’s rights. Part I http://fsrn.org/audio/saudi-arabia’s-response-arab-spring-uprising/8632 Part II Saudi Arabian activists push for women’s right to drive http://fsrn.org/audio/saudi-arabian-activists-push-women’s-right-drive/8649 News And Views 2011-06-11T03:36:01+00:00 /index.php/site/english_271/ /index.php/site/english_271/#When:14:55:00Z Stephane Lacroix Awakening Islam Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University press, 2011, £22.95 ISBN: 978-0-674-04964-2, 328 pages, 1 map The surge in Arab revolutions since January 2011 has surprised many scholars and policy makers for one reason. The revolt is not currently orchestrated by the much studied Islamists. Since the 1970s, Western academics preferred to see the Arab world through the prism of Islam, which has become the constant variable that explained  everything- stagnation, resistance to democracy, oppression of women, discrimination against minorities, and recently terrorism. The majority of academics ignored a limited number of texts written by nuanced scholars who argued that we must go beyond Islam to understand the many social, political and economic problems of the region. Yet Western obsession with security after 9/11 and so-called Islamic radicalism meant that the academe had to follow suit and privilege the study of Islamists- many are seen as terrorists in the making. Privileging Islam as the only explanatory factor allowed policy makers in the West and the Arab world to avoid facing unpleasant realities such as demographic explosions, unemployment, poverty, corruption, authoritarian rule and abuse of human rights.The recent fall of authoritarian Arab regimes in Tunisia and Egypt at the hands of young and frustrated population proved that Islam alone can never and will never explain the Arab world. Yet the metanarrative persists. Book Reviews 2011-06-10T14:55:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_268/ /index.php/site/english_268/#When:13:56:00Z Saudi Arabia and Western Hypocrisy An interview with "theREALnews" Madawi Al-Rasheed: Washington is calling the worst repression in the Arab world "evolving reform" Part I http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6859 Part II http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6867 Part III http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6891 News And Views 2011-06-04T13:56:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_263/ /index.php/site/english_263/#When:04:09:00Z ECONOMIES OF DESIRE, FICTIVE SEXUAL UPRISINGS Saudi women and the chick lit revolution Source: http://mondediplo.com/2011/05/05saudisexnovels ECONOMIES OF DESIRE, FICTIVE SEXUAL UPRISINGS Le Monde Diplomatique-English edition May 2011. Saudi women and the chick lit revolution A new generation of Saudi women novelists is taking the topic of sex into the very public sphere of chick lit, causing shock waves in Saudi Arabia and beyond. By defying sexual constraints imposed by state and religion, they have exploded the myth of a society sailing on a sea of piety By Madawi Al-Rasheed Saudis are reluctant to respond to the revolutionary effervescence that is sweeping neighbouring Arab countries. With the exception of the Shia in the Eastern province, most Saudis have been co-opted into accepting limited political, human and civil rights in return for royal largesse. Even so, a revolution of a different kind is definitely taking place. Young women novelists are stretching the boundaries in unprecedented ways. They are doing this through producing Saudi versions of the “chick lit” of the 1960s. A new generation of novelists is writing about women as sexual agents rather than submissive victims of patriarchal society. Among many others are Raja al-Sani (Girls of Riyadh), Samar al-Muqrin (Women of Vice) and two pen names, Warda Abd al-Malik (The Return), and Saba al-Hirz (The Others). Their novels are published in the obvious place, Beirut, with the publisher al-Saqi taking the lead in promoting this new daring literature (1). News And Views 2011-05-10T04:09:00+00:00 /index.php/site/english_262/ /index.php/site/english_262/#When:04:03:00Z Listen to Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed (King's College) and professor Bernard Haykal (Princeton University) discuss on Blogginheads.tv http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/36025 News And Views 2011-05-10T04:03:00+00:00