Sunday, January 10, 2010

Inside the Kingdom
By Eugene Rogan
Published Financial Times: December 18 2009

Copies of the Koran are certified for shipment at Medina, Saudi Arabia

Inside the Kingdom:
Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
By Robert Lacey
Hutchinson £20, 432 pages

In 1981, Robert Lacey produced a blockbuster exposé on Saudi Arabia at the height of the oil boom. Part history, part current-affairs, The Kingdom, spun a compelling narrative from 18 months of conversations with powerful Saudis and expats drawn to the kingdom to make their fortunes. Lacey’s book was quickly banned by the Saudis for shedding too much light on how nearly limitless oil wealth had transformed the once impoverished desert state.

Nearly three decades after his first foray into Arab Gulf politics, Lacey decided to take another look at Saudi Arabia. He had spent the intervening years writing on the British royals and European aristocrats more generally, interspersed with three volumes of Great Tales from English History.

After this long hiatus, Lacey returned to the kingdom in 2006 on the invitation of his original Saudi host. His commitment to study Saudi Arabia up close, in conversation with the men and women of the kingdom, has again paid off in a book of startling insights.
The events of 9/11 forced Lacey to reconsider the trajectory of Saudi history. If his first book sought to shed light on the emergence of an Arab oil superpower, Inside the Kingdom is more concerned with the rise of religious extremism in Saudi Arabia.

Lacey’s thesis is quite simple. The modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a partnership between the Saudi royal family and Wahhabism, an austere interpretation of Sunni Islam that dates back to the 18th century. Whenever the Saudi government encountered a major problem in society or domestic politics, they responded by injecting more religion. The result has been the gradual radicalisation of a marginal, but increasingly dangerous, segment of Saudi society that has risen to threaten both the Saudi monarchy and their western allies.

Inside the Kingdom opens in 1979 with the dramatic takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Juhayman Al-Otaybi, and the Shia uprising in the Eastern Province, inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran earlier that same year. Ruling between 1975 and 1982, King Khaled took counsel from the Saudi religious authorities and was won over by their views. “Foreign influences and bidaa [innovation] were the problem,” Lacey asserted. “The solution to the religious upheaval was simple – more religion.”

Across the 1980s, the Saudi government encouraged religious study groups in the mosques, and sponsored Koranic recitation competitions. The reign of King Fahd (1982-2005) saw the commissioning of a massive $130m printing press to print millions of copies of the Koran for distribution to Saudi citizens and pilgrims to Mecca and Medina. And the kingdom gave its full support to the pious young Muslims who volunteered to fight the Soviets then occupying Afghanistan. These were the days when Osama bin Laden was celebrated by his government as a national hero.
Link to the FT for the full review.

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