Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia (review)

Saudi Arabia has a complex history of political dissent. Although rare, the Kingdom's rulers have periodically faced contentious challenges to their authority. Perhaps the most visible example of this came in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. The war, and in particular the decision to invite hundreds of thousands of American military personnel into the country, set off a wave of domestic activism that took aim at the Saudi ruling family, the Al Saud, and its political legitimacy. Opposition to the war was spearheaded by a network of Islamists known as the al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Awakening) who not only roused political passions, but also rallied an unlikely insurrection against the Saudi regime. The importance of the sahwa has long been understood, but their origins and their history have not. Their remarkable political acumen and their ability to mobilize disparate social forces has until now not been fully appreciated. In his seminal book Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia, Stéphane Lacroix takes on the sahwa. The result is compelling, a fascinating examination of the much commented upon, but rarely understood world of political Islam in Saudi Arabia.

The sahwa's rise to prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s was the result of several convergences. In the 1950s and 1960s, members of the Egyptian and Syrian Muslim Brotherhood found relief from persecution in Saudi Arabia. Prominent Brothers, such as Muhammad Qutb and Muhammad Surur, fled to the Kingdom and gradually built up influential networks there. Their impact was considerable. Unlike the adherents of Wahhabism, who have historically deferred political matters to the heads of state, the Brotherhood demanded that scholars play a more influential role in political decision-making. From the 1960s through the 1980s, they helped educate and politicize a generation of young Saudi scholars. However, politicization was not enough to secure ascendancy in a crowded Islamist field, particularly one in which many remained loyal to the royal family.

Support for Islamists grew in the 1980s, especially after the siege of the Mecca mosque in 1979. Saudi leaders responded to the threat by funneling billions of dollars into religious institutions. While the intent was to provide greater material support for government supporters and to defuse the radical fringe, the increase in spending also strengthened the sahwa and the forces of incipient insurrection. While they had yet to advocate open rebellion, prominent young sahwa ideologues such as Salman al-Awda and Safar al-Hawali had already begun to question the deference that the Kingdom's most important religious figures has historically exhibited. By the late 1980s, when oil prices plummeted and much of the financial support for Islamists dried up, and especially after the Gulf War, the sahwa emerged as a powerful opposition force. The network quickly transformed into a political movement, earning widespread support among intellectuals and religious scholars. The sahwa's rise and its widespread appeal alarmed the Kingdom's rulers, who moved resolutely in the post-Gulf War era to crush it. Key leaders and members of the sahwa were imprisoned or fled into exile. Today, the most prominent sahwa have been chastened. Salman al-Awda and others no longer represent the forces of opposition and mostly avoid contentious politics. They remain influential, but constitute just one more of the social and political networks to have been successfully co-opted by the Saudi regime.

Stéphane Lacroix masterfully narrates and documents the sahwa's rise and fall. The sahwa's ascendance was hardly ordained, however, and Awakening Islam expertly attends to the many challenges that confronted it. For all of its wonderful storytelling, Awakening Islam is equally sharp for its social and political analysis. At various times, the network faced direct challenges from other Islamists to more secular-minded modernists, all of which were aligned closely with the ruling regime. The success of the sahwa also required overcoming considerable obstacles, including...