Islam in Saudi Arabia by David Commins (review)

There is a need for a book like Islam in Saudi Arabia. Unlike a good deal of recent academic and journalistic writing on Saudi Arabia that tends to treat the country in a kind of exceptionalist framework or as a so-called enigma, David Commins underscores that—just like any other country—there are transparent and standard means of analyzing aspects of Saudi society, political institutions, and culture as influenced by Wahhabism (the English term for the dominant Islamic doctrine of the country). This is why he subdivides the book into sections on topics such as the impact of historical legacy, state-building imperatives, developments in education, reform and the status of women and minorities, transnational affiliations, and geopolitical strategies and rivalries.

Commins is among a handful of scholars producing stellar research on Saudi Arabia. At first glance this book under review may seem like a continuation of his earlier book, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (2006), but they are instead complementary. The latter is denser, more specialized, and focused more on the long durée (long term structures) whereas the former is more accessible, concise, and gives a view "on the ground," so to speak. He probably spends as much time discussing the quotidian as doctrine; his various observations on daily life in the country will no doubt be engrossing for readers. Thus this book is an excellent primer for a survey course on the Middle East or Islam (in its various manifestations) or as one of the textbooks in a course on Saudi Arabia.

Anyone hoping that the book is an anti-Wahhabi screed will be disappointed. This does not mean he is uncritical of religious interpretations or institutions in Saudi Arabia, but rather the tone and language Commins maintains are balanced and well-informed, partially due to his time spent in the country. In other words, this approach makes it evident that Commins is not in pursuit of a particular agenda; therefore he does not limit or filter information through sociopolitical assumptions. If the book does have an agenda it is to not only introduce his readers to various features of Islamic practices in Saudi Arabia but also the many nuances, complexities, and contradictions internal to these practices.

Commins often encourages readers to reject the claim that Saudi society and its religious practices are monolithic, or as he writes, "religious life in Saudi Arabia has never been uniform or static" (182). While it is true that leading Wahhabis have attempted to impose uniformity and are suspicious of bid'ah ("innovation"; a term referring to practices deemed alien to the Islamic tradition), Commins observes that these attempts have never been completely successful or popular. As Commins identifies, religious minorities such as Twelver Shi'is, Ismaili Shi'is, and Sufis have certainly rejected Wahhabi doctrine or sociocultural assertions, but, in addition, other Saudis who we might assume were part of the mainstream. As a matter of fact, periodically Commins uses language such as "the silent majority" (153) and "absence of protest does not mean the Saudi public is complacent" (156) to suggest that there is a substantial difference between public performance and private views.

In this regard his work is evocative of themes developed by scholars like Madawi Al-Rasheed in her Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a New Generation (2007) and her edited volume with Robert Vitalis, Counter-Narratives: History, Contemporary Society, and Politics in Saudi Arabia and Yemen (2004). Admittedly, Al-Rasheed and Vitalis are more iconoclastic, but even a more neutral scholar like Jörg Matthias Determann confirms these trends in his more narrow study of how history has been interpreted and written in Saudi Arabia. In Determann's Historiography in Saudi Arabia: Globalization and the State in the Middle East (2014) he argues that "the salient characteristic of Saudi historiography is not uniformity, but plurality" (12).

Furthermore, even as leading Wahhabi clerics themselves rail against innovation, and talking heads in the US...