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SAUDI ARABIA Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices From a New Generation, by Madawi Al-Rasheed. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xxi + 262 pages. Notes to p. 291. Bibl. to p. 302. Index to p. 308. $30.
Reviewed by Steffen Hertog
The title of this dense, nuanced, and highly informative book about Islamic political discourse in Saudi Arabia appears a sort of political double entendre: On one level, the book indeed describes how new generations of Saudi dissidents have challenged the Saudi state through new readings of Saudi Islamic traditions. On an underlying level, the book itself is a strong political statement critiquing official Saudi Islam. On both accounts, it is a highly stimulating read - whether the reader fully subscribes to its political sub-text or not.
The "Wahhabiyya" has been the ideological linchpin of the Saudi state: a discourse demanding a return to the early principles of Islam as outlined in the texts of ?d"1 century preacher Muhammad ibn Abdalwahhab and his Najdi successors. This book explains how the Saudi state has used the Wahhabiyya to depoliticize Islam and subjugate it to its raison d'état, reducing Islamic doctrine to its social and ritualist dimension with the help of a loyal, locally and socially circumscribed caste of central Arabian 'ulama'.
The Saudi regime has deployed the Wahhabi principles of migration (hijra), excommunication (takfir), and religious struggle (jihad) to define and consolidate its political realm and produce "consenting subjects." State-sponsored 'ulama ' have equated obedience to god with obedience to the Sultan.