Amidst the roil of war and instability across the Middle East,
the West is still searching for ways to understand the Islamic
world. Stephane Lacroix has now given us a penetrating look at the
political dynamics of Saudi Arabia, one of the most opaque of
Muslim countries and the place that gave birth to Osama bin
Laden.
The result is a history that has never been told before. Lacroix
shows how thousands of Islamist militants from Egypt, Syria, and
other Middle Eastern countries, starting in the 1950s, escaped
persecution and found refuge in Saudi Arabia, where they were
integrated into the core of key state institutions and society. The
transformative result was the Sahwa, or Islamic Awakening, an
indigenous social movement that blended political activism with
local religious ideas. "Awakening Islam" offers a pioneering
analysis of how the movement became an essential element of Saudi
society, and why, in the late 1980s, it turned against the very
state that had nurtured it. Though the Sahwa Insurrection failed,
it has bequeathed the world two very different, and very
determined, heirs: the Islamo-liberals, who seek an Islamic
constitutional monarchy through peaceful activism, and the
neo-jihadis, supporters of bin Laden's violent campaign.
"Awakening Islam" is built upon seldom-seen documents in
Arabic, numerous travels through the country, and interviews with
an unprecedented number of Saudi Islamists across the ranks of
today s movement. The result affords unique insight into a closed
culture and its potent brand of Islam, which has been exported
across the world and which remains dangerously misunderstood.
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