Professor Madawi al-Rasheed
LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series | 07
Abstract
Focusing on mutations of Saudi Islamism during the Arab uprisings, this paper examines the responses of Salman al-Awdah, one of the most influential Saudi Islamist scholars. As he reflects on peaceful revolution in the Arab world, al-Awdah combines his Salafi heritage with insights from western thought, thus producing a hybrid discourse that engages with the inevitability of political change. I argue that al-Awdah goes beyond the two now well-known Islamist strategies, namely jihadi militant struggle and Salafi acquiescent positions, that dominated debate in Saudi Arabia for several decades. His treatise on peaceful revolution offers a ‘third way’ between these two binary opposites. I assess whether a new Islamism that values peaceful action and mobilisation in the pursuit of political change has already reached maturity in Saudi Arabia.
About the Author
Madawi Al-Rasheed is Visiting Professor at the LSE Middle East Centre and ResearchFellow at the Open Society Foundation. Al-Rasheed is the author of several books on Saudi Arabia, including A Most Masculine State (Cambridge University Press 201), A History of Saudi Arabia (Cambridge University Press 2011), and Contesting the Saudi State (Cambridge University Press 2007). She has edited several volumes including Dying for Faith (I.B. Tauris 2009), Kingdom without Borders (Hurst & Co. 2009), and Demystifying the Caliphate (Hurst & Co. 2012).