"The Kingdom and the Caliphate: Duel of the Islamic States," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2016 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Vol. 20, April, 2016
Saudi Arabia’s announcement of the formation of an ‘Islamic Alliance’ to combat terrorism in mid-December 2015 incurred the concern of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ‘caliph’ of the Islamic State. His propagandists were unprepared to address the ideological ramifications of such a paradigm shift in Saudi behavior. The anti-Saudi ideological formulations and narratives that the jihadists had developed over a number of years did not factor-in the possibility that Saudi state would undertake aggressive military operations beyond its borders, operations directed primarily against themselves. Saudi thinking may be premised on the idea that the Islamic State—seeking local support in Iraq and Syria by claiming to act in defense of Sunnis against tyranny and sectarianism—would crumble easily and quickly if faced with an ‘Islamic Alliance’ that aims to liberate Sunnis from both the Islamic State and Iranian hegemony alike. The announcement has raised popular expectations of an impending ‘new order’ in the Middle East among those heartened by what they consider ‘long-overdue’ Saudi activism. However, the new Saudi initiative is a dangerous gamble that may backfire on rhetorical and ideological grounds if the campaign fails or takes too long.
Jihad in saudi arabia: violence and pan-islamism since 1979
2010
bin Ladin and many 9/11 hijackers, is widely considered to be the heartland of radical Islamism. For decades, the conservative and oil-rich kingdom contributed recruits, ideologues and money to jihadi groups worldwide. Yet Islamism within Saudi Arabia itself remains poorly understood. Why has Saudi Arabia produced so many militants? Has the Saudi government supported violent groups? How strong is al-Qaida's foothold in the kingdom and does it threaten the regime? Why did Bin Ladin not launch a campaign there until 2003? This book presents the first ever history of Saudi jihadism based on extensive fieldwork in the kingdom and primary sources in Arabic. It offers a powerful explanation for the rise of Islamist militancy in Saudi Arabia and sheds crucial new light on the history of the global jihadist movement.
Saudi Arabia: Islamic Threat, Political Reform and the Global War on Terror
This monograph examines the convergence of the war on terror on Saudi soil, calls for and modest programs of political reform, and heightened post-9/11 tensions with the United States. Saudi Arabia has been condemned for its Wahhabist version of Islam, and linked to the growth of salafist extremism operating locally, regionally, and internationally. This monograph more clearly defines the background and nature of today's Islamic threat in Saudi Arabia, and argues for continuing counter- and anti-terrorist measures but also for political reform and development.
Wahhabi Militancy, the West and the Saudi-Iran Divide: Moving Beyond the Old Status Quo
Geopolitica, 2016
This essay argues for Iran’s importance as a partner in the fight against jihadi-takfiri terrorism and, in this respect, it has the outline of a policy brief, based on a rich array of evidence. It addresses the unleashing of Wahhabi-driven jihaditakfiri violence in North Africa and Southwest Asia followed to the so-called Arab Spring, which has had dire consequences on the populations of Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, but has also been witnessed on the streets of cities around the world such as Paris, Brussels, Tunis, Beirut, Istanbul, Kabul, Jakarta, San Bernardino and Orlando. It does so from the perspective of the new status quo and re-balancing of power in the region brought about on the one hand by the dire consequences of the Spring/Awakening and on the other by the signing (14 July 2015) and implementation (16 January 2016) of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the P5+1. The latter, the essay argues, is a promising sign of the increasing awareness in the West of the need to move beyond faulty security perceptions about Iran and the old Wahhabi-guaranteed status quo in the region. Iran has in effect been the single force that has blocked the emerging threat of Wahhabi militantism and socalled Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh) from Baghdad to Damascus – and arguably from Beirut to Sanaa – and it is therefore an unavoidable partner for anyone sincerely interested in degrading and ultimately destroying ISIS, in the long run putting an end to the decades-long unholy alliance for regional dominance between the West and Saudi Arabia.
Creating Frankenstein: The Saudi Export of Wahhabism
Creating Frankenstein: The Saudi export of Wahhabism By James M. Dorsey Tension between Middle Eastern regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran are likely to intensify sectarian strains in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bahrain that are home to both Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities. At the heart of the battle between Saudi Arabia and Iran is a four decade-old existential battle for dominance not only in the Middle East and North Africa but in the Muslim world as a whole. It is a battle that started with the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, the first toppling by a popular revolt of both a monarch and an icon of US power in the region. Concerned that the Iranian revolution would offer a form of Islamic governance involving a degree of popular sovereignty that would challenge Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy which cloaks itself in a puritan interpretation of Islam, the kingdom went on the warpath. In doing so, it turned Wahhabi proselytization into the single largest dedicated public diplomacy campaign in World War Two history, spending up to $100 billion since 1979 on the funding of Muslim cultural institutions across the globe and forging close ties to non-Wahhabi Muslim leaders and intelligence agencies that have bought into significant elements of its worldview. The result has been Muslim societies like Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh have under Wahhabi and Salafi influence and the playing with religion by governments become more conservative. The spread of Saudi Wahhabism and Salafism has also sparked more militant groups. Nonetheless, the equation of Wahhabism/Salafism is simplistic and masks the complex layers of Wahhabism’s impact across the globe, the fallout of the subservience of significant elements of the Saudi Wahhabi clergy to an absolute monarch, and of Saudi funding that is less aimed at proselytization than at the development of soft power. In fact, increasingly Saudi expenditure fails to pass the test of a cost-benefit analysis and raises question of the future relationship between the kingdom’s ruling Al Saud family and the Wahhabis.
Religion and politics in Saudi Arabia: Wahhabism and the state
2009
What is Wahhabism? What is its relationship with the Saudi state? Does it play a part in Islamist terrorist threats? These are among the complex questions tackled in Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia. Moving from the historical, social, and political contexts in which ...
Knowledge About the Contemporary Wahhabism - Facts About its Influence.pdf
2014
Abstract: In the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the new millennium, there is a kind of revolution within Islam as a religion, which advocates strict adherence to Islam, its purification from the innovations coming from the other cultures. In different parts of the world, in different countries, there are emerging trends, groups and ideologies, which are trying in various ways to point out that Muslims strayed from the path to Allah and do not practice Islam as prescribed by the Koran, the Sunnah and the hadiths. One of these conservative and fundamental Islamic movements, which had its major impact on many other Islamic movements and which is very popular nowadays is the Wahhabism and its ideology. This relatively new (originated in 18th century in Saudi Arabia) ultraconservative movement within Islam, advocates purifying the Islam of any innovations, its acculturation, a return to the way of practicing Islam the way it has been practiced in the time of prophet Muhammad and his contemporaries. Even many Muslims consider this relatively new movement within Islam as very controversial. However, the Wahhabism manages to be present in almost all countries with Muslims population. Originating from Saudi Arabia, which is the "cradle of Islam" and the country in which are located the Islam's holiest places, Mecca and Medina, supported by Saudi "petrodollars" and the powerful propaganda of the Wahhabi establishment in Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabi ideology today is widespread worldwide. In the same time, we are witnesses of a kind of paradox situation: outside Saudi Arabia, this ideology is spreading very fast, but it seems that inside the Muslims holiest land, it is getting weaker and it is losing its influence. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the situation regarding the contemporary Wahhabism, in other words, to observe if it is still one of the leading fundamental and radical religious movements inside Islam or it is slowly losing its influence. Key words: Wahhabism, fundamentalism, Islam,
Saudi Nationalism, Wahhabi Daʿwā, and Western Power
in When Politics are Sacralized, eds. Nadim H. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2021
See Arab News (2017) for a photo and a sympathetic write-up of the event. For a reflection of recent Saudi efforts to disassociate itself from responsibility for extremist movements, see Ansary (2018). The Arabia Foundation played a particularly high-profile role in the US as an aggressive advocate of the policies of Saudi Arabia and its de facto ruler,