Download or read book The Birth of the Islamic Reform Movement in Saudi Arabia written by George Rentz and published by Arabian Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2004 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current troubles in the middle east have focused much international attention on Saudi Arabia. However, little has been published in English on the background to its culture and its roots in the First Saudi State that arose in 18th-century Najd (central Arabia).The Islamic reform movement that imbued it with its sense of mission, and the life and thought of its proponent Shaikh Muhammad b. 'Abd al- Wahhab (1703/4-1792), have been similarly neglected. Often referred to outside Arabia as Wahhabism, the Shaikh's teachings have been a fundamental influence on the lives of Saudi Arabians and their government ever since his death in 1792. His ideas continue to inspire his many followers, both inside the Kingdom and abroad. A knowledge of his life and thought is vital to a proper understanding of both Saudi Arabia and the Arab world of today. Students of Saudi Arabian history have long recognized George S. Rentz's thesis on the Shaikh's life and the origins of the First Saudi State as a work of pioneering scholarship. Despite this, since its acceptance in 1947 by the University of California, it has never before now been published. Rentz (1912-87) went on to become head of Aramco's research department. Closely basing his account on the local Najdi chronicles which were contemporary with many of the events they describe, Rentz pieces together the life and thought of the thinker who set out to purify Islam as he saw it practised around him, and to direct Muslims back to the fountainhead of their faith. In the process Rentz tells the colourful story of the creation of the First Saudi State (1745-1818) with its capital at al-Dir'iyah, near present-day Riyadh.
Download or read book The Birth of the Islamic Reform Movement in Saudi Arabia written by George Rentz and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current troubles in the Middle East have focused much international attention on Saudi Arabia. However, little has been published in English on the background to its culture and its roots in the First Saudi State that arose in 18th-century central Arabia. The Islamic reform movement that gave it its sense of mission, and the life and thought of Shaikh Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792), the teacher who inspired it, have been similarly neglected. Often referred to outside Arabia as Wahhabism, the Shaikh's teachings have been a fundamental influence on the lives of Saudi Arabians and their government ever since his death in 1792. His ideas continue to inspire his many followers, both inside the Kingdom and abroad, and a knowledge of his life and thought is vital to a proper understanding of both Saudi Arabia and the Arab world of today. Students of Saudi Arabian history have long recognized George S. Rentz's thesis on the Shaikh's life and the origins of the First Saudi State as a work of pioneering scholarship. Despite this, since its acceptance in 1947 by the University of California, it has never before now been published. Closely basing his account on the local Najdi chroniclers who were contemporary with many of the events they describe, Rentz pieces together the life and thought of the thinker who, using as his guide orthodox Hanbalite doctrine, set out to purify Islam as he saw it practised around him, and to direct Muslims back to the original fountainhead of their faith. In the process Rentz tells the colourful story of the creation of the First Saudi State (1745-1818) with its capital at al-Dir'iyah, near present-day Riyadh.
Download or read book Islam and Political Reform in Saudi Arabia written by Mansoor Jassem Alshamsi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the link between Islamic thought/jurisprudence on the one hand and political action on the other. It shows how reformism is deeply rooted in Islamic tradition and how Sunni scholars have become activists for change in Saudi Arabia.
Download or read book Awakening Islam written by Stéphane Lacroix and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amidst the roil of war and instability across the Middle East, the West is still searching for ways to understand the Islamic world. Stéphane 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.
Download or read book Force and Fanaticism written by Simon Ross Valentine and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-09 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wahhabism is an Islamic reform movement found mainly in Saudi Arabia. Closely linked to the Saudi monarchy, it enforces a strict code of morality and conduct monitored by mutawa (religious police), and governs every facet of Saudi life according to its own strict interpretation of Shariah, including gender segregation. Wahhabism also prohibits the practice of any other faith (even other forms of Islam) in Saudi Arabia, which is also the only country that forbids women from driving. But what exactly is Wahhabism? This question had long occupied Valentine, so he lived in the Kingdom for three years, familiarizing himself with its distinct interpretation of Islam. His book defines Wahhabism and Wahhabi beliefs and considers the life and teaching of Muham-mad ibn Abd'al Wahhab and the later expansion of his sect. Also discussed are the rejection of later developments in Islam such as bid'ah; harmful innovations, among them celebrating the prophet's birthday and visiting the tombs of saints; the destruction of holy sites due to the fear of idolatry; Wahhabi law, which imposes the death sentence for crimes as archaic as witch- craft and sorcery, and the connection of Wahhabism with militant Islam globally. Drawing on interviews with Saudis from all walks of life, including members of the feared mutawa, this book appraises of one of the most significant movements in contemporary Islam.
Download or read book The Shi is of Saudi Arabia written by Fouad N. Ibrahim and published by Saqi Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Shi'is of Saudi Arabia offers a comprehensive overview of the evolution of Shi'i opposition in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, from the Iranian Revolution in 1979 to the ascension of King Abdullah to the throne in 2005."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Najd Before the Salafi Reform Movement written by Uwidah Metaireek Al-Juhany and published by Garnet & Ithaca Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the middle of the 18th century, a religious reform movement arose in al-Dir'iyyah, a small town in Najd, central Arabia. Founded by Shaykh Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, and politically and militarily supported by Muhammad Ibn Sa'ud, the chief of al-Dir'iyyah, this movement, known as the Salafiyya, called for a return to the original teachings of the Qur'an and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. This book examines the Najd during the three centuries preceding the rise of the Salafis. It is a fascinating historical narrative that reveals phenomenal developments in the spheres of nomadic migration, settlement, the growth of the sedentary population, and the growth of religious learning, all combined to produce a new society that had new prospects by the middle of the 18th century.
Download or read book Muhammad Ibn Abd Al Wahhab written by ‘Abd Allah Salih al-‘Uthaymin and published by I.B. Tauris. This book was released on 2009-07-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arabian religious reform movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, known in the West as Wahhabism, is one of the most controversial and misunderstood religious movements of the modern Middle East. This biography of its founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, is the first serious English-language account written not from a Western, but an Arabian perspective. Based on exhaustive research of primary sources, 'Abd-Allah Salih al-'Uthaymin reconstructs the social, political and spiritual environment of the Arabian peninsula in the time of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The author charts this movement's intellectual development and growing sway, and unpicks the historic alliance of its founder with the House of Al Sa'ud: a uniquely close partnership of political and religious relationships whose legacy is felt in the Saudi state to this day. Al-Uthaymin also provides a detailed exposition and commentary on Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's doctrines, based on his published and unpublished works, and explains his perspective on concepts such as tawhid, takfir and sharia. This meticulously researched biography offers a unique insight into its complex and often controversial subject. As such, it will become essential reading for anyone interested in political Islam, Saudi Arabia and the modern Middle East.
Download or read book The Islamic Boomerang in Saudi Arabia written by Mohammad Hamid Ansari and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Developing Countries Are Confronted With The Twin Imperatives Of Development And Modernization. Each Has Responded In A Distinct Manner To These Impulses. The Underlying Premises And Perceptions Shape Public Policy. The Developing Societies In The Muslim World Are A Part Of This Wider Process.
Download or read book The History of Saudi Arabia written by Alekseĭ Mikhaĭlovich Vasilʹev and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the history of Saudi Arabia from its emergence in 1745 to the 1990s, focusing on the movement to reform Islam, impact of oil on its culture, its place in the world, and the evolution of its socio-political structure.
Download or read book Islam in Saudi Arabia written by David Commins and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The common image of Saudi Arabia portrays a country where religious rules dictate every detail of daily life: where women may not drive; where unrelated men and women may not interact; where the latter veil their faces; and where banks, restaurants and cafes have dual facilities: one for families, another for men. Yet life in the kingdom, contrary to perception, is not so clear cut as simply obeying dogma. David Commins challenges the stereotype of a country immune to change by highlighting the ways that urbanization, education, consumerism, global communications and technological innovation have exerted pressure against rules issued by the religious establishment. He places the Wahhabi movement in the wider context of Islamic history, showing how state-appointed clerics built on dynastic backing to fashion a model society of Sharia observance and moral virtue. But beneath a surface appearance of obedience to Islamic authority he detects currents that reflect Arabia's heritage of diversity (where Shi'i and Sufi tendencies survive in the face of discrimination) and the effects of its exposure to Western mores.
Download or read book The Making of Salafism written by Henri Lauzière and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some Islamic scholars hold that Salafism is an innovative and rationalist effort at Islamic reform that emerged in the late nineteenth century but gradually disappeared in the mid twentieth. Others argue Salafism is an anti-innovative and antirationalist movement of Islamic purism that dates back to the medieval period yet persists today. Though they contradict each other, both narratives are considered authoritative, making it hard for outsiders to grasp the history of the ideology and its core beliefs. Introducing a third, empirically based genealogy, The Making of Salafism understands the concept as a recent phenomenon projected back onto the past, and it sees its purist evolution as a direct result of decolonization. Henri Lauzière builds his history on the transnational networks of Taqi al-Din al-Hilali (1894–1987), a Moroccan Salafi who, with his associates, participated in the development of Salafism as both a term and a movement. Traveling from Rabat to Mecca, from Calcutta to Berlin, al-Hilali interacted with high-profile Salafi scholars and activists who eventually abandoned Islamic modernism in favor of a more purist approach to Islam. Today, Salafis tend to claim a monopoly on religious truth and freely confront other Muslims on theological and legal issues. Lauzière's pathbreaking history recognizes the social forces behind this purist turn, uncovering the popular origins of what has become a global phenomenon.
Download or read book Najd Before the Salafi Reform Movement written by Uwidah Metaireek Al-Juhany and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Saudi Arabia written by Sherifa Zuhur and published by Strategic Studies Institute U. S. Army War College. This book was released on 2005 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph examines the emergence and progress of an Islamist threat in Saudi Arabia and the simultaneous development of other forces for political change, and assesses the strategic situation in the Kingdom in light of the regional war on terrorism.
Download or read book Saudi Arabia in Transition written by Bernard Haykel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making sense of Saudi Arabia is crucially important today. The kingdom's western province contains the heart of Islam, and it is the United States' closest Arab ally and the largest producer of oil in the world. However, the country is undergoing rapid change: its aged leadership is ceding power to a new generation, and its society, dominated by young people, is restive. Saudi Arabia has long remained closed to foreign scholars, with a select few academics allowed into the kingdom over the past decade. This book presents the fruits of their research as well as those of the most prominent Saudi academics in the field. This volume focuses on different sectors of Saudi society and examines how the changes of the past few decades have affected each. It reflects new insights and provides the most up-to-date research on the country's social, cultural, economic and political dynamics.
Download or read book The Muslim Brotherhood in Contemporary Egypt written by Mariz Tadros and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-06 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the oldest and most influential Islamist movements. As the party ascends to power in Egypt, it is poised to adopt a new system of governance and state–society relations, the effects of which are likely to extend well beyond Egypt’s national borders. This book examines the Brotherhood’s visions and practices, from its inception in 1928, up to its response to the 2011 uprising, as it moves to redefine democracy along Islamic lines. The book analyses the Muslim Brotherhood’s position on key issues such as gender, religious minorities, and political plurality, and critically analyses whether claims that the Brotherhood has abandoned extremism and should be engaged with as a moderate political force can be substantiated. It also considers the wider political context of the region, and assesses the extent to which the Brotherhood has the potential to transform politics in the Middle East.
Download or read book A History of Saudi Arabia written by Madawi al-Rasheed and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-07-11 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saudi Arabia is a wealthy and powerful country which wields influence in the West and across the Islamic world. Yet it remains a closed society. Its history in the twentieth century is dominated by the story of state formation. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Ibn Sa'ud fought a long campaign to bring together a disparate people from across the Arabian peninsula. In 1932 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born. Madawi al-Rasheed traces its extraordinary history from the age of emirates in the nineteenth century, through the 1990 Gulf War, to the present day. She fuses chronology with analysis, personal experience with oral histories, and draws on local and foreign documents to illuminate the social and cultural life of the Saudis. This is a rich and rewarding book which will be invaluable to students, and to all those trying to understand the enigma of Saudi Arabia.
