Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has achieved a high level of political, economic, and ideological influence around the world, due to the combination of oil money and the alliance of the house of Saud with clerics who proclaim the teachings of the 18th century reactionary reformist ibn Wahabbi. The first two books below provide some inside perspectives on what life is like in the Saudi kingdom. For explanations of the world-wide role of Saudi Arabia, consult one of the broader histories in the second section.

Personal Life

Qanta Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom (2008). Ahmed is a Muslim British national of Pakistani/Indian origin who did her medical training in the United States and spent two years practicing medicine in Saudi Arabia, ending shortly after 9/11. Her fascinating memoir focuses on gender relations in the Saudi Kingdom, her experiences of Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca), and the tensions of Saudi culture. The contrast between Ahmed’s and Malcolm X’s stories about Hajj is striking. Hajj introduced Malcolm X to the possibility of a world without race, where all people are treated as equals. Ahmed, however, was shocked by the blatant racism she encountered on Hajj, which she considered a disturbing betrayal of Islam’s teachings about the equality of all before God – and far worse than anything she observed during her years of living in Great Britain and the United States. The rest of the book is full of stories about the Saudi women and men Ahmed encountered and learned from. This book could have used an editor who is more attuned to the niceties of English prose, but if you can look past the writing it is well worth reading.

Rajaa Alsanea, Girls of Riaydh: A Novel (2005). First published in Arabic, Girls of Riaydh purports to tell the stories of four young women searching for love and satisfaction in 1990s Saudi Arabia – all through the eyes of a mysterious narrator who has created a Yahoo group and sends out weekly emails every Friday. The novel created quite a sensation throughout the Arab world and is now available in English. It is written adequately well, but what makes it truly interesting is the author’s portrayals of how Saudi women and men are trying to take advantage of the freedom and technology of the modern world while negotiating the constraints of their society.

Global Influence

Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (2005). The rise of extremism informs every book about Islam published since 9/11, but in The Great Theft it is the central question. Abou El Fadl is a professor at the UCLA School of Law and a specialist in Islamic law, also known as shari’a. He argues that the Muslim world is divided between puritans and moderates, each of whom find their own world-view compelling and accuses the other of having changed Islam almost beyond recognition. Abou El Fadl finds the puritans deeply frightening, and he argues they have gained power because of the destruction of Muslim intellectual traditions and the impoverishment of Muslim culture. To give one small but significant example, several universities used to have endowments that dated back to the ninth or tenth centuries. Both colonial and post-colonial rulers confiscated those endowments, thus depriving the universities of the economic independence that underpins intellectual independence and depriving Muslim societies of knowledge of their history and a power center separate from the state. The Great Theft starts with a history of the rise of puritanism, and then charts the moderate and puritan divide in terms of each group’s approaches to God and the purposes of creation, law and morality, history and modernity, democracy and human rights, interactions with non-Muslims and salvation, jihad, warfare, and terrorism, and the nature and role of women. I found Abou El Fadl’s discussion of women, gender, and the Qur’an particularly helpful.

Tamim Ansary, Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes (2009). If you expect to read just one history of Islam, this would be a good choice. In this fascinating and well-written book, Ansary tells the story of what he calls “The Middle World” – the world defined by land routes of travel and trade through the heart of the European/Asian/African land mass, which has long interacted with yet been distinct from the Mediterranean world defined by sea routes. He starts with a reflection on the concept of world history – the story of how we got where we are, but which “we” and where are we? The book then explores the origins and growth of Islamic civilization, its challenges from inside and out (crusades, Mongols, etc.), and modern (meaning 18th to 20th century) responses to those challenges. Highly recommended.

Leila Ahmed, A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence from the Middle East to America (2011). This valuable book is far broader than its title suggests. I recommend it highly for anyone who is interested in Muslim women or Islamism, and is willing to read a well-written scholarly book. Ahmed grew up in Egypt and now teaches at the Harvard Divinity School, and she started with the question of why more women are wearing hijab now than a generation ago, in the United States and around the world. Answering this question led her not only to exploring the multiple reasons individual women offer for wearing and not wearing different forms of veils, but also to writing an extremely helpful history of Islamism in Egypt, where the Islamic Brotherhood was founded in the 1920s, and the United States, where Islamism-influenced women are now at the forefront of challenging gender hierarchies. Islamism puts the pursuit of social justice and service to others near the core of Muslim practice. Traditional forms of Islam, in contrast, tend to have a more personal, spiritual, and ethical focus. Because Islamism urges its members towards organization and activism, and because of financial support from Saudi Arabia, Islamism has grown rapidly and is increasingly able to define itself as the “true” Islam. Islamism has changed the symbolic meaning of hijab, and for many Islamist women, wearing hijab now signifies their commitment to social justice. In the 1970s the leadership of the Islamic Brotherhood repudiated violence as a means for achieving their goals, but not all Islamists agreed with them and some broke away to create militant groups, which are a small minority but more likely to make the news than the peaceful Islamist mainstream. Most American Muslim institutions have Islamist roots, but most American Muslims are not Islamist. 9/11 has had a huge effect on American Muslim organizations, making them more open to diverse opinions and challenges to hierarchical leadership. In the US, the Islamic call to justice has extended to gender justice among many, but probably not a majority, of American Islamists. Such a brief summary does not do justice to the depth of Ahmed’s work, but suggests the breadth and importance of her story.