Abstract
To understand Saudi Arabian Wahhabi theology, it needs to be contextualized. This article explores the discussion about music in Saudi Arabia in order to illuminate the political theory of the social of Wahhabi theology and the ongoing transformation of Saudi publicness. Since Wahhabism has singled out music as one of the abominations of society to be avoided by the believer, the changing soundscapes of the kingdom as music becomes a more common public presence has becomes a hot topic of discussion. By looking at the common Wahhabi stand on music and comparing it with both new practices and a new discourse represented by the scholar al-Kalbani, it becomes clear how a plurality of opinions challenge established Wahhabi agendas in a new publicness. This, in its turn, makes it relevant to investigate the logic of the political vision of the social that the official Wahhabi scholars have. I argue that this Wahhabi theology needs to be understood in the framework of its view on the human psyche and in relation to its concept of sin. I further argue that a renegotiation of positions is taking place, since negative judgments about music are not internalized in the population to the extent scholars might wish for or envisage.
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Notes
Wahhabi is sometimes considered to be a pejorative, since it supposes that people called that follow Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792). Most “Wahhabis” prefer the label Muslim, ahl al-tawhid or al-muwahhidun (both terms stressing monotheism; see Lacroix 2011: 10; Al-Rasheed 2007: 2ff.). I use Wahhabi as an established term but have no intention of using it as a pejorative. Furthermore, Wahhabi is not a single interpretation but can be divided into major trends, like official Wahhabism, Sahwa, Jihadis, and Ahl al-Hadith (or the rejectionists). Even within those trends, one finds a diversity of opinions (Commins 2009; Lacroix 2004, 2011; Al-Rasheed 2007).
Armando Salvatore (2007) has argued for a change in the English translation of Habermas’s concept of “Öffentlichkeit.” The usual translation, “public sphere,” is then replaced with Salvatore’s suggestion “publicness,” which seeks to preserve the grammatical construct of the German concept and, thus, also create associations with an abstract but powerful idea, instead of a concrete sphere.
Formally a military unit, the National Guard (al-haras al-watani al-musaʻida l-l-shu’una al-ʻaskariyya) has been reformed to deal with both national security and cultural issues.
U.S. consulate in Jeddah homepage 2011.
The metal group Chicks behind Walls was the first all-female Saudi band. At least this is often claimed. I have, this far, never been able to track down one single song by it, even though its name is often featured on different sites.
During 2011, the Web site Saudi Metal (2011) was a great resource for learning about Saudi metal, but the page has been closed down since mid-autumn 2011. Search Myspace for Saudi metal instead.
A search was made using the words musiqa, miʻzaf, mutrib/ alat al-ʻazaf.
A rababa is a two-stringed instrument played with a bow, widespread all over the Middle East. There are a wide variety of versions (fewer or more strings, played without a bow, etc.).
See Saudi online TV on, for example, http://www.sm.gov.sa/Ch1.htm, or online radio on, for example, http://www.sm.gov.sa/RD1.htm.
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Acknowledgments
Research for this article was made possible by a grant from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University, Sweden. It has also gained substantially from the discussions in the Nordic network “Researching Music Censorship,” coordinated by Professor Annemette Kirkegaard, Copenhagen University, and funded by Nordforsk.
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Otterbeck, J. Wahhabi ideology of social control versus a new publicness in Saudi Arabia. Cont Islam 6, 341–353 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-012-0223-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-012-0223-x