Abstract
The recent events of the Arab Spring that have brought the fall of the regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, a transition in Yemen, and a civil war in Syria have only partially, slightly, or not at all affected the Arab monarchies. Why? In the case of Saudi Arabia, one of the possible explanations could be traced back in the path that led to the rise of the current state, in particular the way with which the al-Saud have been able to use religion as an ideological unifying glue, to forge a binding identity between the several fragmented segments of society. In particular, this strategy turned out to be crucial first to control, and then to put an end to the military and political autonomy of the Bedouins. If we consider the current process of re-Islamization in the whole of Middle East, the role of Islamic movements and parties in reshaping the political framework of those countries where they have recently won the elections or where they enjoy a wide popular support as opposition forces, and finally their financial and political backing by some of the Gulf monarchies, it is useful to shed some light on as important an episode in Saudi history as that of the Ikhwan movement, as a way to analyze under a historical perspective the role, strengths, and limitations of the political use of religion.
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Notes
Uwaidah M. Al Juhany, Najd before the Salafi Reform Movement: Social, Political, and Religious Conditions in Najd during the Three Centuries Preceding the Rise of the Saudi State (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 2002), 49–50, 159–160;
Abd Allah al-Salih al-Uthaymin, Storia dell’Arabia Saudita (Palermo, Italy: Sellerio Editore, 2001), 38.
Nadav Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security (Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985), 20–21;
Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 31.
Al Juhany, Najd before the Salafi Reform Movement, 156; George S. Rentz, The Birth of the Islamic Reform Movement in Saudi Arabia: Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhāb (1703/4–1792) and the Beginnings of Unitarian Empire in Arabia (London: Arabian Publishing, 2004), 4.
Mashaal Abdullah Turki al Saud, “Permanence and Change: An Analysis of the Islamic Political Culture of Saudi Arabia with Special Reference to the Royal Family,” PhD diss., Claremont Graduate School, 1982, 24;
Christine Moss Helms, The Cohesion of Saudi Arabia: Evolution of Political Identity (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 84;
Madawi al-Rasheed, Storia dell’ Arabia Saudita (Milan: Bompiani, 2004), 42–43; Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia, 80.
Al-Rasheed, Storia dell’Arabia Saudita, 47–48; Safran, SaudiArabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security, 22; Daryl Champion, The Paradoxical Kingdom: Saudi Arabia and the Momentum of Reform (London: Hurst, 2003), 27–28;
Joseph Kostiner, The Making of Saudi Arabia 1916–1936: From Chieftaincy to Monarchical State (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 4.
About the period spent by Abdul Aziz with the al-Murrah tribe, see Robert Lacey, The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Saud (New York: Harcount Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1981), 23–30; and
Michael Darlow and Barbara Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior and His Legacy (London: Quartet, 2010), 60–75.
About the formative years spent in exile at the court of Mubarak al-Sabah, see Darlow and Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior and His Legacy, 75–92; Lacey, The Kingdom, 76–77; Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security, 29; Al-Uthaymin, Storia dell’Arabia Saudita, 188;Mark Weston, Prophets and Princes: Saudi Arabia from Muhammad to the Present (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), 114.
Harry St. John Philby, Sa’udi Arabia (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1968), 255; Vassiliev, The History ofSaudi Arabia, 223; Darlow and Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior and His Legacy, 143.
Gary Troeller, The Birth of Saudi Arabia: Britain and the Rise of the House of Sa’ud (London: Frank Cass, 1976), 83–87; Darlow and Bray, Ibn Saud: The Desert Warrior and His Legacy, 208–215; Lacey, The Kingdom, 114–118;
David Holden and Richard Johns, The House of Saud (London: Pan Books Ltd., 1982), 48–50; Philby, Sa’udi Arabia, 271–272.
Niblock, “Social Structure and the Development of the Saudi Arabian Political System,” 84; Henry Rosenfeld, “The Social Composition of the Military in the Process of State Formation in the Arabian Desert,” part II, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 95, part II, July–December 1965, 186–187; Kostiner, The Making of Saudi Arabia, 42; PBS transcript of the interview to Madawi al-Rasheed (2005) available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saud/interviews/alrasheed.html (last accessed: February 12, 2012); Abdulaziz H. Al-Fahad, “The ‘Imama vs the ‘Iqal: HadariBedouin Conflict and the Formation of the Saudi State,” in Counter-Narratives: History, Contemporary Society and Politics in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, eds Madawi al-Rasheed and Robert Vitalis (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 43, 45, 50.
On the historical debate over the obscure origin of the Ikhwan movement, see Abdulla S. Zaid, “The Ikhwan Movement of Najd, Saudi Arabia 1908– 1930,” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1989, 31–32, 45–46;
Joseph Kostiner, “On Instruments and Their Designers: The Ikhwan of Najd and the Emergence of the Saudi State,” Middle Eastern Studies, 21:3, 1985, 299;
John Habib, Ibn Sa’ud’s Warriors of Islam: The Ikhwan of Najd and Their Role in the Creation of the Sa’udi Kingdom, 1910–1930 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1978), 20–24; Helms, The Cohesion of Saudi Arabia, 128–130; Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia, 227;
Ayman al-Yassini, Religion and State in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (London and Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), 50–51;
David Commins, The Wahhabi Mission and the Saudi Arabia (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 81.
Zaid, “The Ikhwan Movement of Najd,” 65–66; Ugo Fabietti, “Coping with Change in Arabia: The Bedouin Community and the Idea of Development,” in Changing Nomads in a Changing World, eds Joseph Ginat and Anatoly M. Khazanov (Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 1998), 51.
The fact that the hujar were populated mainly on the basis of tribal affiliation showed how the attempt to break the tribal ‘asabiyya was only limited. Despite the assertions by the Ikhwan that their settlements were communities of equals, social differences among their inhabitants persisted. They were divided into three groups: (1) Bedouin members of noble tribes who had become farmers and who fought against enemies; (2) the mutawwa’in, who acted as preachers and were under the direct control of the Riyadh ‘ulama and were recruited from outside the tribal units of the settlement; (3) merchants and craftsmen, members of ignoble tribes who did not fight, whose military duty consisted in shoeing horses, making and repairing arms, etc. Furthermore, only 10–20 percent of all the Bedouins decided to settle in Ikhwan’s hujar. See Al-Yassini, Religion and State in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 52–53; and Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia, 228–229. In brief, as Joseph Kostiner has stated, “the evolution of the Ikhwan movement was neither controlled, uniform or complete.” See Joseph Kostiner, “Transforming Dualities: Tribe and State Formation in Saudi Arabia,” in Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, eds Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1990), 231.
J. C. Wilkinson, “Nomadic Territory As a Factor in Defining Arabia’s Boundaries,” in The Transformation of Nomadic Society in the Arab East, eds Martha Mundy and Basim Musallam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 44–46; Kostiner, The Making of Saudi Arabia, 82.
Ugo Fabietti, Sceicchi, beduini e santi: potere, identità tribale e religione nel mondo arabo-musulmano (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1994), 90, 131, 141.
Wahhabism has never developed a theory of its own or a different political view from those already present in the Sunni tradition. As for the theory of political power’s legitimization, it has been strongly influenced by the thought of the Hambali alim Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328). From the latter it took that religion and state are indissolubly linked. Without the coercive power of the state, religion is in danger, and without the discipline of revealed law, the state becomes a tyrannical organization. Absolute obedience to the ruler was due unless he had disobeyed God’s law, that is, he had not applied the sharia or had prevented the ruled from exercising their religion. Even if the ruler was a tyrant or a dissolute, the ruled had to obey him and everything that was in accordance with the teachings of God, because this form of obedience to the authority was part of the obedience to God and the Prophet. Any condition of fitna had to be avoided at all costs since it led to the division of the umma. See Helms, The Cohesion of Saudi Arabia, 80, 105–108; Al-Saud, “Permanence and Change,” 32–34; Al-Yassini, Religion and State in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 30–31; Derek Hopwood, “The Ideological Basis: Abd al-Wahhab’s Muslim Revivalism,” in State, Society andEconomy in Saudi Arabia, 33–34. More recently, former Saudi ambassador to the United States Prince Turki al-Faisal confirmed this kind of existing legitimization between the ruler and the ruled: “The ruler obliges himself to protect, promote, and enhance the lives and property of the ruled; and the ruled oblige themselves to protect, promote and obey the ruler in everything but that which counters the teachings of God.” See Thomas Lippman, Saudi Arabia on the Edge: The Uncertain Future of an American Ally (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books. 2012). 34.
Donald P. Cole, “The Enmeshment of Nomads in Sa’udi Arabian Society: The Case of Al Murrah,” in The Desert and the Sown: Nomads in the Wider Society, ed. Cynthia Nelson (Berkeley: University of California, 1973), 126. See also
Donald P. Cole, “Bedouin and Social Change in Saudi Arabia,” in Change and Development in Nomadic and Pastoral Societies, eds John G. Galaty and Philip C. Salzman (Leiden, the Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1981), 131, 139–140, 145; PBS interview to Madawi al-Rasheed.
E Gregory Gause III, “The Persistence of Monarchy in the Arabian Peninsula: A Comparative Analysis,” in Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of Modernity, ed. Joseph Kostiner (Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 174–175.
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© 2013 Kenneth Christie and Mohammad Masad
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Andreotti, S. (2013). The Ikhwan Movement and Its Role in Saudi Arabia’s State-Building. In: Christie, K., Masad, M. (eds) State Formation and Identity in the Middle East and North Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137369604_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137369604_5
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