Saudi Arabia: Islamic Threat, Political Reform, And The Global War On Terror
Sherifa Zuhur
Language: English
Pages: 72
ISBN: 1312322519
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
U.S. foreign policy and the domestic concerns of Middle Eastern states are influencing the pursuit of the global war on terror in the Middle East. A close view of Saudi Arabia reveals the complex interaction of these forces. The U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and the global war on terror are important challenges to the U.S. administration that have region-wide ramifications. Saudi Arabia has been facing down Islamist insurgency along with other challenges since September 11, 2001, and with even more urgency since May 2003. The Kingdom clearly remains a major political and economic force in the region. The income from its vast oil resources primarily has funded its strong influence, and the Kingdom has, in turn, sponsored poorer developing Arab nations. Furthermore, its Islamic influence has been apparent in the broader Muslim world, and the United States has maintained a strong relationship with the Kingdom for many decades.
“Decreasing Violence in Saudi Arabia and Beyond” (in Pick, Speckhard, and Jacuch, eds., 2010) about Saudi Arabia. She is a former president of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies and an editor of the Review of Middle East Studies, and she holds a BA in political science and Arabic and Arabic literature, an MA in Islamic studies, and a PhD in history, all from the University of California, Los Angeles. xi Preface All books are written at particular historical moments. Especially in
in an 1857 firman (royal decree), the Ottomans had prohibited the trade in black slaves (an order to emancipate Christian slaves was issued in 1830), excluding the Hijaz from the prohibition. The exception came about due to a revolt against the Ottomans that was unleashed when a leader of the ‘ulama issued a fatwa against the Ottomans for this decree (Lewis 1990, 80–81). It seems curious that many of the British sources characterized Arabian slavery as not being linked to production (instead, they
argued against militance using arguments based on Islamic precepts, and television dramas that addressed the background of militance and its presence in local communities. Also, the government began an experiment staffed by psychologists, other social scientists, and religious experts in “reeducating” detainees suspected of being linked to the militants. The voluntary counseling program was intended to correct wrongful notions of jihad and takfir (the action of declaring a Muslim to be a
found on the bottom of a sea or lake, became fossilized. Then the fossilized matter was heated or subjected to pressure. (The alternative thesis is that petroleum is of abiogenic origin.) This material was buried under sediment, and that in turn created heat and pressure in a process 6 | Chapter 1 Geography called diagenesis. That turned the material into kerogen or, when even greater heat occurred, into hydrocarbons of a liquid or natural gas type. Usually, the oil or natural gas was trapped
outside of banks, especially by foreign workers from South Asia; these are sometimes referred to as hawala. The worker typically pays the hawaladar, who telephones or electronically contacts his counterpart in the home country, who pays out cash to the worker’s family. Such transfers cannot be easily traced and have also been criticized as a means, or potential means, of terrorist funding, although terrorist activity has not been traced to the foreign-labor sector in the kingdom. The social and