1 00:00:05,490 --> 00:00:14,280 Welcome all to this, the second session of our political pod seminar sponsored by the Middle East Centre at TheJapanese College Oxford. 2 00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:17,490 It's really a pleasure to have with us today. 3 00:00:17,490 --> 00:00:25,800 Plus, the moderator rescued Professor Prescott Minaret, both speaking on Saudi Arabia and religion, specifically in Saudi Arabia. 4 00:00:25,800 --> 00:00:29,370 My name is special DG and I'm joined by someone. 5 00:00:29,370 --> 00:00:36,960 Ask me. The both of us are convenors of the seminar. And let me just say a couple of words about how we will proceed. 6 00:00:36,960 --> 00:00:48,840 Osama will shortly introduce our speakers. We will have the talks by Badawi, followed immediately by the PA. and then take questions at the end. 7 00:00:48,840 --> 00:00:56,940 If you have questions, please write them in the Q&A box or in the chat box and we shall come to them. 8 00:00:56,940 --> 00:01:02,640 And don't wait until the end of the talks. You can write your questions any time during them. 9 00:01:02,640 --> 00:01:07,830 So much looking forward to the second session and over to you, Osama. 10 00:01:07,830 --> 00:01:15,180 Thank you so much, Faisal, and welcome everyone and especially a warm welcome to both medullary and Pasko. 11 00:01:15,180 --> 00:01:20,630 Beaming in from Madali, of course, is a local for us and sometimes a local chorus within Oxford. 12 00:01:20,630 --> 00:01:28,050 If you've come in and spent time with us quite a few times and Pascal is beaming in from the northeast of the United States, 13 00:01:28,050 --> 00:01:32,460 I'm going to briefly introduce Madali and then share them. 14 00:01:32,460 --> 00:01:37,560 Though you can take 20 minutes or so for your lecture as you've requested. 15 00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:45,480 I will give you a heads up when your time is running out, and then I will briefly introduce Pascal and take things from there. 16 00:01:45,480 --> 00:01:48,210 According to the same format as Faisal has highlighted, 17 00:01:48,210 --> 00:01:56,130 please do put in your questions early just so that we're able to capture them within the Q&A period. 18 00:01:56,130 --> 00:02:01,680 So that means while we're going midstream, so Mahdavi is no stranger to us at Middle East Centre. 19 00:02:01,680 --> 00:02:07,560 She's a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, then at least centre. 20 00:02:07,560 --> 00:02:14,910 And she has spent a long career, a very prolific career working at institutions around the world, 21 00:02:14,910 --> 00:02:18,510 including the National University of Singapore King's College. 22 00:02:18,510 --> 00:02:27,780 For a period of, I want to say, about 20 years, you were a professor of anthropology of religion and also recently, 23 00:02:27,780 --> 00:02:34,740 well, relatively recently you became a fellow of the British Academy amongst a whole litany of awards and prises. 24 00:02:34,740 --> 00:02:37,380 Also, very prolific author. 25 00:02:37,380 --> 00:02:46,260 Your most recent book, though his most recent book is The Sum King Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia, published in 2020 with Hirst and Opie. 26 00:02:46,260 --> 00:02:53,070 But in addition to academic writings, books, journal articles, she's also very prolific in the media space. 27 00:02:53,070 --> 00:02:58,890 So very much in a sense of public humanities scholar, public, an engaged scholar, shall we say. 28 00:02:58,890 --> 00:03:03,300 So with that, we look forward to your presentation on Saudi Arabia. 29 00:03:03,300 --> 00:03:10,950 Thank you very much. Thank you so much, and thank you, Faisal, for organising this timely seminar. 30 00:03:10,950 --> 00:03:21,750 Islamic political thought is extremely important at this specific moment in the contemporary history of the Muslim world in general. 31 00:03:21,750 --> 00:03:27,930 The Arab world, and specifically Saudi Arabia, top our case study today. 32 00:03:27,930 --> 00:03:34,860 The title of my presentation is the Islamic reformist movement in Saudi Arabia, 33 00:03:34,860 --> 00:03:46,530 and it is between the violence of the minority and the apathy of the majority, and I'll explain my title in due course. 34 00:03:46,530 --> 00:03:56,250 But let me start by just a little definition to focus our mind when we invoke Islamic reform. 35 00:03:56,250 --> 00:04:01,980 What do we mean? Who are we talking about as far as I'm concerned? 36 00:04:01,980 --> 00:04:11,970 I regard Islamic reform as first and intellectual movement within the Muslim world in general and Saudi Arabia. 37 00:04:11,970 --> 00:04:20,130 Although Saudi Arabia is not usually associated with the term reform when it comes to Islam. 38 00:04:20,130 --> 00:04:27,930 But we shall see that Saudi Arabia has its intellectuals has joined the trend within 39 00:04:27,930 --> 00:04:34,260 the Muslim world that somebody might say not only started with the modern reformers, 40 00:04:34,260 --> 00:04:40,290 we always talk about Mohammad Abdo and Afghani, etc., but it has a very, 41 00:04:40,290 --> 00:04:45,630 very long history that goes back to mediaeval times within the Islamic tradition. 42 00:04:45,630 --> 00:04:54,240 So first, it's an intellectual movement. It has its ideologues and it has its discourses. 43 00:04:54,240 --> 00:05:04,620 In a way. It's a debating club within the world of Islam in which participants are scholars, religious or lemma. 44 00:05:04,620 --> 00:05:12,530 What? We called recently also Muslim thinkers or musiker Islamic intellectuals, 45 00:05:12,530 --> 00:05:19,910 literate people who have entered the public sphere with their ideas and with their pen. 46 00:05:19,910 --> 00:05:30,080 Also, this intellectual trend in modern times has its advocates and it has its activism. 47 00:05:30,080 --> 00:05:43,700 So it's not only a theoretical position, a discourse, but it's also translated into activism by engaged religious scholars or intellectuals. 48 00:05:43,700 --> 00:05:49,310 So what is so reformist and what is so modern about these? 49 00:05:49,310 --> 00:05:58,850 We invoke the word modern, but I prefer to call them Muslim reformers or Aslan Yorn. 50 00:05:58,850 --> 00:06:09,230 And these people take a position when it comes to interpreting the body of the Islamic tradition, which consists of the Koran, 51 00:06:09,230 --> 00:06:15,410 the Hadith and also what we call the interpretive tradition, 52 00:06:15,410 --> 00:06:26,300 meaning that the old texts of old Islamic scholars, which is not sacred, but it is their interpretation. 53 00:06:26,300 --> 00:06:40,520 So it's a debating movement that looks at this body of knowledge that Muslims have accumulated over 14th century in order to reach a novel. 54 00:06:40,520 --> 00:06:47,780 Some would say rational interpretation of these texts trying to push aside 55 00:06:47,780 --> 00:06:53,780 anything that is not subjected to some kind of rational debate and discussion. 56 00:06:53,780 --> 00:07:03,650 So this is in briefly really my my talk is not going to be based on religious studies or theological arguments, 57 00:07:03,650 --> 00:07:10,580 but I would like to look at the political implication of this kind of trend or movement. 58 00:07:10,580 --> 00:07:20,720 So in all Muslim societies from Malaysia, Indonesia, Africa, even amongst Muslims in the West, we find this kind of reformist tradition. 59 00:07:20,720 --> 00:07:30,890 And they they the scholars, the ideologues, if you like, argue against certain dominant positions within, I must say the Sunni tradition. 60 00:07:30,890 --> 00:07:39,020 I'm not going to look at the Shia tradition, which has its own reformers, but this is beyond my expertise. 61 00:07:39,020 --> 00:07:46,910 So in Saudi Arabia, this reformist trend argues against an entrenched Wahhabi tradition, 62 00:07:46,910 --> 00:07:52,130 which had been the dominant religious tradition at the state level. 63 00:07:52,130 --> 00:07:59,870 I would say since the 18th century, although Saudi Arabia had especially its different regions, 64 00:07:59,870 --> 00:08:05,510 other traditions, but with the establishment of the modern state in 1932, 65 00:08:05,510 --> 00:08:15,590 where the background to this Islamic reform movement is that Wahhabi tradition that is sometimes referred to as the Salafi movement, 66 00:08:15,590 --> 00:08:25,070 and there is a very big debate about whether the Wahhabism all Wahhabis are Salafis or Salafis are Wahhabism. 67 00:08:25,070 --> 00:08:30,080 That's another debate. We could discuss it later. So basically in Saudi Arabia, 68 00:08:30,080 --> 00:08:37,070 what prompted me to look at this trend is when I was researching a book called 69 00:08:37,070 --> 00:08:43,370 Contesting the Saudi State and I was looking at the dominant state religion, 70 00:08:43,370 --> 00:08:48,830 namely Wahhabism and the offshoot that has sprung out of it. 71 00:08:48,830 --> 00:08:57,470 The book was published in 2007, and in the last chapter, I came across a movement that I called. 72 00:08:57,470 --> 00:09:02,210 The chapter is called Searching for the UNmediated Word of God. 73 00:09:02,210 --> 00:09:14,060 And this is basically what the Salafis claim Salafis claim is that we reached God through his words without the mediation of anybody, 74 00:09:14,060 --> 00:09:24,560 of a religious scholar. We are all equal. If we are literate pious, we could reach their religious texts and reach our own interpretation. 75 00:09:24,560 --> 00:09:29,990 But everybody does it, and everybody reaches a different interpretation, perhaps. 76 00:09:29,990 --> 00:09:33,800 So this trend that started, I would say, 77 00:09:33,800 --> 00:09:41,330 from the 1990s and developed in Saudi Arabia that they are called Islam and 78 00:09:41,330 --> 00:09:48,590 scholarly work on this trend had labelled them as the rationalist or the liberals. 79 00:09:48,590 --> 00:10:00,260 I prefer not to draw, not to rely on such labels because they are really misleading as scholars of Muslim societies and the Islamic tradition. 80 00:10:00,260 --> 00:10:04,850 I prefer to invoke the words they use rather than. 81 00:10:04,850 --> 00:10:12,920 Should a label such as the liberal Islamist or the liberal Muslims parachute it and use it 82 00:10:12,920 --> 00:10:20,450 to describe people and discourses that may or may not correspond to this so-called liberal? 83 00:10:20,450 --> 00:10:26,240 So the word liberal, I don't think it travels well in other cultures, 84 00:10:26,240 --> 00:10:35,690 and we have to rely on the local conception of the self and the activity that those people are doing. 85 00:10:35,690 --> 00:10:48,800 So this trend that I would call the reformist that emerged out of the kind of Islamism that dominated the Muslim world since probably the 1960s and 86 00:10:48,800 --> 00:11:01,670 its advocates just to give you some names who have become prominent in writing about how to interpret the Islamic text within this reformist agenda. 87 00:11:01,670 --> 00:11:10,580 So people like Zalman and other people like Abdullah Hamad and many others came under scrutiny, 88 00:11:10,580 --> 00:11:18,500 and those people have dedicated a lot of time to write in a way that is accessible. 89 00:11:18,500 --> 00:11:26,090 So I would call some of them, with the exception probably of Salmonella Daouda as more factor Islamic as intellectuals 90 00:11:26,090 --> 00:11:33,950 rather than a scholastic people who had traditional training in the Islamic sciences. 91 00:11:33,950 --> 00:11:45,200 But the trend combines the lama and moussaka and Islam, the intellectuals who have obviously Islamic training and knowledge. 92 00:11:45,200 --> 00:11:58,220 But they work in professions such as English, Arabic literature or history or other fields that are not specifically related to theology. 93 00:11:58,220 --> 00:12:07,370 So this trend had emerged in 2008, and it had been under pressure since then. 94 00:12:07,370 --> 00:12:14,300 In fact, I don't want to jump as a stages, but let me give you a glimpse of the concepts they deal with. 95 00:12:14,300 --> 00:12:23,900 So as they are working against a state Wahab Wahhabi, the state Wahhabi in terms of politics, 96 00:12:23,900 --> 00:12:31,100 the official language of religion of Wahhabi insisted on certain concepts. 97 00:12:31,100 --> 00:12:35,960 One of them is the total obedience to Wesley Al Ammar. 98 00:12:35,960 --> 00:12:42,920 That is total obedience to the rightful ruler of the Muslim community. 99 00:12:42,920 --> 00:12:51,200 Whoever he is and those official scholastic religious interpretations have a 100 00:12:51,200 --> 00:12:58,880 history within Sunni Islam in terms of forbidding a rebellion against the ruler, 101 00:12:58,880 --> 00:13:04,070 and it goes back to how easily it goes back to the word, the, et cetera, et cetera. 102 00:13:04,070 --> 00:13:10,670 And they insist that whoever is the ruler must be obeyed. 103 00:13:10,670 --> 00:13:24,440 And there are conditions that justify the rebellion, and for them, rebellion is extended to include or encompass all sorts of actions and words. 104 00:13:24,440 --> 00:13:31,100 Whereas the original Sunni rebellion was armed rebellion against the ruler because it creates fitna, 105 00:13:31,100 --> 00:13:40,760 chaos, discord within the Muslim community and the reformers I, I consulted their work and books. 106 00:13:40,760 --> 00:13:50,480 They argue that this obedience is limiting because it justifies the rule by conquest. 107 00:13:50,480 --> 00:13:56,630 You know how Camila's alphabet that is, you know, if you land in the city and you conquer it, 108 00:13:56,630 --> 00:14:03,440 then you are the legitimate ruler and we have to obey you. And they challenged that in their discourse. 109 00:14:03,440 --> 00:14:08,780 So it mainly Abdullahi Hamad has written over 20 books in order to discuss this. 110 00:14:08,780 --> 00:14:17,180 The other so a rebellion for the Saudi state and its Salama means that a tweet against the policies of the 111 00:14:17,180 --> 00:14:28,010 regime or even in the 90s affects sent to a government bureaucracy criticising the policies of the state. 112 00:14:28,010 --> 00:14:35,600 A poem can be a rebellion in their in their rulings and the mufti of Saudi Arabia. 113 00:14:35,600 --> 00:14:40,520 Abdulaziz l'échec epitomises this position because, for example, 114 00:14:40,520 --> 00:14:48,170 Twitter was outlawed because it involves dissent and people are using it to criticise the king. 115 00:14:48,170 --> 00:14:57,890 So another concept is that it emerged in the Muslim community and community of believers, etc. and it comes in different shades. 116 00:14:57,890 --> 00:15:04,780 So for for the reformer, especially Abdullah, Mohammed Elomar is wealthy and. 117 00:15:04,780 --> 00:15:16,720 Which means that an has, as a body, the capacity to rule itself through the election of its representative. 118 00:15:16,720 --> 00:15:26,470 And this is pretty revolutionary in Saudi Arabia because the Omar in Saudi Arabia is only supposed to give their oath of allegiance when requested, 119 00:15:26,470 --> 00:15:34,810 the bearer. And so that people would come to offer to the king, obey, bear the oath of allegiance. 120 00:15:34,810 --> 00:15:39,400 And there are no elections or no representative of the OMA. 121 00:15:39,400 --> 00:15:44,290 The only representatives are the King, the appointed Majlis S'assurer, 122 00:15:44,290 --> 00:15:51,520 which is the council, the consultative council that the king appoints its members. 123 00:15:51,520 --> 00:15:54,160 According to the official Wahhabi. 124 00:15:54,160 --> 00:16:05,110 Those are qualify as little Helliwell Auckland people who have the notables, but the notables are actually appointed by the king. 125 00:16:05,110 --> 00:16:11,040 They have not emerged through a natural progression. 126 00:16:11,040 --> 00:16:20,670 Then there is the concept of Hisbah, which is the forbidding evil and commanding right. 127 00:16:20,670 --> 00:16:30,090 So they they, as the Saudi government outlaws the demonstration or civil resistance civil disobedience. 128 00:16:30,090 --> 00:16:42,350 From the perspective of the reformer and Hisbah is the community that Ummah being on guard to watch state and society relation. 129 00:16:42,350 --> 00:16:55,590 It is not simply a couple, a fleet of Mattawa of religious vigilante who roam the streets in order to discipline and punish transgression. 130 00:16:55,590 --> 00:17:05,610 It is to look at how this relationship between state and society functions in an equitable way. 131 00:17:05,610 --> 00:17:13,140 And just finally, the concept of jihad, which has prominent and there are thousands of books, have been written on it. 132 00:17:13,140 --> 00:17:17,670 Abdul Hamid introduces something called Civil Jihad that you hadn't met any. 133 00:17:17,670 --> 00:17:22,890 So he argues that yes, of course, there is defensive jihad. 134 00:17:22,890 --> 00:17:29,400 When a Muslim country is invaded, it's incumbent upon all Muslim Aibo men to join. 135 00:17:29,400 --> 00:17:40,290 But there is another civil jihad and Medellin's jihad that allows you to struggle for the betterment of your society and your governance. 136 00:17:40,290 --> 00:17:52,170 So this trend has faced in Saudi Arabia the violence of the jihadis because they saw it as a threat to their discourse. 137 00:17:52,170 --> 00:18:02,970 At the same time, the government that the monarchy had seen this as the ultimate challenge to its so-called Islamic State, 138 00:18:02,970 --> 00:18:07,320 and because it's a discourse that comes out of the Islamic tradition, 139 00:18:07,320 --> 00:18:16,020 try to fuse it with human and civil and political rights in order to create a better political system. 140 00:18:16,020 --> 00:18:28,710 And finally, there is the apathy of Saudis in general, who for centuries had been sort of given up on their own religion, 141 00:18:28,710 --> 00:18:34,890 producing liberation theology, the only sort of in inverted commas. 142 00:18:34,890 --> 00:18:40,500 Liberation theology that existed was the violent path of the jihadis. 143 00:18:40,500 --> 00:18:46,950 And because of this, the turmoil that had happened since the 19th 1979, 144 00:18:46,950 --> 00:18:55,950 quite a lot of Saudis had probably abandoned faith in any kind of emancipation within the religious tradition. 145 00:18:55,950 --> 00:19:06,390 So the reformers are in prison since they were put on trial in 2009, and that went on until 2011. 146 00:19:06,390 --> 00:19:18,810 They were all sentenced to long prison sentences. And unfortunately, Abdullah Mohammed, one of the main ideologues, died in prison because of neglect. 147 00:19:18,810 --> 00:19:26,130 So what is the future? Are we going to see a revival or a continuation of this trend? 148 00:19:26,130 --> 00:19:35,310 I think the rise and demise of this reformist trend is not finalised, especially it's sort of the repression. 149 00:19:35,310 --> 00:19:46,560 And we know that within the Islamic tradition, there is probably an innate ability to rejuvenate discourse to debate. 150 00:19:46,560 --> 00:19:55,830 There is no way that any Muslim community would accept that the gates of jihad of reasoning are closed. 151 00:19:55,830 --> 00:20:04,110 And because of that characteristic within Islam, we are going to see a revival when and how? 152 00:20:04,110 --> 00:20:17,580 I don't know. However, and just the final warning that when a repressive state like the Saudi state represses this nascent reformist tradition, 153 00:20:17,580 --> 00:20:24,900 it actually creates a void in society, both intellectual ideological. 154 00:20:24,900 --> 00:20:35,970 And what we have seen recently is the new sort of shedding the Islamic tradition, pushing it away apart from the state sanctioned one. 155 00:20:35,970 --> 00:20:44,790 And we are having a void at the moment in Saudi Arabia that can't be filled again by the cycle of violence. 156 00:20:44,790 --> 00:20:49,660 So I'll stop here. I'm sorry, I said before going on, I apologise. 157 00:20:49,660 --> 00:20:52,650 I actually gave you an early warning than I was supposed to. 158 00:20:52,650 --> 00:21:00,810 So you have actually concluded exactly on time, and I very much appreciate that and apologies if my sort of comments disturbed you at all. 159 00:21:00,810 --> 00:21:05,400 I'll stay with you. The fascinating election, I mean reminiscent. 160 00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:09,360 It reminded me of your fantastic music modernists where you discuss this. 161 00:21:09,360 --> 00:21:12,540 You know, this constellation of scholars and thinkers. 162 00:21:12,540 --> 00:21:22,080 And I was also reminded of the somewhat slightly tragic and poignant article that you had in the book on sectarianism with Hashemi. 163 00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:29,370 And I forget poster where you basically talk about the difficulty in a place like Saudi Arabia of actually actualising any change. 164 00:21:29,370 --> 00:21:32,360 But perhaps we can explore that further in the Q&A. 165 00:21:32,360 --> 00:21:45,120 Thank you so much for an eye-opening reflection that covered a number of your works now will shift to Pascale Mentally, who is at Brandeis University. 166 00:21:45,120 --> 00:21:50,610 He is the renowned Leicester crown professor of modern Middle Eastern studies. 167 00:21:50,610 --> 00:21:58,140 So Pascal's teaching and interests include urban anthropology, infrastructure protests and ethnographic fieldwork. 168 00:21:58,140 --> 00:22:07,230 He's the author of four works, most recently with Stanford University press graveyards of clerics everyday activism in Saudi Arabia, 169 00:22:07,230 --> 00:22:11,700 so very much in the same sort of space that we're thinking about. 170 00:22:11,700 --> 00:22:20,310 And for this seminar, Pascal has taught at Princeton, New York University Boothby and has conducted research at Harvard. 171 00:22:20,310 --> 00:22:25,050 And of course, most of your education took place in France. 172 00:22:25,050 --> 00:22:29,490 It gives us great pleasure to welcome you to the session. Please take the floor. 173 00:22:29,490 --> 00:22:35,160 Thank you. Thanks. Thanks very much. Thanks. Samantha's health for the for the very kind invitation. 174 00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:41,470 It's great to be with you today, and it's a very great pleasure to see you and to listen to the mother we are. 175 00:22:41,470 --> 00:22:46,650 Rashid, thank you very much for your presentation. I'm really happy to be able to be here with you. 176 00:22:46,650 --> 00:22:50,250 So I'm going to start with with the fieldwork anecdotes. 177 00:22:50,250 --> 00:22:56,010 When I was doing fieldwork in Riyadh in the late 2000s, I was in the French Foreign Office stipends. 178 00:22:56,010 --> 00:23:00,600 This was not a lot of money. The French state was not very generous with its physicians. 179 00:23:00,600 --> 00:23:04,530 I was. It was getting roughly, you know, 700 euros a month. 180 00:23:04,530 --> 00:23:10,350 But that was enough to actually make French intelligence officers think that they could invite me to work with them. 181 00:23:10,350 --> 00:23:15,090 And so one night, the second counsellor of the of the French Embassy invited me for dinner, 182 00:23:15,090 --> 00:23:19,110 and usually the second counsellor is the intelligence guy write in French embassies. 183 00:23:19,110 --> 00:23:23,470 And that was a retired army general and you had more than a veneer of culture. 184 00:23:23,470 --> 00:23:26,160 The conversation was free flowing and interesting. 185 00:23:26,160 --> 00:23:34,050 He dined and wined me, and then at the end of dinner, his sidekick, a guy working with him inside, insisted to to drive me home. 186 00:23:34,050 --> 00:23:38,850 And he asked if I could keep tabs on French converts living in Riyadh. 187 00:23:38,850 --> 00:23:45,570 So I said no, but the story stuck with me. And basically, it leads me to my main question this morning, this afternoon in the. 188 00:23:45,570 --> 00:23:50,700 The question is what's the point of studying religious activism or political activism in Saudi Arabia? 189 00:23:50,700 --> 00:23:51,810 And that's a real question. 190 00:23:51,810 --> 00:24:00,270 At a time when social science research has been used by states to, you know, direct or inform various forms of the of the war on terror. 191 00:24:00,270 --> 00:24:04,680 And we're still living through the war on terror 20 years after its beginning. 192 00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:08,730 So I worked on mostly on Islamic activism as opposed to students. 193 00:24:08,730 --> 00:24:11,490 But when I came to the U.S. as a post-doc, 194 00:24:11,490 --> 00:24:18,340 I was very ill at ease with the idea that I was working there would write a book that would that might basically, 195 00:24:18,340 --> 00:24:25,350 you know, help inform the war on terror. So I wrote my first first book on joyriding drug writing in Rio. 196 00:24:25,350 --> 00:24:35,040 And it was partly to issue the kind of university to intelligence pipeline that you see in France, in the US, and I'm sure in the UK as well. 197 00:24:35,040 --> 00:24:38,010 And then a couple of years ago, I published graveyards of clerics. 198 00:24:38,010 --> 00:24:44,970 Almost reluctantly, I made it as ethnographic as possible and as I would say, politically toothless as possible. 199 00:24:44,970 --> 00:24:52,190 Not in a bad way, but but, you know, in order not not to be informing that kind of, you know, kind of global war. 200 00:24:52,190 --> 00:24:57,210 And so the book came out during the pandemic with a title that was not very inviting. 201 00:24:57,210 --> 00:25:01,530 You know, who wants to buy a book called Graveyard during COVID 19? 202 00:25:01,530 --> 00:25:05,270 So the book is kind of a dud, which is exactly what I hoped for, but basically. 203 00:25:05,270 --> 00:25:12,290 What I want to do is to in response to that question, by studying Islamic movements in Saudi Arabia. 204 00:25:12,290 --> 00:25:14,060 I want to I want to draw, you know, 205 00:25:14,060 --> 00:25:21,770 a broad landscape of of three types of study of Islamic movements three styles of study Islamic movements in Saudi Arabia. 206 00:25:21,770 --> 00:25:27,320 The first style is basically what I would call the War on Terror Scholarship. 207 00:25:27,320 --> 00:25:36,500 And it's it's the style of studying Islamic movements in Saudi Arabia that portrays them as anti-liberal and therefore the enemy, right? 208 00:25:36,500 --> 00:25:40,970 And I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to be very brief about this because it's pretty well known. 209 00:25:40,970 --> 00:25:46,970 You know, you have scholars such as Jill Kebbell in France, Joshua Teitelbaum in Israel. 210 00:25:46,970 --> 00:25:53,900 In some ways, eg hammer in in in Norway have been examples of this trend, right? 211 00:25:53,900 --> 00:26:02,090 I mean, and the idea here is to study the most egregiously violent Islamic activists and to foreground the 212 00:26:02,090 --> 00:26:08,300 study of texts and political theology and to turn that scholarship into an instrument of war. 213 00:26:08,300 --> 00:26:12,530 This is pretty mainstream, and I don't need to spend much time discussing it. 214 00:26:12,530 --> 00:26:20,840 The second style of studying Islamic movements and reform movements in Saudi Arabia has been what I would call the democratisation scholarship. 215 00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:30,860 And basically its main tenet is that Islamic movements in Saudi Arabia represent a step on the road towards political reform and democratisation, 216 00:26:30,860 --> 00:26:41,240 despite their sometimes anti liberal leanings. And so the idea here is that, too is to say that through Islamic activism, 217 00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:50,660 larger shares of the population have gotten access to the public space and in particular to political spaces, right, including the political sphere. 218 00:26:50,660 --> 00:26:55,670 So, you know, I mean this in this trend, you find the well, you know, 219 00:26:55,670 --> 00:27:00,980 stiffening acquires Islamic liberalism thesis writing disease emphasis on some 220 00:27:00,980 --> 00:27:06,110 of the reformers that mother we rasheed is studying and on their liberalism. 221 00:27:06,110 --> 00:27:13,790 You also find some of my work, I mean, belongs definitely to that, to that democratisation or that almost transito largest thesis. 222 00:27:13,790 --> 00:27:22,850 You know, I worked a bit on the 2005 municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, and I analysed the connexions between Islamic activities, 223 00:27:22,850 --> 00:27:28,880 Islamic everyday activities in in schools, in local mosques and as as a as a resource, 224 00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:34,580 as a political resource to organise and guide electoral participation. 225 00:27:34,580 --> 00:27:42,920 And in particular, I was fascinated by the way electoral campaigns were modelled after summer camp events that had been organised 226 00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:49,500 by Islamic activists for for a very long period of time so that that that connexion was very strong. 227 00:27:49,500 --> 00:27:54,990 The third type of scholarship is what I would call postcolonial scholarship. 228 00:27:54,990 --> 00:27:59,340 And here, you know, you could call it the tantalised school in some sort of way. 229 00:27:59,340 --> 00:28:05,160 And it basically says that position one and position two so that, you know, 230 00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:11,070 the jihad the largest and then the Transito allergists are basically still Eurocentric, right? 231 00:28:11,070 --> 00:28:17,110 They take Western liberalism as their point of reference. And I think your mother is worth really belongs. 232 00:28:17,110 --> 00:28:22,470 I mean, some of Malawi's work belongs to to that to the third orientation. 233 00:28:22,470 --> 00:28:27,060 And I'm also trying to work more toward that third orientation myself in my work. 234 00:28:27,060 --> 00:28:35,910 So basically, it is to say that jihad ologist and transito interests are still taking Western liberalism as their point of reference. 235 00:28:35,910 --> 00:28:42,570 And here are the ideas to read Saudi activism Saudi Islamic reformism in its own terms, right? 236 00:28:42,570 --> 00:28:49,800 And it's realising that, like the jihad allergists, most reformers in Saudi Arabia are not liberal. 237 00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:55,470 And here I totally agree with the way that we just presented their thoughts. 238 00:28:55,470 --> 00:29:03,770 And but like the transit geologist's, it's it's also in a way, it's a way to saying that, to say that it's not because they're not liberal, 239 00:29:03,770 --> 00:29:10,920 that this is necessarily a bad thing for political perspectives and for the political future of Saudi Arabia. 240 00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:17,850 And you're, you know, the reference to tolerance that comes with that short piece that he wrote think back in the in the early 1990s, 241 00:29:17,850 --> 00:29:21,060 and it's called the limits of religious criticism in the Middle East. 242 00:29:21,060 --> 00:29:29,100 It's a fascinating piece of 30 40 pages a piece, which is based on a comparison between Immanuel Kant and Sayyid Benzyl, 243 00:29:29,100 --> 00:29:35,940 who is one of the pioneers of Islamic reformism in Saudi Arabia and also one of the one of the 244 00:29:35,940 --> 00:29:41,520 veterans of political prisons in the country who's been in prison for the longest period of time. 245 00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:49,530 And hear what Stalinism does is that it takes basically sums up political liberalism according to counts as follows, right? 246 00:29:49,530 --> 00:29:56,610 Argue as much as you like, but obey. Right. So you have the conjunction of free speech and punctual obedience. 247 00:29:56,610 --> 00:30:01,080 And so liberalism is based on the refusal of direct action. 248 00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:08,420 Right? Enlightenment led to strengthening Western states and to I mean, 249 00:30:08,420 --> 00:30:15,330 we also know that enlightenment is connected with colonialism and with systemic racism in a very narrow manner, 250 00:30:15,330 --> 00:30:22,470 and also that the Enlightenment with was better in some sort of way better than absolutism that's making state authority convincing. 251 00:30:22,470 --> 00:30:26,580 Right? So here what's the being Zaire is doing? 252 00:30:26,580 --> 00:30:35,550 It is in his work and in his spoken word, because here that al-Assad relies on the sermon on the on the taped sermon given by my side, the entire, 253 00:30:35,550 --> 00:30:41,340 I believe at the end of the 1980s basically say it's either been Zaire saying, well, 254 00:30:41,340 --> 00:30:46,710 according to the Enlightenment, there is a right to criticise the ruler and a duty to obey. 255 00:30:46,710 --> 00:30:54,870 According to us, there's a duty to criticise and maybe also a duty to not obey in certain circumstances. 256 00:30:54,870 --> 00:30:59,430 So criticism is a duty. It's not optional. And you know, this goes back to the Hadith. 257 00:30:59,430 --> 00:31:06,450 If you see evil, you know, change it by your hand if you can't change it by your tongue, if you can't change it by your heart. 258 00:31:06,450 --> 00:31:10,200 Right. And so Islamic action here, too. 259 00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:14,250 I mean, this is where I connect my my works to the work of Talaat al-Assad. 260 00:31:14,250 --> 00:31:21,930 Islamic action is direct action, right? And so Talal Assad analyses Nassir in in his work. 261 00:31:21,930 --> 00:31:27,150 And basically, I mean, there are a lot of implications to his analysis of sides are your positions. 262 00:31:27,150 --> 00:31:34,410 And I see her, I you know, the duty to advise the ruler in matters of public affairs. 263 00:31:34,410 --> 00:31:38,430 And there are two conditions according to as to performing the Syria. 264 00:31:38,430 --> 00:31:43,500 The first one is to be knowledgeable. And the second one is to be kind. 265 00:31:43,500 --> 00:31:49,230 But kindness and knowledge are basically the preconditions to accessing the public sphere. 266 00:31:49,230 --> 00:31:52,320 So I mean this this opens. 267 00:31:52,320 --> 00:32:01,980 This postcolonial direction opens a lot of really exciting prospects and really exciting theoretical avenues and perspectives. 268 00:32:01,980 --> 00:32:09,180 You know, there are a few pages about the notion of slavery to God as a model of political persona and a model of political style. 269 00:32:09,180 --> 00:32:16,440 And here, you know, I mean, you could reconnect. Also, some of the Mahmood's work through to that, to the direction of thought slavery, 270 00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:27,390 to God as a as a political model here is definitely opposed to mastery, which is the liberal ideal of political agency autonomy. 271 00:32:27,390 --> 00:32:33,450 Right. So in my own work and this is this is my fourth point, if you will, 272 00:32:33,450 --> 00:32:40,920 what I've been doing in my in my fieldwork is that I've been looking because of the difficulties of conducting 273 00:32:40,920 --> 00:32:46,710 ethnographic fieldwork and political activism in the conditions that we are actually just summed up for us. 274 00:32:46,710 --> 00:32:53,270 I've been looking at politics. Through the prism of urban change and urbanism, 275 00:32:53,270 --> 00:33:00,050 and basically I've been looking at the urban fabric as a as a gates towards understanding the political sphere, and in particular, 276 00:33:00,050 --> 00:33:07,890 I've been looking at the movements from informal urbanism to form the formal urbanism as a movement of destruction, 277 00:33:07,890 --> 00:33:14,060 as everybody who's looked into urban renewal operations in the UK or in the US knows. 278 00:33:14,060 --> 00:33:21,050 And I've been looking all sorts of urbanisation as the making of, you know what Michel Foucault would call a disciplinary space. 279 00:33:21,050 --> 00:33:27,230 It's a place that has been ordered and organised and in which each individual basically is put in their own 280 00:33:27,230 --> 00:33:35,630 small corner and asks to be predictable and to engage only in certain types of very limited activities. 281 00:33:35,630 --> 00:33:40,910 So my main question has been how do you subvert a disciplinary space? 282 00:33:40,910 --> 00:33:48,260 How do you deprogram the infrastructure, right? And so in writing in Riyadh, I have been looking at, you know, 283 00:33:48,260 --> 00:33:53,810 joy writers and move a cartoon as those people who use speed as the main way 284 00:33:53,810 --> 00:33:58,850 to deprogram the infrastructure of roads and cars in graveyards of clerics. 285 00:33:58,850 --> 00:34:04,970 I have been looking at every day religious activism as a way to politicise suburban spaces, 286 00:34:04,970 --> 00:34:11,550 as a way to use suburban institutions, the mosque, the school, the summer camp and the commute itself. 287 00:34:11,550 --> 00:34:18,050 Right? The one central suburban institution, right? The invisible institution of the time you spent in your car. 288 00:34:18,050 --> 00:34:23,270 So basically, they've been using these suburban institutions as spaces of organising and activism. 289 00:34:23,270 --> 00:34:28,510 So I could give you, you know, I can give you a few examples. Commute time could be a. Time. 290 00:34:28,510 --> 00:34:34,910 Right? It could be the very image of the individualisation of society of its atomisation at the hands of the state and of, 291 00:34:34,910 --> 00:34:40,250 you know, of the corporate state as well. But for Islamic activists, this time is not lost time. 292 00:34:40,250 --> 00:34:45,890 It's actually time regain. It's made plain and full by using the car as a political vector. 293 00:34:45,890 --> 00:34:54,980 So in Saudi Arabia, the car the Sahara becomes the smallest unit of the Islamic Movement, and that unit is called al-Nusra. 294 00:34:54,980 --> 00:35:01,220 You know, in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, for instance, the family in Saudi Arabia, in the Saudi Muslim Brotherhood, 295 00:35:01,220 --> 00:35:06,920 in Saudi Sahwa movements, the Islamic Awakening movements there is that notion that to make an aura, 296 00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:10,580 you need several sirens to actually bring people toward that place and that 297 00:35:10,580 --> 00:35:16,430 the suburban space and the commute time themselves are political resources. 298 00:35:16,430 --> 00:35:19,730 Same goes with school breaks right at school. 299 00:35:19,730 --> 00:35:27,920 These are not empty times, but there there are loads of time to be used on invested political capital in waiting for summertime. 300 00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:32,570 Same thing with the summer camps organised by Islamic activists since the 1970s. 301 00:35:32,570 --> 00:35:37,820 Not empty time, but time regains time. Politicised here, you know, basically, 302 00:35:37,820 --> 00:35:47,510 summertimes are those pieces where you learn all kinds of political organisational moves and tactics that are recoverable in the public sphere. 303 00:35:47,510 --> 00:35:52,410 Once the conditions become ripe for for collective action. 304 00:35:52,410 --> 00:35:59,580 So basically, Saudi Islamic activism that that's the crux of what I've been doing in graveyard of clerics have been read, 305 00:35:59,580 --> 00:36:01,560 you know, reawakening the graveyard, right? 306 00:36:01,560 --> 00:36:09,540 I mean, the Sahara, a Sahwa, as you know, the political awakening the Islamic Awakening movement happens within the graveyard of clerics, right? 307 00:36:09,540 --> 00:36:14,700 Grandma and the graveyard of clerics is what exactly what's what's Marawi has been describing with, 308 00:36:14,700 --> 00:36:17,190 you know, Wahhabism is the graveyard of clerics, right? 309 00:36:17,190 --> 00:36:25,950 It's it's that notion that clerics are put under a lid and that they're forbidden from engaging in basic public activities. 310 00:36:25,950 --> 00:36:32,100 And maybe I'll take a I'll take a minute to answer the question I was asking in the beginning if I still have one or two minutes. 311 00:36:32,100 --> 00:36:40,920 But what's the point of studying Islamic activism? It's only now a year after starting this project that I start to see the meaning of all this. 312 00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:45,300 And here I'm going to. I'm going to kind of zoom out and change the perspective a bit. 313 00:36:45,300 --> 00:36:51,600 I believe that Saudi political and religious activists bring some responses to a very pressing question. 314 00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:58,200 And the question is, how can we imagine life in the ruins of petrol capitalism and of racial capitalism 315 00:36:58,200 --> 00:37:02,610 in the ruins created by the domination of oil over the Saudi environment, 316 00:37:02,610 --> 00:37:09,780 Saudi political environment, the Saudi natural environment in the ruins created, for instance, by Saudi bulldozers in Riyadh and Jeddah? 317 00:37:09,780 --> 00:37:13,260 I mean, parts of Jeddah are being demolished as we speak. 318 00:37:13,260 --> 00:37:19,800 Following the logic of urban renewal that I have analysed in some of my work or in the ruins created by the Saudi army in Yemen, 319 00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:23,430 the same dynamics, the politics of the void, right? 320 00:37:23,430 --> 00:37:32,670 So the global economic system is based on the fiction of infinite growth, which is itself predicated on the fiction of a cheap supply of fossil fuels. 321 00:37:32,670 --> 00:37:38,250 And so looking at the Anthropocene and looking at Saudi Arabia is actually it's actually very easy to be 322 00:37:38,250 --> 00:37:45,220 truly pessimistic and to read in oil the collapse of ecosystems and of the global financial systems. 323 00:37:45,220 --> 00:37:54,040 And so the angle I'm looking at Saudi activism from is basically to say that the Fossil Apocalypse Apocalypse is not a future events, right? 324 00:37:54,040 --> 00:37:58,420 It's already happened in Saudi Arabia. How did Saudis survive it? 325 00:37:58,420 --> 00:38:04,390 What can we learn from Saudi activists? There are too many accounts of Anthropocene as impending death. 326 00:38:04,390 --> 00:38:12,550 And basically, what I propose is to look at instead how people already living through the apocalypse are organising within the ruins, right? 327 00:38:12,550 --> 00:38:17,190 And so that, you know, I'm starting to think about the notion of the optimists. 328 00:38:17,190 --> 00:38:25,450 You know, the petrol optimists and it's based on Emile Habibie. So, you know, it's depend on Emile Habibie is a very famous optimist figure. 329 00:38:25,450 --> 00:38:30,670 So I'm looking at Islamic activists in Saudi Arabia as pitch optimists. 330 00:38:30,670 --> 00:38:36,130 They live through the political and economic apocalypse and found ways to organise in its ruins. 331 00:38:36,130 --> 00:38:43,630 Thank you very much. Thank you very much for both really fascinating talks. 332 00:38:43,630 --> 00:38:50,800 So again, to the audience, do you know in your questions, in the Q&A or the or the chat box? 333 00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:55,720 And I have a couple, but I know Osama has one as well. Do you want to begin Osama? 334 00:38:55,720 --> 00:38:56,530 I'd be happy to. 335 00:38:56,530 --> 00:39:04,690 I've got a lot of questions for, you know, two outstanding scholars in Saudi Arabia, and I actually lived in Saudi Arabia for a period as well. 336 00:39:04,690 --> 00:39:13,420 So I have an abiding interest in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps I can ask something which has sort of straddles both of your talks to a certain extent, 337 00:39:13,420 --> 00:39:18,140 this discourse on rebellion and the notion of obedience. 338 00:39:18,140 --> 00:39:23,950 So you've both basically said that this can be anchored within the Islamic tradition and is, 339 00:39:23,950 --> 00:39:32,860 you know, weaponized in different ways by different actors. The states want to, you know, emphasise the absolute necessity for obedience. 340 00:39:32,860 --> 00:39:37,150 And people like Abdel-Hamid or other activists will point out no. 341 00:39:37,150 --> 00:39:43,540 Actually, Islam legitimates sort of activism and a little bit mad. 342 00:39:43,540 --> 00:39:51,850 And I just wanted to ask both of you if you thought that the had settled a particular position or is it constant contestation? 343 00:39:51,850 --> 00:40:00,750 And if you're willing to perhaps prognosticate in the direction of travel for the ideas about obedience vs. a marathon? 344 00:40:00,750 --> 00:40:08,870 Not yet a point of contest. Thank you, Sam, and thank you, Pa., for a very, 345 00:40:08,870 --> 00:40:18,110 very inspiring presentation that sums the study of Islamic or Islamist movement from the time it started. 346 00:40:18,110 --> 00:40:26,660 But just to respond as you were talking about how you came to study Saudi Arabia and the Islamic extremism, 347 00:40:26,660 --> 00:40:31,610 I think I have a different story because for me, it's very personal. 348 00:40:31,610 --> 00:40:40,430 As I grew up in Saudi Arabia, I was introduced and indoctrinated in the official religious curriculum. 349 00:40:40,430 --> 00:40:47,030 So for me, it's not only about democracy, about jihad, about fist, about the war on terror. 350 00:40:47,030 --> 00:40:52,520 It's about little fact was that I remember I was supposed to abide by. 351 00:40:52,520 --> 00:41:04,070 So for example, I mean, if it moves to the absurd, as a young person living in Saudi Arabia, you are told how to comb your hair as a woman. 352 00:41:04,070 --> 00:41:09,110 So we can't comment on the sides or have a parting on the side. 353 00:41:09,110 --> 00:41:13,400 And this is a fatwa in the big manuals. 354 00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:20,510 If you like that, if you put your hair on on the side, it is called the shape of fire. 355 00:41:20,510 --> 00:41:27,380 We are imitating the infidels and it goes down to the minor details of your life. 356 00:41:27,380 --> 00:41:32,000 So I was fascinated by this and obviously as a child, you don't. 357 00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:41,390 You think about it. But as I grew up, I wanted to explore the meaning of this and what it does to disciplining the body, 358 00:41:41,390 --> 00:41:49,160 disciplining your mind and also instigating obedience and mitigating against rebellion. 359 00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:58,040 So it is actually it starts at the level of disciplining the body, and that is the official religious curriculum. 360 00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:10,580 And then there is as you grow up, you are introduced to the 12-Year-Old AMR, not if in school every morning, but also on television. 361 00:42:10,580 --> 00:42:18,620 When television started in the 60s. And now you get you get it in mosque sermons, you'll get it everywhere, 362 00:42:18,620 --> 00:42:25,430 you'll get it in tweets as well as the mufti with tweet, Twitter used to tweet and many others. 363 00:42:25,430 --> 00:42:34,670 So basically, yes, between rebellion and obedience, there is a spectrum of activities that people could do. 364 00:42:34,670 --> 00:42:45,200 I mean, Pascal focuses on these these rebellions that if you look at the grand revolutionary scenario, they are not. 365 00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:59,840 But they are ways for people to break the constraints of the heavy going discourse of obedience and sanctions against digression. 366 00:42:59,840 --> 00:43:10,010 You can't and therefore the rebellion, as the Islamic classical scholars theorised it within the Sunni tradition. 367 00:43:10,010 --> 00:43:21,600 There are different views. But the Saudi position now builds on the Wahhabi position, which itself started as a rebellion. 368 00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:26,240 So, so basically, these are cycles in the 18th century, 369 00:43:26,240 --> 00:43:34,160 and Hamad Ibn Abdulwahab called for jihad to establish the Islamic State and called for a rebellion against 370 00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:43,730 the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul because the Ottoman state was described as Dowdall Kafr al-Mukhtar zero, 371 00:43:43,730 --> 00:43:55,100 which means they are the infidel state that has innovations mainly because they were Sufis or encouraged Sufism in the Ottoman Empire. 372 00:43:55,100 --> 00:44:00,350 So the original rebellion of Muhammad had been Abdulwahab was armed rebellion. 373 00:44:00,350 --> 00:44:06,170 It was called a jihad against the unbelievers, and the unbelievers were not the Christians and Jews. 374 00:44:06,170 --> 00:44:11,870 As many people would tell you, there are other Muslims, and they are not even the Shi'a. 375 00:44:11,870 --> 00:44:19,610 They are Sunni Muslims. That's the beginning of the Saudi jihad against Sunni Muslims in the Hejaz. 376 00:44:19,610 --> 00:44:26,240 In the other villages, always. So the act of rebellion of 18th century was justified. 377 00:44:26,240 --> 00:44:38,120 But then, once the rightful Muslim leader got established and sowed, the rebellion has to be outlawed and then rebellion only. 378 00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:46,940 In the Wahhabi tradition, we see that this word rebellion is overstretched to include peaceful action, 379 00:44:46,940 --> 00:44:51,050 peaceful giving your opinion, civil disobedience. 380 00:44:51,050 --> 00:45:00,080 So, for example, demonstrations are banned in Saudi Arabia, but people like Abdul Hamid use the concept of Rahab Group of People. 381 00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:04,190 So and he gives examples from the Islamic tradition. So if you have. 382 00:45:04,190 --> 00:45:12,650 Have something to say to your ruler or leader. You don't go on your own because you are, some of you are weak. 383 00:45:12,650 --> 00:45:18,410 You bring a lot of people and you all go together because there is strength in numbers. 384 00:45:18,410 --> 00:45:24,380 And this, he calls Iraq, is actually a demonstration in modern day. 385 00:45:24,380 --> 00:45:36,290 So there is quite a lot of fusion with the old Islamic traditions that relate to obedience and rebellions and modern terminology. 386 00:45:36,290 --> 00:45:45,500 But that doesn't justify calling them the Islamic liberals or the, you know, using these kind of words, as Pascal said. 387 00:45:45,500 --> 00:45:52,560 We have to understand them within their own context and within their own terminology. 388 00:45:52,560 --> 00:46:00,420 Thank you very much. Pascale. I had the same sort of question for you, but I don't know if you would like to add to that. 389 00:46:00,420 --> 00:46:05,010 I think I mean, I think we should move on to two more questions. 390 00:46:05,010 --> 00:46:11,010 Okay, that's fine. So to the audience, do you know, either raise your hand or write the question? 391 00:46:11,010 --> 00:46:14,240 We have one. I have a couple. 392 00:46:14,240 --> 00:46:24,230 For both middleweight PA. But let me begin with you, Pa., which is, you know, this what you say, fight from the other side. 393 00:46:24,230 --> 00:46:32,240 You know, it's fascinating, because if one were to put the argument is not the way it would be anti-liberal 394 00:46:32,240 --> 00:46:38,810 insofar as this is the vision of criticism or what you want to call it, 395 00:46:38,810 --> 00:46:48,620 that's not based on rights, but on duties that your absolute duty to criticise, rather than simply the freedom to criticise. 396 00:46:48,620 --> 00:46:54,980 And as you was speaking, I was reminded of, you know, some of the work I'm doing on Gandhi, 397 00:46:54,980 --> 00:47:00,590 where obviously very different kind of context and part, but nevertheless there too, 398 00:47:00,590 --> 00:47:10,190 you have a kind of deliberate critique of Wright's language and linked to freedoms that you know, 399 00:47:10,190 --> 00:47:13,550 you have the freedom to do something, but you don't have to do it. 400 00:47:13,550 --> 00:47:20,810 And a resort to the language of duty where you are actually impelled to do something, you must do something. 401 00:47:20,810 --> 00:47:25,760 And that's what makes it a moral act as opposed to simply being free to do something. 402 00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:33,480 And I was just wondering whether it's clearly not liberal in that sense, but whether, you know. 403 00:47:33,480 --> 00:47:39,480 There is any engagement at all with the opposite. Know, and this goes to my doorway as well, you know, 404 00:47:39,480 --> 00:47:46,560 I totally agree with you that we shouldn't simply loosely call people liberals for this and other reasons. 405 00:47:46,560 --> 00:47:55,110 But it struck me that the departure that you that the intellectuals you're looking at represent is actually quite startling. 406 00:47:55,110 --> 00:48:01,230 Because if you go even to the 19th century and sort of Muslim reformist of the 19th century, you know, 407 00:48:01,230 --> 00:48:09,540 they are constantly engaging with liberal and other European categories notions, ideas, narratives. 408 00:48:09,540 --> 00:48:17,760 And here you seem not to see that at all. So it's actually detached even from this earlier Muslim reformist tradition, as far as I can tell. 409 00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:26,940 And I just wondered whether surely it must be a deliberate choice, the must know some of this tradition reformist and liberal. 410 00:48:26,940 --> 00:48:30,810 And you know, why do you think that is and what's going on? 411 00:48:30,810 --> 00:48:43,830 You know, is it a direct invocation of or derivation from the kind of Wahhabi vision that they come out of and against which they speak is they they 412 00:48:43,830 --> 00:48:52,650 seem to have been the decision not to actually draw on this by now vast corpus of reformist themes and narratives and terms and categories, 413 00:48:52,650 --> 00:49:00,720 which would actually make these figures much more easily understood not just by the West, but by other kinds of Muslim movements. 414 00:49:00,720 --> 00:49:05,220 So it's the the deliberation of that refusal that I find fascinating. 415 00:49:05,220 --> 00:49:08,020 And for PA. again, just the. 416 00:49:08,020 --> 00:49:16,780 You know, if there's anything that could be said about the explicitly anti-liberal nature and not just that they don't happen to be liberals, 417 00:49:16,780 --> 00:49:21,250 but they actually have an argument against it insofar as, you know, 418 00:49:21,250 --> 00:49:28,960 there is a critique of the idea of rights and freedoms and a much more since you mentioned call for collodion type ideals. 419 00:49:28,960 --> 00:49:36,700 You know, when he writes about partition and the duty to dissent, even if it is at some risk to herself. 420 00:49:36,700 --> 00:49:38,980 And that just is just because, like Gandhi as well. 421 00:49:38,980 --> 00:49:49,930 So there's an alternative tradition, which is clearly in some ways egalitarian and clearly rebellious, but it doesn't go down the liberal road. 422 00:49:49,930 --> 00:49:54,550 Sorry for other mixed up. But question to you both. 423 00:49:54,550 --> 00:50:00,000 Well, I think, Faisal, you put your finger on a very, very important point. 424 00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:06,970 And first of all, you know, the context of Mohammed Abdo and the others is different. 425 00:50:06,970 --> 00:50:15,040 They were trying, in my view and in the view of many of the Saudi reformers to make Islam palatable. 426 00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:22,990 Also, they palatable to a west that was aggressive, that was occupying Muhammad Abdullah and the British. 427 00:50:22,990 --> 00:50:31,980 And so instead of saying, yes, we are going to be all liberal like you, we have some kind of Islam that can be adapted to your liberalism. 428 00:50:31,980 --> 00:50:39,580 In this context of Saudi Arabia in the late 20th century is completely different. 429 00:50:39,580 --> 00:50:53,440 So basically, yes, all the reformers are aware of Mohammed Abdul of the others of Afghani and all of them, but it is a completely different context. 430 00:50:53,440 --> 00:51:03,340 We have a Wahhabi state in Saudi Arabia and they like me, they were indoctrinated in the tradition of their were happy. 431 00:51:03,340 --> 00:51:07,660 And in fact, they mastered, you know, that language in the discourse. 432 00:51:07,660 --> 00:51:14,950 But they were able to emerge out of that tradition rather than an attempt to please 433 00:51:14,950 --> 00:51:21,400 some kind of colonial power and say and also of Mohammed Abdo and the others. 434 00:51:21,400 --> 00:51:33,850 The biggest question is the colonialism the of the occupation of Muslim land and the introvert sort of looking inside your tradition to say why? 435 00:51:33,850 --> 00:51:40,450 What happened to us? What how have we failed? Why are we in this city or situation in Saudi Arabia? 436 00:51:40,450 --> 00:51:44,390 It's a completely different context, like 100 years later. 437 00:51:44,390 --> 00:51:57,040 You know, you have the power of an Islamic tradition called the Wahhabi tradition, whether it's Salafi or not sitting and and perpetuating injustices. 438 00:51:57,040 --> 00:52:06,210 So in terms of the duty? Yes. I mean, I wouldn't even go as far as, for example, calling them the post Islamism of, 439 00:52:06,210 --> 00:52:12,520 for example, Asif, but yet that he observed in Iran amongst the reformers there. 440 00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:21,730 I don't think it's a time. It's a discursive tradition that you can go in cycles and it's not like, Oh, now we're finished with Islamism. 441 00:52:21,730 --> 00:52:30,010 We're moving to post Islamism because those people are talking about rights rather than duties, theatre duty to obey. 442 00:52:30,010 --> 00:52:40,600 But I think it is an intellectual mutation that is local, and that's the difference between them and reformers, 443 00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:52,710 such as the one that emerged towards the 19th century end of the 19th century in places like Egypt, Syria and India and Indonesia and everywhere. 444 00:52:52,710 --> 00:52:58,800 That might mean if I might just interject here, Badawi, that you're right, of course, 445 00:52:58,800 --> 00:53:04,530 that these are not figures who are arguing against colonialism and but in a way what their 446 00:53:04,530 --> 00:53:10,740 emergence then tells us is that the post-colonial moment in the way of thinking about, 447 00:53:10,740 --> 00:53:11,130 you know, 448 00:53:11,130 --> 00:53:20,800 what Pascal was describing of Islamic reformist or whatever you want to call them in colonial or post-colonial terms simply doesn't apply here. 449 00:53:20,800 --> 00:53:31,640 You know, this is not an issue, and it's. I find that a quite important suggestion that even though in the Western Academy, 450 00:53:31,640 --> 00:53:39,740 we are inundated with talk about empire and colonialism, and I'm opposed to decolonial stuff. 451 00:53:39,740 --> 00:53:45,770 In fact, it might be the case that the figure of the colonial is just not part of these debates at all. 452 00:53:45,770 --> 00:53:55,540 Even in some extenuating way, you know, like American Empire or something like that, and that actually is quite it's a kind of fascinating. 453 00:53:55,540 --> 00:54:02,960 It's more interesting that as if my model of post everything post, you know, post Islamist as opposed to, 454 00:54:02,960 --> 00:54:08,000 you know, in comparison to post-colonial or postmodern or post whatever it is. 455 00:54:08,000 --> 00:54:09,650 Well, I mean, as you said, 456 00:54:09,650 --> 00:54:20,270 there is an awareness of global power and inequality and also of domination in the writings of Abdullah Mohammed and the others. 457 00:54:20,270 --> 00:54:23,270 But the focus is really on. 458 00:54:23,270 --> 00:54:36,800 They are arguing against a hegemonic Wahhabi tradition that had deprived people of their rights and inscribed certain duties that they objected to, 459 00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:42,860 basically. But yes, it would be an interesting case because, you know, I mean, 460 00:54:42,860 --> 00:54:49,130 when we talk about colonialism in the context of Saudi Arabia, it's different from, you know, the direct colonialism. 461 00:54:49,130 --> 00:54:59,840 We don't want to go into that. But I mean, the domination, that hegemony, American hegemony in Saudi Arabia, that that is reverse itself to reality. 462 00:54:59,840 --> 00:55:08,360 They can't escape it, those reformers. Can I interject on this sort of Saudi, in a sense, 463 00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:13,620 a different set of circumstances that you're thinking about when it comes to the colonial condition? 464 00:55:13,620 --> 00:55:19,310 So I mean, it's true that Saudi Arabia obviously hasn't experienced colonialism in the way that many states, 465 00:55:19,310 --> 00:55:22,190 Egypt or, you know, South Asian states have. 466 00:55:22,190 --> 00:55:33,590 But it's kind of experienced something almost the opposite where the Wahhabi sort of regime, which is a thoroughly Islamic of a kind of Islam. 467 00:55:33,590 --> 00:55:37,820 Obviously, it's not sort of I'm not suggesting that there's one kind of Islamist Wahhabi Islam, 468 00:55:37,820 --> 00:55:46,220 but that was actually propped up by US power and those intimate relations based on the fact that there was so much oil there. 469 00:55:46,220 --> 00:55:56,540 So there is a kind of a liberal underlining or a liberal underwriting, you could say, of the Wahhabi project in an ironic sense, which, you know, 470 00:55:56,540 --> 00:56:02,300 I think about sometimes when we think about sort of a post liberal space liberalism as a 471 00:56:02,300 --> 00:56:08,300 Democrat and others have observed is intimately integrated into empire building as well, 472 00:56:08,300 --> 00:56:13,430 right? Historically speaking, and scholars talk about the liberal colonial state. 473 00:56:13,430 --> 00:56:19,850 And this isn't just a subtle alternate form of colonial domination, potentially where the Wahhabi state, 474 00:56:19,850 --> 00:56:27,800 which is the proximate interlocutor for these activists, it may be seen as an extension of a liberal project, potentially. 475 00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:36,010 But for these people that, you know, secondary sort of like hegemon is not the proximate cause of their suffering. 476 00:56:36,010 --> 00:56:41,590 And so that's why I don't know if that's a useful way of framing this situation. 477 00:56:41,590 --> 00:56:52,690 Well, I mean, you're right. They were happy tradition is actually became very useful to the so-called liberal state, the United States, Britain. 478 00:56:52,690 --> 00:57:01,900 I mean, it was. But you know, the interesting thing is, is the militant part of the Wahhabi tradition that was that endeared itself in the 479 00:57:01,900 --> 00:57:08,440 Cold War as a force amongst Muslims to fight other social and political movements. 480 00:57:08,440 --> 00:57:12,370 And that is from from the 1960s, it was it. 481 00:57:12,370 --> 00:57:22,030 But it wasn't only the Wahhabi tradition. We see it also like evangelical Protestant groups who benefited from that Cold War period, 482 00:57:22,030 --> 00:57:30,460 and they were seen as a counter current to, for example, you know, leftists, et cetera, a nationalist. 483 00:57:30,460 --> 00:57:43,330 So it wasn't. It was the weaponization of religion in during the Cold War that made the Wahhabi extremely useful for colonial or imperial, 484 00:57:43,330 --> 00:57:51,250 whatever you want to call it, project. But yes, I don't know how Abascal perhaps has an take on this. 485 00:57:51,250 --> 00:57:58,010 Yes. You know, I'm reminded of some of your work on the separation of religion and state in Saudi Arabia. 486 00:57:58,010 --> 00:58:06,250 And I was going to say, you know, Wahhabism, in a way is coterminous to liberalism in the sense that it lends itself to that sort of separation. 487 00:58:06,250 --> 00:58:15,790 Right. And and until the division of labour between between the princes and those who have subjected themselves to that to the palace. 488 00:58:15,790 --> 00:58:23,290 And we've we've seen that, you know, that that separation taking different shades since like roughly the 1950s. 489 00:58:23,290 --> 00:58:28,390 And, you know, at the time when Mohammed bin Ibrahim was was was Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia. 490 00:58:28,390 --> 00:58:36,400 So until 1969, he definitely took a different kind of colouration than after Mohammed bin Ibrahim's death. 491 00:58:36,400 --> 00:58:40,330 You know, during Mohammed bin Ibrahim's time, it was more like a separation, strict separation. 492 00:58:40,330 --> 00:58:45,250 And then after that began more subjugation of the religious sphere to the to the political sphere. 493 00:58:45,250 --> 00:58:51,750 And then I would say, you know, after the the Gulf War in 1990, it became a kind of more direct repression. 494 00:58:51,750 --> 00:58:57,160 Mean the religious fear became under attack in several, several very direct ways. 495 00:58:57,160 --> 00:59:02,650 So in that sense, why Buddhism to me is is I'm not going to I'm not saying it's a form of liberalism. 496 00:59:02,650 --> 00:59:09,730 I'm saying it's coterminous to liberalism. It lends itself to the kind of division of labour and overrules that liberalism entails. 497 00:59:09,730 --> 00:59:15,070 But you know, it's going to come back to to face Faisal's question about rights and duty. 498 00:59:15,070 --> 00:59:21,820 I think that that's from my perspective as as an outsider, as somebody who came to Saudi Arabia by chance. 499 00:59:21,820 --> 00:59:30,130 So I and who, who who was absolutely willing to I mean, I had been studying Arabic for a very long time. 500 00:59:30,130 --> 00:59:36,190 I come from Marseilles, which is a growing up was a bilingual city, is still in many ways, a bilingual city. 501 00:59:36,190 --> 00:59:40,450 And I really wanted to speak the other language and to understand the other language of the city. 502 00:59:40,450 --> 00:59:48,190 So, you know, I come from the some of the deep curiosity and commitment to be involved in all things Arab and Islamic. 503 00:59:48,190 --> 00:59:51,250 But I came to Saudi Arabia by chance, right? It could have been elsewhere. 504 00:59:51,250 --> 00:59:59,500 But what what I take away from from my study of Islamic activism in Saudi Arabia is really a set of very radical and very interesting, 505 00:59:59,500 --> 01:00:06,670 very intriguing ideas. I mean, the notion that that there would be a duty to engage in political affairs is something 506 01:00:06,670 --> 01:00:12,400 that is absolutely a radical right radical because of its implications for everyday life. 507 01:00:12,400 --> 01:00:17,620 I mean, if we think of what would the duty to vote mean in such a place as the United States, for instance? 508 01:00:17,620 --> 01:00:21,010 I mean, that would be a sea change, right in politics. 509 01:00:21,010 --> 01:00:27,340 Of course, the United States, especially right now, is deeply involved in doing the opposite right and restricting the right to vote. 510 01:00:27,340 --> 01:00:31,780 But it's also it's also radical theoretically right, not only in everyday politics. 511 01:00:31,780 --> 01:00:40,270 This idea that basically until the idea that autonomy is no longer the crux of political self-definition or so fashioning, 512 01:00:40,270 --> 01:00:44,930 it's that there are no rights. You take your orders from somewhere else, right? 513 01:00:44,930 --> 01:00:51,550 So you no longer base your persona, your political persona on that notion of self-mastery rights, 514 01:00:51,550 --> 01:00:58,810 which is definitely I mean, since the age of the Enlightenment based on the idea that you're a master or a slave. 515 01:00:58,810 --> 01:01:06,880 Right? So it's based on the basically the deep, the deep connexion between the Enlightenment and slavery as a global institution. 516 01:01:06,880 --> 01:01:10,300 And in that sense, liberalism is absolutely problematic. Right? 517 01:01:10,300 --> 01:01:16,960 So that that, you know, the notion of the hit their enemy should be at the crux of political life is absolutely fascinating. 518 01:01:16,960 --> 01:01:21,700 Does it mean that we are dealing with a reactionary thought? 519 01:01:21,700 --> 01:01:28,420 I don't think so, and that's that's another part of that's another facet of that fascination I have for these movements and for their theories. 520 01:01:28,420 --> 01:01:33,520 Basically, what comes first for Islamic activists in Saudi Arabia is never the states, right? 521 01:01:33,520 --> 01:01:41,330 And that's that's that in that sense, it's not conservatism or reactionary. You know, actually, what comes first is the inviolability of the. 522 01:01:41,330 --> 01:01:46,430 It's the sacredness of this private sphere, and the state comes second after, that's right. 523 01:01:46,430 --> 01:01:52,970 I mean, the Enlightenment again was, by the way, I mean Tocqueville as as very, you know, convincing pages about that. 524 01:01:52,970 --> 01:01:59,450 The Enlightenment was a way to make the absolute state even more absolute than it was before the French Revolution, right? 525 01:01:59,450 --> 01:02:00,230 Because what's more, 526 01:02:00,230 --> 01:02:08,060 absolutes than the idea that you yourself as a as a self mustering individual are actually participating in you're in the making of the state, right? 527 01:02:08,060 --> 01:02:13,550 So in that sense, Islamic activists in Saudi Arabia come from very different ground. 528 01:02:13,550 --> 01:02:21,760 I mean, there are there are many other topics the notion of the post-colonial, and I might have a slightly different perspective on this. 529 01:02:21,760 --> 01:02:27,110 You know, I mean, again, and I could quote, I could quote you Mahdavi in your work, right? 530 01:02:27,110 --> 01:02:34,790 I mean, you basically in your history of Saudi Arabia. I mean, back in 2002, was it 2001? 531 01:02:34,790 --> 01:02:38,870 You criticised that idea that that notion that Saudi Arabia hasn't been colonised, right? 532 01:02:38,870 --> 01:02:43,540 I mean that there has been a British protectorate in 1915 in that sense. 533 01:02:43,540 --> 01:02:48,620 You know, I mean, it's it's not that much different from what was going on around the Gulf at the same period of time. 534 01:02:48,620 --> 01:02:54,020 It's it's it's a matter of length of time. But but the operations are very similar. 535 01:02:54,020 --> 01:02:59,760 And then the 1933 oil concessions are absolutely key in the making of of contemporary Saudi Arabia. 536 01:02:59,760 --> 01:03:08,700 Right. And so and this is some of what I've been working on very, very closely under the the unmaking and remaking of Saudi Society of Saudis. 537 01:03:08,700 --> 01:03:15,860 So the urban spaces and Saudi spaces themselves through through US presence and influence is is absolutely key. 538 01:03:15,860 --> 01:03:23,960 And here my mind, my slight difference is that I look at everyday politics or I look at those activists who are inspired by, 539 01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:30,980 I would say, mainstream Sahwa discourse and not necessarily the most reformist amongst them. 540 01:03:30,980 --> 01:03:36,920 And I would say, you know, mainstream Sahwa is very much preoccupied with the idea of the post-colonial, 541 01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:45,470 and it's very much preoccupied with the notion that Saudi Arabia is a quasi colony of the United States and it needs to be liberated. 542 01:03:45,470 --> 01:03:52,010 I mean, when you read or listen to, you know, sermon in the 1990s so far from early in the 1990s, 543 01:03:52,010 --> 01:03:54,950 Nasser Omar, even even very recently, Mohammed for the age. 544 01:03:54,950 --> 01:04:04,940 I mean, these these animals or activists are all committed to the notion to that to a notion of of decolonial activism as well. 545 01:04:04,940 --> 01:04:09,710 So thanks, PA. We have two questions, and I just want to vote for Badawi, 546 01:04:09,710 --> 01:04:15,410 but before I read them, I just want to say that on the question of colonialism, of course, 547 01:04:15,410 --> 01:04:21,380 even where it happens and it happens, most places directly or indirectly, you know, 548 01:04:21,380 --> 01:04:28,350 it's a question of at what point does the category cease to be analytically and politically viable? 549 01:04:28,350 --> 01:04:35,060 You know, I've been looking recently at the font the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 in, 550 01:04:35,060 --> 01:04:39,500 in my view, it, you know, if 1947 is the beginning of the post-colonial state, 551 01:04:39,500 --> 01:04:48,260 with India and Pakistan the first to be colonised countries 1971 with Bangladesh, you have the end of the post-colonial moment. 552 01:04:48,260 --> 01:04:53,180 All the states have that were once colonial have formally at least become independent. 553 01:04:53,180 --> 01:04:58,670 But Bangladesh is a new kind of emergence because it emerges against the post-colonial state, not against it. 554 01:04:58,670 --> 01:05:01,910 It's not, you know, its enemies, not the colonial state. 555 01:05:01,910 --> 01:05:06,950 And to this day, when you look at its national narratives, it's nothing to do with colonialism. 556 01:05:06,950 --> 01:05:14,240 Even though of course, it's a product of colonialism, you know, it has come about by destroying the post-colonial state. 557 01:05:14,240 --> 01:05:22,580 And that's what I find interesting that, you know, in that kind of situation, you know, you seem to have the beginning of a new logic, 558 01:05:22,580 --> 01:05:31,010 political logic coming not out of anti-colonial movements and independence, but out of civil war. 559 01:05:31,010 --> 01:05:37,850 Civil war fomented within the post-colonial state itself and clearly the links back to empire evident. 560 01:05:37,850 --> 01:05:44,930 I mean, who's to argue against them, but at a certain point that the term and the idea seems to be viable? 561 01:05:44,930 --> 01:05:50,880 And I find that quite interesting. You know how and why that happens and where it happened obviously doesn't happen everywhere. 562 01:05:50,880 --> 01:06:00,890 But you know, that was the thing. And I also agree with, you know, the idea that you move from a situation of slavery as it were, 563 01:06:00,890 --> 01:06:09,020 you're compelled to do something with slavery, becomes the site of, if you will, freedom because you have a duty to resist. 564 01:06:09,020 --> 01:06:14,480 In both cases, your building, in one case, you are being in the way that Mugabe was describing it. 565 01:06:14,480 --> 01:06:19,310 You have to obey the king or, you know, I mean, it's drilled into you. 566 01:06:19,310 --> 01:06:26,690 In the other case, you are still obeying, but you obeying being something else yourself or God or, you know, whatever. 567 01:06:26,690 --> 01:06:35,300 It's interesting that these you still have the language of obedience that structures both these forms, but very differently conceive. 568 01:06:35,300 --> 01:06:44,480 But let me go to the to the just a little comment. Pascal, you know, it's obviously colonialism comes in different shapes, but you know, 569 01:06:44,480 --> 01:06:52,550 in the Sahwa movement, as much as the nationalist or the leftist movement in Saudi Arabia from the 1950s. 570 01:06:52,550 --> 01:07:00,380 I mean, there was an awareness, a strong awareness of the subservience or the domination of Saudi Arabia, 571 01:07:00,380 --> 01:07:04,370 by the United, by Britain first and the United States later. 572 01:07:04,370 --> 01:07:09,490 And for example, you know, if you look at the work of a Kuwaiti now, how come the. 573 01:07:09,490 --> 01:07:22,040 He calls them the devil and what they fear? Like the states, the Gulf states as states to perform a certain function in the service of bigger powers. 574 01:07:22,040 --> 01:07:30,890 So I mean, 1990, the biggest crisis was the invitation of the U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia to defend, 575 01:07:30,890 --> 01:07:35,480 to defend the country against the possible invasion by Saddam Hussein. 576 01:07:35,480 --> 01:07:46,130 So that is the critical moment. But, you know, to think that in response to Faisal's comment about, you know, 577 01:07:46,130 --> 01:07:53,420 Mohammed Abdo and the moderate reformist trend within within the Muslim Arab Muslim world, 578 01:07:53,420 --> 01:07:59,420 I don't see the reformers in Saudi Arabia arguing I was wanting to make Islam 579 01:07:59,420 --> 01:08:06,080 palatable to a western power that is occupying them with troops on the ground. 580 01:08:06,080 --> 01:08:12,530 I think that's that's what I meant. But the awareness of the subservience, I mean, with the jihad man last may be, 581 01:08:12,530 --> 01:08:19,570 you know, even the one who occupied the mosque in nineteen seventy nine. 582 01:08:19,570 --> 01:08:30,770 And the first thing is that the Saudi king breached one sacred, you know, injunction and that is his subservience to the West. 583 01:08:30,770 --> 01:08:39,080 So there is an awareness, but I mean, to invoke this post-colonial or post Islamist, is this very problematic? 584 01:08:39,080 --> 01:08:47,750 I think, you know, we probably need another hour to discuss their applicability across countries. 585 01:08:47,750 --> 01:08:53,570 Do you mind if I interject briefly and just ask, I understand we have a couple of questions in the Q&A. 586 01:08:53,570 --> 01:08:58,580 This is kind of more for Pascal, but it echoes what you're saying, Malawi as well. 587 01:08:58,580 --> 01:09:04,730 I mean, I very much agree with both of you that in a sense, you know, using the. 588 01:09:04,730 --> 01:09:10,430 Lens as a kind of merrier, as a as a yardstick for assessing the quality of a certain idea. 589 01:09:10,430 --> 01:09:16,730 I mean, I'm reminded of Albert Ran book a very important book, obviously for his time. 590 01:09:16,730 --> 01:09:23,720 But in a sense, talking about these thinkers, that kind of second great thinkers, they're not really, you know, the very best. 591 01:09:23,720 --> 01:09:29,210 But because he's assessing them against kind of a liberal tradition, which he sees as sort of mature. 592 01:09:29,210 --> 01:09:32,660 But that maturity is part of the colonial sort of context naturally. 593 01:09:32,660 --> 01:09:40,610 And I think in some respects and both of you seem to be invested in a kind of a, I mean, you've described it as post-colonial. 594 01:09:40,610 --> 01:09:50,540 So if you've used the colonial, sometimes that I like Raymond Gross, Fogell at Berkeley talks about the fact that, look, you know, 595 01:09:50,540 --> 01:09:55,100 these all of these de colonial discourses that he's he himself is so invested in, 596 01:09:55,100 --> 01:10:02,000 he considers them to be completely independent of the sort of like the post-colonial ideas of people like fuko. 597 01:10:02,000 --> 01:10:05,630 I mean, that have been derived from two cultures by Saeed or by others. 598 01:10:05,630 --> 01:10:11,630 And in a sense, I think there's an importance to giving value to these thinkers in their own contexts, 599 01:10:11,630 --> 01:10:16,940 recognising that they are inevitably going to be reacting to global hegemonic forces. 600 01:10:16,940 --> 01:10:23,690 But they deserve the same kind of respect that we would give a roles or account or whatever and that sort of context. 601 01:10:23,690 --> 01:10:30,980 And I think that that's very worthwhile as an enterprise personally for what it's worth. 602 01:10:30,980 --> 01:10:41,480 Well, I mean, one thing just a quick note, IRA Evans-Pritchard from Oxford, when he went to study the newer and newer religion, 603 01:10:41,480 --> 01:10:51,650 he came across something or somebody or a figure or a spirit called Couth, and he was struggling to translate it to a Western audience. 604 01:10:51,650 --> 01:10:53,750 So he called it the new word of God. 605 01:10:53,750 --> 01:11:02,900 Although the idea, the concept of a god for the newer in the southern Sudan doesn't exist, but this is the problem of translation. 606 01:11:02,900 --> 01:11:13,370 This doesn't mean that we rule out any kind of engagement with world universal concepts. 607 01:11:13,370 --> 01:11:23,570 There might be, but to think that we could come across something in the Islamic tradition and label it for a political reason. 608 01:11:23,570 --> 01:11:28,130 As Pascal told Al Jazeera, there's the jihad allergy industry. 609 01:11:28,130 --> 01:11:34,880 Then there is the sort of transitional advocates like, Oh, well, if we want to see democracy in the Arab world, 610 01:11:34,880 --> 01:11:40,430 we really need to promote those or support those liberal Islamists. 611 01:11:40,430 --> 01:11:44,150 And this is a political project for a Western audience. 612 01:11:44,150 --> 01:11:50,150 It's not possibly the main concern of the reformists I talked about today. 613 01:11:50,150 --> 01:11:55,640 They're not trying to make themselves, you know, liked or appreciated by a Western audience. 614 01:11:55,640 --> 01:12:04,880 Although Muhammad Ali and Mohamed Panopto did and was forced to do that because of the crisis of Egypt, of the Muslim world. 615 01:12:04,880 --> 01:12:12,710 And then he was dealing with a British administration on the ground, changing the law of Sharia, et cetera, et cetera. 616 01:12:12,710 --> 01:12:22,940 Introducing Constitution. All these kind of things are not there in Saudi Arabia, although now they are beginning to manifest themselves. 617 01:12:22,940 --> 01:12:25,220 Thank you. Yeah, thanks. 618 01:12:25,220 --> 01:12:36,170 It almost seems as if it's the Saudi state that has actually turned back to the 19th century in its attempts to vote against it. 619 01:12:36,170 --> 01:12:48,560 Well, I mean, my question to Pascal, how does he see the the changes that had taken place in the last six or seven years, 620 01:12:48,560 --> 01:12:53,870 affecting the activism of the Islamist movement? 621 01:12:53,870 --> 01:12:58,490 Because, you know, you're very close in understanding and engaging with them. 622 01:12:58,490 --> 01:13:06,620 And I remember reading your book and I got to the last chapter and I was thinking, Oh, so what's happening now? 623 01:13:06,620 --> 01:13:12,800 So maybe now is the time to tell us. Well, I mean, what's happening now is not is not very. 624 01:13:12,800 --> 01:13:21,710 These are not happy times, right? I think I mean, there are there are many things to say about about the post 2015 2016 moments. 625 01:13:21,710 --> 01:13:31,220 One of them is that Mohamed bin Salman is definitely taking some of his lessons from an Islamic book, 626 01:13:31,220 --> 01:13:38,120 and that book is the book of the Muslim Brothers using leisure as a way to organise youth. 627 01:13:38,120 --> 01:13:49,150 And so by foregrounding leisure as as one of the, you know, I mean, leisure has been a political object in Saudi Arabia since the 1970s. 628 01:13:49,150 --> 01:13:54,890 You know, I mean, there was a general presidency for what was a real family. 629 01:13:54,890 --> 01:13:58,700 You remember that for fun? Yeah, for fun. 630 01:13:58,700 --> 01:14:03,380 But it was it wasn't called fun. It was arrested anyway. 631 01:14:03,380 --> 01:14:10,900 It's going to. It's the general presidency of youth, I think that that's that the earlier I have to shop for the for the. 632 01:14:10,900 --> 01:14:17,470 I was going to say that domestication of things, but I have to sum up for the care towards youth, right? 633 01:14:17,470 --> 01:14:19,240 So that that dates back to the 1970s. 634 01:14:19,240 --> 01:14:26,380 But it was just a, you know, a general presidency lost in the administration have been someone has made leisure and fun. 635 01:14:26,380 --> 01:14:32,440 One of is one of the the headers of his agenda and that that speaks to in some sort of way. 636 01:14:32,440 --> 01:14:37,060 He's actually also inspired by the Muslim brothers, right? That's a very Muslim brother thing to do. 637 01:14:37,060 --> 01:14:42,400 My my second remark about what's going on since 2015 is that, you know, 638 01:14:42,400 --> 01:14:47,470 you just said he's going back to the 19th century and that's that's there is there is a lot of truth to that. 639 01:14:47,470 --> 01:14:55,870 Mohammed bin Salman, as you has to, I mean, I think he or his advisers have realised the very unstable ground on which, 640 01:14:55,870 --> 01:15:04,100 you know, the Wahhabi movement is basically putting the states on that unstable ground is exactly what you are describing. 641 01:15:04,100 --> 01:15:08,530 Probably when you were talking about obedience to and and and, you know, 642 01:15:08,530 --> 01:15:16,120 forbidding rebellion obedience is limited because it justifies the rule by conquest, says Abdullah Mohammed. 643 01:15:16,120 --> 01:15:21,250 But that's precisely the I mean, the rule by conquest is precisely what the Saudi state is based on, right? 644 01:15:21,250 --> 01:15:24,640 So by by basically limiting rebellion, 645 01:15:24,640 --> 01:15:32,590 the Saudi state and its Wahhabi iteration is opening the gates to rebellion by limiting all sorts of political engagement, 646 01:15:32,590 --> 01:15:40,990 all sorts of peaceful engagement with the public sphere. It's actually leaving no other choice to activists but to take arms, right? 647 01:15:40,990 --> 01:15:48,820 And so I guess it's that very unstable ground that Saudi elites right now are trying to to stay away from or to to transform. 648 01:15:48,820 --> 01:15:52,690 It's very unclear to me on what book, what book they read. 649 01:15:52,690 --> 01:15:59,440 I mean, they read stuff that definitely comes from here, from Boston, Massachusetts, and from Cambridge, Massachusetts. 650 01:15:59,440 --> 01:16:04,640 They're pretty much certainly inspired by the Boston Consulting Group, the Harvard's Kennedy School. 651 01:16:04,640 --> 01:16:12,310 I mean, there are, you know, there there has been a back and forth of experts between these different institutions since the 1950s and 1960s, 652 01:16:12,310 --> 01:16:18,580 but it's become even more prominent. So they read from the neo liberal book. But I don't see this as becoming a political project, right? 653 01:16:18,580 --> 01:16:26,890 So, you know, my sense is that the ground they're trying to to stay on is actually as unstable, if not more unstable than the ground. 654 01:16:26,890 --> 01:16:34,300 You know, the State of America capital was was based on, and the last thing is, is is about political repression, right? 655 01:16:34,300 --> 01:16:40,480 I mean, repression has been extremely intense and severe in the past six years. 656 01:16:40,480 --> 01:16:44,500 It was already presence and not not much publicised. 657 01:16:44,500 --> 01:16:48,250 I remember, I remember. It's really pretty difficult to find, you know, 658 01:16:48,250 --> 01:16:54,250 reliable figures that were agreed upon to to describe the state of political repression in my own work. 659 01:16:54,250 --> 01:16:56,830 Right. So it's become even worse. 660 01:16:56,830 --> 01:17:03,520 And I think one of the things that that comes back very often when you talk to to activists and activists in the billions, right? 661 01:17:03,520 --> 01:17:10,150 I mean, activists waiting to come back to the to go back to the forefront because right now, I mean, nothing is really going on inside the country. 662 01:17:10,150 --> 01:17:18,220 But one item that comes back pretty often is the fact that you used to know where the red lines were during King Abdullah's rule. 663 01:17:18,220 --> 01:17:22,090 Now the red lines are still there, but you no longer know where there are right. 664 01:17:22,090 --> 01:17:28,330 And so it's become way more difficult to actually engage in political action because or in public, 665 01:17:28,330 --> 01:17:34,510 in the public sphere, because every single movement is actually being criminalised right now. 666 01:17:34,510 --> 01:17:41,650 Yes, but I can see the kind of resistance that is being staged already to this situation. 667 01:17:41,650 --> 01:17:51,730 You know, if we're thinking, oh, well, they're going to do mosque sermons or distributed online, et cetera, that's not what is going on. 668 01:17:51,730 --> 01:18:02,710 But you could see every leisure activity and fun and concert is marred by one important and sad thing, 669 01:18:02,710 --> 01:18:08,920 and that is sexual harassment of women every single, you know, it's not. 670 01:18:08,920 --> 01:18:15,430 Suddenly, the government discourse is that all of this you have never seen this before, and it's the first time. 671 01:18:15,430 --> 01:18:22,120 And that's why. And you know, they are engaging in this kind of activity. 672 01:18:22,120 --> 01:18:32,890 And then there's the there's a state run press talking about Saudi youth as basically animals or criminals. 673 01:18:32,890 --> 01:18:42,760 But at a different level, it could be, you know, a sabotage and sabotaging that kind of leisure atmosphere that is staged. 674 01:18:42,760 --> 01:18:48,970 And unfortunately, women will pay the price of this simply because, you know, 675 01:18:48,970 --> 01:18:57,850 there is no mosque imam who could fire her words against the illegitimate ruler or the fear or, 676 01:18:57,850 --> 01:19:04,020 you know, sermons or summer camp where they could tell the youth, you know, this is not. 677 01:19:04,020 --> 01:19:08,670 The rightful dollar to hit the state of monotheism. 678 01:19:08,670 --> 01:19:15,990 But now it's it's appearing in different ways, which reminds me of what happened in Egypt in 2011, 679 01:19:15,990 --> 01:19:25,140 when women, you know, if they participated in them in political activism, they got punished in Saudi Arabia. 680 01:19:25,140 --> 01:19:32,160 Now, if they participate in state sponsored leisure and fun, they are participating. 681 01:19:32,160 --> 01:19:42,570 They are punished because those men can't get to the state in the traditional resistance that we have studied. 682 01:19:42,570 --> 01:19:47,790 And, you know. And so it's a new phase that could be dangerous. 683 01:19:47,790 --> 01:20:00,330 And it is actually. And you know, it is touching now the fabric of society rather than the intellectual activist political field. 684 01:20:00,330 --> 01:20:05,310 That's really fascinating, both both these comments come in, 685 01:20:05,310 --> 01:20:14,550 but let me go through in the time remaining the questions so they are two for Badawi and then two or one in two parts for Pascale. 686 01:20:14,550 --> 01:20:21,210 So Badawi and his bill has asked for names of famous reformist Lama. 687 01:20:21,210 --> 01:20:26,970 The second, an anonymous attendee is asked about how do you see the future of the senior Ulema 688 01:20:26,970 --> 01:20:32,160 Council in Saudi Arabia in relation to MERS if the current mufti passes away? 689 01:20:32,160 --> 01:20:37,410 What are the characteristics that NBS would look for in a future mufti and for PA.? 690 01:20:37,410 --> 01:20:44,010 How can we use what we have learnt with the three ideal type of studies of Islamist activism in Saudi 691 01:20:44,010 --> 01:20:49,530 Arabia and their relation to the state to help us think about the Anthropocene crisis you mentioned? 692 01:20:49,530 --> 01:20:57,210 Meaning how do people organise in this environmental crisis and the relation to the green initiative of the state, for instance? 693 01:20:57,210 --> 01:21:03,780 And then again, a small addition. Will the future mufti be another typical Wahhabi Hanafi or something else? 694 01:21:03,780 --> 01:21:08,970 So two questions about the future Mufti Badawi, do you want to begin? 695 01:21:08,970 --> 01:21:17,610 Yeah, I mean, names of famous reformists in Saudi Arabia who are not recognised intellectuals 696 01:21:17,610 --> 01:21:25,620 or Islam or just I'm not sure you know where and who is being referred to. 697 01:21:25,620 --> 01:21:40,050 But I mean, the people that I talked about and they are not necessarily all of them are famous all over who are trained and step in issuing fatwa. 698 01:21:40,050 --> 01:21:52,710 So, for example, young Abdullah al-Maliki or Mohammed Abdul Karim, these are regarded as Islam Islamic intellectuals who are not issuing fatwas, 699 01:21:52,710 --> 01:22:04,620 but they are writing about the texts and the Islamic text in ways that make them fit the definition of Islamic reformers. 700 01:22:04,620 --> 01:22:12,830 As I said earlier, not necessarily the religious scholars who dominate the field, but there are other voices now. 701 01:22:12,830 --> 01:22:19,530 And then the second question see the future of senior counsel in relation to me. 702 01:22:19,530 --> 01:22:25,950 I mean, it is completely like toothless and they are meant to just issued a fatwa. 703 01:22:25,950 --> 01:22:32,580 And this has been going on even before. And this, you know, from the nineteen sixties. 704 01:22:32,580 --> 01:22:38,820 I mean, for example, when King Sound was dethroned and you know, 705 01:22:38,820 --> 01:22:47,860 the council was forced to issue a fatwa to say that King Faisal is the legitimate king and the previous king thinks it should abdicate. 706 01:22:47,860 --> 01:22:53,610 So there's a long history of this kind of subjugation. 707 01:22:53,610 --> 01:22:58,110 But now they don't actually make the sound waves. 708 01:22:58,110 --> 01:23:03,090 There is a complete sidelining of of the own and the council. 709 01:23:03,090 --> 01:23:09,510 I mean, there you get the image and the occasional image of the mufti coming to see and Hamad bin Salman. 710 01:23:09,510 --> 01:23:18,780 But that said, really, it's all there. What Pascal described as the Boston consultancy and basically the management consultancy 711 01:23:18,780 --> 01:23:25,590 groups that make the Saudi Arabia even in the sense of designing a Saudi nation, 712 01:23:25,590 --> 01:23:33,390 a management consulting firm would be given the job, you know, to to construct a Saudi nation, 713 01:23:33,390 --> 01:23:42,420 to detach it from its previous, you know, from the previous discourses on religious nationalism or Islam. 714 01:23:42,420 --> 01:23:48,330 Yeah, I think these are the two for me, one for you. 715 01:23:48,330 --> 01:23:58,590 So we we we don't learn much from these three styles of study in terms of, you know, environmental thought, I think. 716 01:23:58,590 --> 01:24:03,870 And that's, you know, that would be a new direction in studying activism. 717 01:24:03,870 --> 01:24:09,690 I mean, my way of studying activism has been to has been to study it in its environments, 718 01:24:09,690 --> 01:24:15,990 and it's in the broad sense of the of the word so in its urban environments, its spatial environment. 719 01:24:15,990 --> 01:24:20,730 I'm moving on towards environmental anthropology more and more. 720 01:24:20,730 --> 01:24:25,810 And but no longer studying Saudi Arabia more. I think I'm studying Yemen now. 721 01:24:25,810 --> 01:24:35,520 And so that's that's a new that's a new project. But as a response to your to your question, there has been a lot of work done over the past 30, 722 01:24:35,520 --> 01:24:43,380 40 years about Islamic tools, environmental conservation, which which is absolutely fascinating. 723 01:24:43,380 --> 01:24:46,350 Some of it has been conducted in Saudi universities. 724 01:24:46,350 --> 01:24:59,620 There is that notion of Alabama, which which is the, you know, the grazing system that that is embedded in Islamic tenets and and. 725 01:24:59,620 --> 01:25:08,490 Is a management, an management system that is extremely effective and that goes absolutely against the grain 726 01:25:08,490 --> 01:25:13,590 of the developmental discourse that the states as adopted very often in Saudi Arabia, 727 01:25:13,590 --> 01:25:20,880 which has consisted of saying, you know, the Bedouin are culprits for the degradation of their own environments. 728 01:25:20,880 --> 01:25:25,860 Right. If we have desertification, it's because of the Bedouin, which is a which. 729 01:25:25,860 --> 01:25:33,510 I mean, going back to the notion of colonialism, I mean, this is definitely a colonial discourse that the Saudi state has as embraced in some ways. 730 01:25:33,510 --> 01:25:42,810 In some other ways, the Saudi state has also, you know, favoured studies of of Lebanon, of traditional ways of, you know, preserving the environment. 731 01:25:42,810 --> 01:25:47,280 So. So yeah, there are several responses to this question. 732 01:25:47,280 --> 01:25:57,300 It's a very it's a very multifaceted question, and I don't have much to say about the green initiatives of the of the state right now. 733 01:25:57,300 --> 01:26:00,870 I mean, that sounds much of it sounds like like greenwashing to me. 734 01:26:00,870 --> 01:26:06,150 I'm not very serious ecological thoughts. 735 01:26:06,150 --> 01:26:12,300 Yes, thanks. I'm going back to Leibowitz of the McKinsey model of Saudi nationalism. 736 01:26:12,300 --> 01:26:20,670 We have to close. I see suddenly we have started to get more questions, but I'm afraid we are out of time. 737 01:26:20,670 --> 01:26:26,010 And Osama, do you want to? I thought I would just answer this last question, 738 01:26:26,010 --> 01:26:32,790 which is asking whether we're going to upload videos and we plan to upload the videos on the Middle East Centre YouTube channel. 739 01:26:32,790 --> 01:26:40,080 But I just want to thank all of you for really what both of you for eye opening insights 740 01:26:40,080 --> 01:26:45,720 and allowing us to interrogate you for the last hour and a half and learn so much. 741 01:26:45,720 --> 01:26:53,760 And I hope we can stay in touch. I personally am quite interested in your latest book. 742 01:26:53,760 --> 01:27:00,330 Thank you very much. It's wonderful to see you. And thank you, officer for chairing the session. 743 01:27:00,330 --> 01:27:02,940 Look forward to seeing you face on in a couple of weeks. 744 01:27:02,940 --> 01:27:07,680 I don't know if you want to briefly say something about the session from a couple of weeks from now. 745 01:27:07,680 --> 01:27:13,290 Yes, in two weeks from now. Same day. Same time we have our third session. 746 01:27:13,290 --> 01:27:20,520 The title of which sadly escapes me because we'll be controlled by Saudi Arabia and have been captured might rest today, 747 01:27:20,520 --> 01:27:25,890 but you will all receive announcements of the session. So thank you. 748 01:27:25,890 --> 01:27:30,210 Thank you very much for the invitation. It was a pleasure. Thanks. 749 01:27:30,210 --> 01:27:35,010 We hope to see you in person as well. Yes. Bye. Yes, exactly. 750 01:27:35,010 --> 01:27:49,397 We love to begin something. Thank you. All right. Very.