Awakening Islam

Stephane Lacroix is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Sciences Po, Paris.

Al-Sahwa Al-Islamiyya or "Islamic Awakening" was one of the most powerful social movements in the history of Saudi Arabia. It is also one of the least documented--until now. Stephane Lacroix tells the story of this movement in his splendid new book...Lacroix's study is timely and original. Serious students of Saudi Arabia need to read this important book. They will be enlightened by it and moved to seek more knowledge about the Kingdom. -- Joseph Richard Preville Saudi Gazette 20110320 A timely work, especially when read against the backdrop of antigovernment demonstrations taking place across the Middle East and North Africa today. -- Christopher McConnell Booklist 20110415 Awakening Islam is a product of serious scholarly interpretive and linguistic skills. -- Madawi Al-Rasheed Times Higher Education 20110421 Looking at the Muslim misfits of the past half-century and how many received refuge in Saudi Arabia, Parisian professor Stephane Lacroix argues that the resulting movement has yielded two opposing camps--the Islamo-liberals and the neo-jihadis, both headquartered out of that Islamic heartland. -- Asma Gull Hasan Publishers Weekly 20110427 Little attention is paid to Saudi Arabia's internal Islamist movements. During the decades before the 1990s, the kingdom actively fostered the Sahwa, or "Islamic awakening," a movement led by local activists that was as political as it was religious. In his meticulously researched book, Stephane Lacroix provides an exhaustive history of the Sahwa, detailing the movement's original constituents--Muslim emigres fleeing persecution from other states in the region--and its importance to the Saudi social and political spheres. For decades, Saudi leaders supported the group's activities, even though their ideas were not entirely in line with state-sanctioned Wahhabism. This ended when Saddam Hussein invaded the country in 1990. The Saudis' reliance on American military assistance expedited the Sahwa's radicalization and ultimately