Search Results

“... The reputation​ of Saudi Arabia in the West – never high – sank to a terrible low after 9/11, its name synonymous with terrorism, radical religious teachings, persistent gender inequality and stumbling economic development. The accession of King Salman in 2015 was cautiously welcomed but what really raised hopes that the PR nightmare could be ended was the appearance in the limelight of his son Mohammed, known as MBS ...”

“... himself as a 21st-century whizzkid reformer with the help of some fawning press coverage. Madawi al-Rasheed, a Saudi academic-activist who has lived in London for decades, is the pre-eminent Anglophone scholar of the kingdom. The Khashoggi affair illuminated the nature of the Saudi regime – modernising yet repressive, profligate with power ...”

“... oil-producing Eastern province. In Contesting the Saudi State, the London-based Saudi historian Madawi Al-Rasheed argues that the defeat of 1818 taught the Wahhabis the art of survival. This entailed the adoption of more pragmatic policies, i.e. straightforward political opportunism. For literalists this could not have been easy. One of Muhammad’s ...”

“... puts it, ‘they would fare even worse under Islamists than they would under the royal family.’ Madawi al-Rasheed, a leading historian of the kingdom, writes that ‘the regime sees the perverse benefit of attacks on Shia worshippers by radical Sunni groups’: such attacks allow it to present itself ‘as the best protector of the Shia’, since the ...”