Saudi Arabian Modernization

The late King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz was born in Riyadh in 1905/6, several years after his father Abdulaziz Ibn Saud had recaptured it from Ibn Rashid. In 1964 he became king of Saudi Arabia, famous for harbouring twenty five percent of the world's oil reserves and hailed as the most powerful Arab ruler in centuries. In 1975, his nephew shot him in

This book examines Dār al-Iftā, the official Saudi religious establishment for issuing fatwas, between 1971 and 1999. Specifically, it explores the challenges that this scholarly body encountered when applying Wahhābī interpretations of the Shari'a to late twentieth-century modernity.

The entire Gulf is passing through a transitional phase. The member-states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are witnessing change in varying degrees. The change has become too evident from the 1960s. It was oil, more than any other factor, which was responsible for a rapid transition. Control over oil production and marketing have led to the strengthening of governmental role as owner and distributor of oil income. The regions tribal society is being transformed into a modern society. Political modernization is a recent phenomenon if the nature and extent of structural and informal transformations are taken into account. Three broadly defined phases of political change can be discerned in the Arabian Peninsula: the traditional, the neo-traditional, and the modernizing or post-traditional. The modernizing phase was initiated by radical policies of socio-economic development, including the necessary restructuring of replacement of regimes and a redefinition or expansion of the scope and role of the state. However, the pace and direction of change is not clear enough. The coming few decades are crucial in this regard.