Unholy Kingdom: Religion, Corruption and Violence in Saudi Arabia
Malise Ruthven (Verso, $46, $368)
BBC editor Malise Ruthven has written an expose of Saudi Arabia, the Unholy Kingdom, the alliance between the House of Saud – the royal family that ruled modern Saudi Arabia since its founding – and extremist imams who he labels a “sectarian Islamic cult.” Their extreme Wahhabism has become mainstream, according to Ruthven, due to the Saudi rulers pumping untold billions of petrodollars into the cause normalizing the teachings of the 18th century marginal Muslim heretic Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The Saudi state also pumps tens of billions of dollars into other conservative strands of Islam such as Salafism and Deobandism, and exports it to Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Indonesia. The result is deep division – sometimes deadly division – among Muslims in those countries. Ruthven “follows the money” from Riyadh through various cultural networks to foreign imams and terrorist groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and the 2002 Bali bombers in Indonesia, to say nothing of the 9/11 hijackers.
Ruthven argues that western governments and businesses are whitewashing Saudi atrocities by lavishing investment, sporting spectacles such as the World Cup and F1 racing, and normal relations with the House of Saud. He denies that there is substantial modernization or reforms in Saudi Arabia as the Wahhabi clergy are recalcitrantly stuck in the past and the Saudi regime dreads substantive change. Ruthven has written a gimlet-eyed assessment of the dangers that Saudi Arabia continues to pose despite its putative modernization.
