Jihad, yes, but not revolution: Explaining the extraversion of islamist violence in Saudi Arabia

British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies

Volumn 36, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 395-416

  Hegghammer, Thomas ^a  

^a NORWEGIAN DEFENCE RESEARCH ESTABLISHMENT FFI   (Norway)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL INFLUENCE; ETHNIC CONFLICT; ETHNOPOLITICS; ISLAMISM; MILITARY INTERVENTION; POLITICAL IDEOLOGY; SOCIAL MOVEMENT; STATE ROLE; VIOLENCE;

ALGERIA; EGYPT; SAUDI ARABIA;

EID: 72249098426     PISSN: 13530194     EISSN: 14693542     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13530190903338938     Document Type: Article

References (109)

1. See e.g. Helen Lackner, A House Built on Sand: A Political Economy of Saudi Arabia (London: Ithaca Press, 1978)
2. Peter W. Wilson and Douglas Graham, Saudi Arabia: The Coming Storm (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994)
3. Säid K. Aburish, The Rise, Corruption, and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (New York: St Martin's Press, 1995)
4. and Robert Baer, 'The Fall of the House of Saud', Atlantic Monthly, 291 (2003), pp. 53-62.
5. In this article, the term 'Islamist' is defined broadly as Islamic activist, while 'jihadist' is defined as violent Sunni Islamist.
6. The same puzzle was observed and addressed in Madawi al-Rasheed, 'The Minaret and the Palace: Obedience at Home and Rebellion Abroad', in Madawi al-Rasheed (ed.), Kingdom without Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), pp. 199-220.
7. Gary LaFree and Laura Dugan, Global Terrorism Database 1.1, 1970-1997 [Computer file]. ICPSR22541-v1 (College Park: University of Maryland, 2006 and Ann Arbor: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2008), www.start.umd.edu/data/gtd/ (accessed 14 September 2008).
8. RAND-MIPT Terrorism Incident Database, www.terrorisminfo.mipt.org/incidentcalendar.asp (accessed 14 September 2008).
9. Edward F. Mickolus et al., International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE), 1968-2007 (Dunn Loring: Vinyard Software, 2008).
10. For more on the weaknesses of terrorism incident data, see e.g. Alex P. Schmid and Albert J. Jongman, Political Terrorism: A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories & Literature (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1988), pp. 137-175
11. Andrew Silke, 'The Devil You Know: Continuing Problems with Research on Terrorism', Terrorism and Political Violence, 13(4) (2001), pp. 1-14
12. Leonard Weinberg and William Eubank, 'Data Daze', Criminology and Public Policy, 8(3) (2009), pp. 601-606.
13. For more details on leftist activism, see Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia (London: Saqi Books, 2000), pp. 368-372
14. John E. Peterson, Historical Dictionary of Saudi Arabia (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003), pp. 108-110
15. Fred Halliday, Arabia Without Sultans, 2nd ed. (London: Saqi, 2002), pp. 66-69
16. James Buchan, 'Secular and Religious Opposition in Saudi Arabia', in Tim Niblock (ed.), State, Society and Economy in Saudi Arabia (London: Croom Helm, 1982), pp. 106-124.
17. Robert Vitalis, America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 149.
18. Halliday, Arabia Without Sultans, p. 68.
19. Anita L.P. Burdett (ed.), Records of Saudi Arabia, 1966-1971, Vol. IV (Slough: Archive Editions, 2004), pp. 3-91
20. Halliday, Arabia Without Sultans, p. 68
21. Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia, p. 371.
22. Adeed Dawisha, 'Saudi Arabia's Search for Security', Adelphi Paper 158 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1979), p. 7.
23. One of the last signs of life from radical Saudi leftists came in November 1979, when Nasir al-Sa'id, head of the UPAP, curiously claimed responsibility for the Mecca uprising. Shortly afterward, al-Said mysteriously disappeared; liquidated, some believe, by an intelligence agency. Although Kuwait-based leftists had printed Juhayman al-Utaybi's letters, the UPAP had nothing to do with the Mecca events. Soviet media took al-Sa'id at his word and reported a working-class uprising in the Hijaz in November 1979; this, incidentally, is the source of the misrepresentation of the Juhayman incident in Alexey Vassiliev's otherwise reliable History of Saudi Arabia.
24. For more on Shiites in Saudi Arabia, see Fouad Ibrahim, The Shi'is of Saudi Arabia (London: Saqi, 2007)
25. Toby Jones, 'The Shiite Question in Saudi Arabia', in Middle East Report (Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2005)
26. and Laurence Louër, Transnational Shia Politics. Political and Religious Networks in the Gulf (London and New York: Hurst and Columbia University Press, 2008).
27. Toby Jones, 'Rebellion on the Saudi Periphery: Modernity, Marginalization, and the Shi'a Uprising of 1979', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 38(2) (2006), pp. 213-233.
28. Followers of the 'Shirazi marja' considered Grand Ayatollah Muhammad ibn Mahdi al-Hussayni al-Shirazi (1928-2001) as their main religious authority.
29. Peterson, Historical Dictionary of Saudi Arabia, p. 110.
30. Martin Kramer, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1996), pp. 161-187.
31. Thomas Hegghammer, 'Deconstructing the Myth about al-Qa'ida and Khobar', The Sentinel, 1(3) (2008), pp. 20-22. Thus far, the strongest case for al-Qaida responsibility for Khobar has been made by Gareth Porter in a five-part article series in Inter Press Service (www.ips.org), 22-26 June 2009.
32. Human Rights Watch, The Ismailis of Najran: Second-class Saudi Citizens (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2008), pp. 19-28.
33. For more on the Ikhwan, see John Habib, Ibn Saud's Warriors of Islam: The Ikhwan of Najd and Their Role in the Creation of the Sa'udi Kingdom, 1910-1930 (Leiden: Brill, 1978)
34. Christine Moss Helms, The Cohesion of Saudi Arabia: Evolution of Political Identity (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 127-150, 225-274
35. Joseph Kostiner, The Making of Saudi Arabia: From Chieftaincy to Monarchical State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 72-79.
36. Thomas Hegghammer and Stéphane Lacroix, 'Rejectionist Islamism in Saudi Arabia: The Story of Juhayman al-Utaybi Revisited', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 39(1) (2007), p. 106.
37. Mufid al-Zaydi, al-tayyarat al-fikriyya fi'l-khalij al-'arabi, 1938-1971 [Ideological Currents in the Arab Gulf, 1938-1971] (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wihda al-Arabiyya, 2000), p. 268.
38. See also William A. Rugh, 'Saudi Mass Media and Society in the Faisal Era', in Willard Beling (ed.), King Faisal and the Modernisation of Saudi Arabia (London: Croom Helm, 1980), p. 30.
39. Haya Saad Al Rawaf and Cyril Simmons, 'The Education of Women in Saudi-Arabia', Comparative Education, 27(3) (1991), pp. 287-295.
40. Eric Schmitt, 'FBI Agents Join Search In Saudi Blast', New York Times, 15 November 1995, p. 7
41. Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia, p. 370.
42. For a more detailed explanation of this typology, see Thomas Hegghammer, 'Jihadi Salafis or Revolutionaries? On Theology and Politics in the Study of Militant Islamism', in Roel Meijer (ed.), Global Salafism (London and New York: Hurst and Columbia University Press, 2009), pp. 244-266.
43. Peterson, 'Saudi Arabia: Internal Security Incidents Since 1979', Arabian Peninsula Background Note, 3 (2005); available at www.jepeterson.net/source_material.html.
44. Florian Peil, 'Die Besetzung der Großen Moschee von Mekka 1979', Orient, 47(3) (2006), pp. 387-408
45. Hegghammer and Lacroix, 'Rejectionist Islamism in Saudi Arabia'
46. Yaroslav Trofimov, The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al Qaeda (New York: Doubleday, 2007).
47. For more on Juhayman's apocalypticism, see Jean-Pierre Filiu, L'apocalypse dans l'islam (Paris: Fayard, 2008), pp. 112-118.
48. Report to the President and Congress on the Protection of US Forces Deployed Abroad (Washington DC: US Department of Defense, 1996), p. 29.
49. Interviews with Nasir al-Barrak, Dammam, December 2005, and Mansur al-Nuqaydan, Riyadh, April 2004.
50. Urgent Action 200/95', Amnesty International, 15 August 1995
51. Statement 38 (London: Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights, 1995).
52. Joshua Teitelbaum, Holier Than Thou: Saudi Arabia's Islamic Opposition (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Studies, 2000), pp. 73-82.
53. Interview with unidentified Islamist, Jeddaah, April 2004, and Nasir al-Barrak, Dammam, December 2005.
54. The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), pp. 152, 491.
55. Thomas Hegghammer, 'Violent Islamism in Saudi Arabia, 1979-2006: The Power and Perils of Pan-Islamic Nationalism' (PhD thesis, Sciences-Po Paris, 2007), pp. 128-132, 134-135.
56. The size and overall activity of the jihadist community in the Kingdom increased dramatically in the 2000-2003 period. Moreover, an assassination manual published by a Saudi writer on jihadi websites in 2004 included several of the same tactics employed in the 2000-2003 period; see Abu Jandal al-Azdi, 'tahrid al-mujahidin al-abtal ala ihya sunnat al-ightiyal [Encouraging the Heroic Mujahidin to Revive the Practice of Assassinations]', www.tawhed.ws, 2004.
57. Hegghammer, 'Violent Islamism', pp. 132-133.
58. In November 2001, the Washington Times reported an attempted assassination attempt on King Fahd that had allegedly occurred in the form of an attack on his motorcade. These reports were vehemently denied by Saudi authorities; See 'Al-Riyadh Denied Assassination Attempt at King Fahd', ArabicNews.com, 24 November 2001.
59. Saudi Royal Survives Attack Claimed By Qaeda', Reuters, 28 August 2009. Since the late 1990s, Muhammad bin Nayif has been the main contact point for militants wishing to surrender. The 2009 assassination attempt occurred when a wanted militant pretending to surrender slipped through security and blew himself up.
60. See e.g. Alan Sipress and Peter Finn, 'Terror Cell Had Recent Gun Battle With Police', Washington Post, 14 May 2003.
61. Hazim al-Madani, 'hakadha nara al-jihad wa nuriduhu [This is How We View the Jihad and How We Want It]', www.qa3edoon.com, 2002.
62. Anonymous, 'ghazwat al-hadi 'ashar min rabi'al-awwal: 'amaliyyat sharq al-riyadh wa-harbuna ma'amrika wa 'umala'iha [The 12 May Raid: The East Riyadh Operation and Our War with America and its Agents]', www.qa3edoon.com, 2003.
63. Abu Bakr al-Husni, 'hidayat al-sari fi hukm istihdaf al-tawari' [The Prophet's Guidance on Targeting Emergency Forces]', www.qa3edoon.com, 2004.
64. George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 248.
65. Rawya Rageh, 'Ex-Militants: al-Qaida Preys on Young Men', Associated Press, 22 September 2004.
66. Interview with Saudi security source, Riyadh, November 2005
67. Mahmoud Ahmad, 'Al-Qaeda Operatives Are an Ignorant Lot, Say Former Members', Arab News, 3 October 2003.
68. See for example Terrorism in Egypt-A Timeline, gemsofislamism.tripod.com/timeline_egypt.html (accessed 26 October 2008)
69. and Salah-Eddine Sidhoum, Chronologie des Massacres en Algerie 1992-2005, www.algeria-watch.org/francais.htm (accessed 26 October 2008).
70. For example, Egyptian militants have attacked high-level officials on numerous occasions: Awqaf Minister Muhammad al-Dhahabi abducted and killed, July 1977; President Anwar Sadat killed, October 1981; Interior Minister Zaki Badr almost killed, December 1989; Speaker of the Parliament Rifaat al-Mahgoub killed and Interior Minister Abdel Halim Moussa almost killed, October 1990; Information Minister Safwat Sharif almost killed, April 1993; Interior Minister Hasan al-Alfi badly injured, August 1993; Prime Minister Atef Sidqi almost killed, November 1993; Deputy Chief of the Security Service Rawf Khayrat killed, April 1994; and President Mubarak almost assassinated in June 1995.
71. See e.g. Rodney Wilson, 'Whither the Egyptian Economy?', British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 20(2) (1993), p. 205
72. Miriam L. Lowi, 'Algeria, 1992-2002: Anatomy of a Civil War', in Paul Collier (ed.), Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis (Herndon, VA: World Bank, 2005), pp. 224-225.
73. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, 'Anatomy of Egypt's Militant Islamic Groups: Methodological Notes and Preliminary Findings', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 12(4) (1981), pp. 423-453.
74. See e.g. Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 26-35.
75. See e.g. Luis Martinez, The Algerian Civil War: 1990-1998 (London: Hurst, 2000), p. 147ff.
76. Average GDP per capita (in constant 2000 USD) for Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt in the period 1970-2007 was $10,850, $1,805 and $1,123 respectively; World Development Indicators (Washington DC: World Bank, 2007).
77. Email correspondence with Steffen Hertog, 25 November 2007.
78. Hertog, 'Segmented Clientelism: The Politics of Economic Reform in Saudi Arabia' (Oxford University, 2006), p. 218.
79. M. Gibney, L. Cornett, and R. Wood, Political Terror Scale 1976-2006 (2008), at www.politicalterrorscale.org/ (accessed 14 September 2008).
80. David L. Cingranelli and David L. Richards, The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset (12 March 2008 version), at www.humanrightsdata.org (accessed 14 September 2008).
81. Ayman al-Yassini, Religion and State in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985).
82. Christopher Boucek, Saudi Arabia's 'Soft' Counterterrorism Strategy (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2008).
83. Most assumptions on the role of tribes have been based on the profiles of the Saudi 9/11 hijackers, which included several southern tribesmen. More recent research has shown that the composition of the 9/11 attack team was not representative of Saudi al-Qaida members. Moreover, in the absence of overall figures on the size of Saudi tribes, it is impossible to know whether certain tribes are over-represented. See Thomas Hegghammer, 'Terrorist Recruitment and Radicalisation in Saudi Arabia', Middle East Policy, 13(4) (2006), pp. 39-60.
84. Boucek, Saudi Arabia's 'Soft' Counterterrorism Strategy, p. 13.
85. Madawi al-Rasheed, 'God, the King and the Nation: Political Rhetoric in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s', Middle East Journal, 50(3) (1996), pp. 359-371.
86. Al-Rasheed, 'The Minaret and the Palace', pp. 204-206
87. Madawi al-Rasheed, Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a New Generation (Cambridge: University Press, 2007) p. 22ff.
88. In a related argument, Madawi al-Rasheed has maintained that the Wahhabi religious establishment has developed and promoted a peculiar 'theology of rebellion abroad'. Since the 1940s, she argues, the state systematically allowed and promoted the glorification of jihad in certain conflict zones abroad, notably in Palestine and Afghanistan; Al-Rasheed, 'The Minaret and the Palace', pp. 206-208.
89. See e.g. David Commins, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006)
90. and Guido Steinberg, Religion und Staat in Saudi-Arabien (Wurzburg: Egon, 2002).
91. Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 141-142
92. Joas Wagemakers, 'Framing the 'Threat to Islam': al-wala' wa al-bara' in Salafi Discourse', Arab Studies Quarterly, 30(4) (2008), pp. 1-22.
93. Roberta Senechal de la Roche, 'Collective Violence as Social Control', Sociological Forum, 11 (1) (1996), pp. 118-122
94. Donald Black, 'The Geometry of Terrorism', Sociological Theory, 22 (1) (2004), pp. 14-25.
95. Hegghammer, 'Violent Islamism', pp. 635-721.
96. For a good treatment of the subject of Saudi education, see Michaela Prokop, 'Saudi Arabia: The Politics of Education', International Affairs, 79(1) (2003), pp. 77-89.
97. For more critical treatments, see e.g. Nina Shea, Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance (Washington DC: Hudson Institute, 2008)
98. and Excerpts from Saudi Ministry of Education Textbooks for Islamic Studies: Arabic with English Translation (Washington DC: Freedom House, 2006). Criticism of Saudi curricula has also been voiced publicly by Saudi intellectuals, notably by the Islamist lawyer Abd al-Aziz al-Qasim. For a Wahhabi response to the criticism, see Does Saudi Arabia Preach Intolerance and Hatred in the UK and US? An Independent Study of the Neo-Con and Sufi Partnership, www.SalafiManhaj.com, 2007.
99. Mansoor Moaddel, 'The Saudi Public Speaks: Religion, Gender and Politics', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 38(1) (2006), pp. 79-108.
100. Zogby International, 'The Ten Nations 'Impressions of America' Poll Report' (2002).
101. Some analysts have even suggested that the government had secretly paid al-Qaida not to conduct terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia. This, however, is a conspiracy theory. The absence of al-Qaida operations in the Kingdom in the late 1990s was due, first, to lack of capability, and subsequently to a lack of intention; see Thomas Hegghammer, 'Islamist Violence and Regime Stability in Saudi Arabia', International Affairs, 84(4) (2008), pp. 701-715.
102. Hegghammer, 'Violent Islamism', p. 298.
103. Sawt al-Jihad, 2 (2003), p. 24.
104. Interview with unidentified Interior Ministry official, Riyadh, May 2008.
105. I specify 'large-scale terrorism' because small-scale violence was largely ignored by the authorities. A large number of small but lethal attacks on individual Westerners in the Kingdom between 2000 and 2003 were never properly investigated by Saudi police. Instead, some of the attacks were even blamed on Western alcohol traders in what most outside observers view as gross miscarriage of justice. See Hegghammer, 'Violent Islamism', pp. 128-135.
106. Hegghammer, 'Violent Islamism', pp. 298-302.
107. See Ziyad Salih al-Hadhlul and Muhammad Abdallah al-Humaydhi, al-qissa al-kamila li'l-dawr al-sa'udi fi al-busna wa'l-harsak [The Full Story of the Saudi Role in Bosnia-Herzegovina] (Riyadh: Al-Homaidhi Printing Press, 1998)
108. and Hegghammer, 'Islamist Violence and Regime Stability in Saudi Arabia', p. 704.
109. Abdelaziz Testas, 'The Roots of Algeria's Ethnic and Religious Violence', Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 25 (2002), pp. 161-183.