MER Article Thinner Than Air Rachel Bronson, Thicker Than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) Robert Vitalis • 6 min read
MER Article Saudi Arabia's Not So New Anti-Shi`ism Enmity for the Shi‘a in Saudi Arabia, never entirely absent, has become increasingly strident in 2006 and early 2007. The empowerment of the Iraqi Shi‘a and the bloody escalation of Sunni-Shi‘i violence in Iraq have intensified sectarian animosity around the Middle East, but in Saudi Arabia the Toby Jones • 9 min read
MER Article The Iraq Effect in Saudi Arabia Shi‘is in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have watched Iraq’s political transformation with a combination of horror and optimism. Iraq’s slide toward civil war, the carnage wrought by militant violence and the targeted slaughter of thousands of Iraqi Shi‘is by Sunni insurgents have sown fears among Shi‘ Toby Jones • 15 min read
Current Analysis Dictatorship Remains OK for our Allies President George W. Bush likes to associate his administration’s goals with the will of the Almighty. Witness the stirring coda of the 2005 State of the Union address: “The road of Providence is uneven and unpredictable yet we know where it leads: It leads to freedom.” As in many previous speeches, Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Violence and the Illusion of Reform in Saudi Arabia After nine months of increasing internal and external pressure, the Saudi royal family has recently appeared ready to make major changes in the way government is done in the Arabian Peninsula. On October 13, 2003, the Consultative Council—a nominally autonomous body that in reality reflects the royal will—announced Toby Jones • 12 min read
MER Article Seeking a "Social Contract" for Saudi Arabia For most of its history, the royal family of Saudi Arabia has maintained public order by exercising absolute, at times brutal, control over the people of the country. The House of Saud has tolerated neither resistance nor the questioning of its authority. But in the mayhem of 2003, with war Toby Jones • 19 min read
MER Article World Oil Markets and the Invasion of Iraq George W. Bush's regime-changing war in Iraq is widely seen as an oil war -- a grab for the second-largest petroleum reserves in the world. In the minds of many, this interpretation was confirmed when the United States pressed for, and secured, a UN resolution giving the US-British Raad Alkadiri, Fareed Mohamedi • 22 min read
Current Analysis A Saudi Dissident's Agenda for Democratic Reform From Washington to the Arab summit, there has been much discussion lately of reformism in Saudi Arabia, but few have heard from grassroots voices within the pro-democracy movement itself. The United States has acted as though it were introducing reform notions where they previously did not exist. B Mohammed AlMohaissen • 2 min read
Current Analysis Understanding Political Dissent in Saudi Arabia The weeks following September 11 brought to the surface the tense undercurrents in the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. In the aftermath of the horrific attacks in New York and Washington, word spread that many of the hijackers were from the Asir, the mountainous southwest province of Gwenn Okruhlik • 8 min read
MER Article Migration, Modernity and Islam in Rural Sudan For the villagers of Wad al-Abbas in northern Sudan, transnational migration has generated new understandings of what it means to be a Muslim. From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, Wad al-Abbas’s incorporation into the global economy was mediated primarily by Saudi Arabia. The Saudi kingdom exerted Victoria Bernal • 8 min read
MER Article The Romance of Tahliyya Street For middle and upper class elite, entertainment in Jidda is overwhelmingly centered around commodities. In particular, the city’s Tahliyya Street is a monument to commercialization in Saudi Arabia: a string of shops and fast food restaurants such as Benetton, Esprit, McDonald’s and Sbarro, mixed in Lisa Wynn • 6 min read
MER Article Arabia Without Sultans Revisited For an author to revisit a book he wrote a quarter of a century, and a half lifetime ago, is a perilous undertaking. Arabia Without Sultans was conceived of, and written, in the early 1970s, and published in 1974 in Britain, in 1975 in the US, and subsequently, in Arabic, Fred Halliday • 10 min read
