Table of Contents

* Foreword Professor Fred Halliday * Introduction * Going beyond the logic of security * Osama bin Laden and Saudi Arabia * A suburb of the West * Part OneThe Construction of Identities * 1 The Island of the Arabs * The other country * The fantasies of outside perception * Contempt for history * The abolition of geography * An unattainable national identity? * Bedouin and sedentary * Sunnis and Shiites, Najd and periphery * Modernity and tradition * 2 What Is Wahhabism? * The reforms of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab * The Najd revolution * Saudis do not call themselves

About the Author

Pascal Menoret worked as a civil servant with the French foreign ministry. He developed a deep understanding of Saudi society during an extensive period as attache to the French embassy in Riyadh, beginning a few days after September 11, 2001, and is the author of several publications in French on Saudi politics and society. The book is translated by Patrick Camiller.

Reviews

'Finally, we have a book by someone who has a robust social science approach to what is a modern and fast-changing society, who has lived in, and thought a lot about, the country, who does not fall into conspiracy theory, who avoids the anti-Saudi banalities of the outside world as much as the pieties of the regime, who, in a word, tells us how the country actually works.' - Professor Fred Halliday, London School of Economics 'A treasure-house of precise references and analyses, this book does not set out to provide simple answers, but to illustrate the great complexity of the country and to account for the deep changes it has gone through. Particularly enlightrening on the current crisis and the official response to it since 2002.' - Sophie Pommier, Le Monde Diplomatique 'A historical and sociological analysis, a balance sheet that eschews illusions.' - Francoise Crouigneau, Les Echos