’BEARDED LIBERALS’: SAUDI ISLAMISTS’S STRUGGLES OVER DIVINE POLITICS

Madawi Al-Rasheed
Professor of Anthropology of Religion

The talk analyses how Islamists in Saudi Arabia responded to the Arab uprisings and developed new discourses on civil and political rights against the background of both Salafi resistance and regime repression. Activists are pejoratively labelled as ’bearded liberals’ to discredit their project to move the Saudi state to more open and representative government.

Moderation:
Gudrun Harrer; Senior Editor, Der Standard

Madawi Al-Rasheed is Visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre at LSE and Research Fellow at the Open Society Foundation. She was Professor of Anthropology of Religion at King’s College, London between 1994 and 2013. Previously, she was Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. She also taught at Goldsmith College (University of London) and the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. Her research interests include the anthropology of Muslim societies; religion, politics and state in Saudi Arabia; Islamist movements, civil society and mobilization; gender, religion and politics; transnational connections and the Arab Gulf; and human development.