Draped in Meaning: The Evolving Symbolism of the Black Abaya in Saudi Arabia

Covering Women’s Rights, Silencing Suppression

This thesis examines healthy ageing conceptualizations and their perceived influences in older Saudi women living in Saudi Arabia. To date, no research has examined the question of how older people themselves understand the concept of healthy ageing in Saudi Arabia. The focus is on women because of cultural reasons and gender may influence concepts of healthy ageing and how ageing is experienced. Two pieces of research are reported in this thesis: a systematic review and a qualitative empirical study. The systematic review critically summarized evidence from studies that examined ageing experiences relevant to Arabic-Muslim cultures. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA) flow diagram methodology was used and found few studies addressing ageing in the Saudi population, and fifteen articles investigating ageing among Arabic Muslim cultures. The review underscored the different sociodemographic associations of health status, family network, religion, and social activity with wellbeing in old age. In order to address the research gaps, a subjective understanding of the elements that affect healthy ageing concepts in older Saudi women must be considered. This thesis empirically examines older Saudi women’s perspectives of healthy ageing, and perceived influences on healthy ageing in Saudi Arabia. It aims to achieve its objective by seeking answers to the following research questions: How do older Saudi women experience ageing in everyday life? How do they understand the concepts of ageing? How do they view their ideal life in old age? How do they prepare for healthy ageing? What are the factors that are positively related to the healthy ageing? What are the barriers to healthy ageing? Qualitative in-depth interviews with seventeen Saudi women aged 60 years and over were done. Data collection concluded when the categories were saturated, then iterative/thematic analysis was done. The study showed that the standard household living arrangements across Saudi Arabia indicates co-habitation between older parents and children. Also, all the women in this study were dependent housewives, financially supported by their families. Almost half of the participants were illiterate. The study informants mainly rated their health status as good or better although they had multiple chronic diseases. Analysis of the data resulted in rich and interconnected themes, including: old age and respect, interpersonal relationships, religious faith and spirituality, health functioning, supportive environment, financial security, and the ageing process. Healthy ageing perspectives in older women in Saudi Arabia include multidimensional measures that are interconnected prominently with religion/spirituality and family connection. This research found the pathway to healthy ageing among the study population was similar to Western cultures; however, these western approaches were unable to explain cultural and religious differences. This study will be useful for Saudi governments as it has the potential to provide knowledge to develop targeted strategies to promote healthy ageing in Saudi Arabia. Consequently, it may have important implications for researchers, clinicians, and policymakers as they focus on improving quality of life for an ageing population in Saudi Arabia.

From Café Culture to Tweets

Saudi Arabia has long been an important country because of the pilgrimage to Mecca, leadership in Muslim institutions, oil wealth, rapid economic and social change, and its controversial role in both opposing and fostering Islamic radicalism. In early 2015 King Salman's succession to the throne initiated a series of changes, particularly in foreign and military affairs, that have increased Saudi Arabia's importance. Understanding current affairs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a country that has historically been inhospitable to critical research, is therefore vital. The work under review here, Saudi Arabia in Transition: Insights on Social, Political, Economic and Religious Change, is a good source of information and analysis for the general public and for specialists.In the introduction (chapter 1) the three editors pose two questions: Why were there no mass mobilizations or protests in Saudi Arabia during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings such as those experienced in other Arab countries? Why have so many analysts erred in their evaluations of Saudi politics? The answer to the first question may be found by reading many of the book's essays. In the view of the editors, the chief answer to the second question is that before the year 2000 few foreign scholars were able to conduct fieldwork in Saudi Arabia. The chief value of this book then resides in recent research conducted chiefly by foreign and some Saudi scholars, as epitomized in the fifteen chapters contained in this volume. The three editors also argue that an analysis of Saudi politics and society based solely on any one factor, such as oil, is inherently flawed, given the complex and dynamic nature of change currently underway in the kingdom. The introduction provides a rapid overview of developments in Saudi society and government, concentrating on the importance of the kingdom for the world, domestic and international challenges to the status quo, material and symbolic resources mobilized by the ruling family to meet these challenges, and contextualization of Saudi strengths and resources showing their strengths and weaknesses.The first theme treated in the book concerns oil, more specifically the role, impact, and effects of oil and the wealth it produces for Saudi Arabia. Oil plays a significant part throughout modern Saudi history and in all parts of this book. However, chapters by F. Gregory Gause, Toby C. Jones, Giacomo Luciani, Bernard Haykel, and Steffen Hertog most directly relate to this topic.Oil wealth is widely presumed to play a key role in determining political events. However, F. Gregory Gause, in his perceptive and timely analysis of this presumption in chapter 2, shows that periods of low oil prices do not automatically lead to political unrest and stress. Indeed, periods of high oil prices and high governmental revenues have often coincided with political mobilization, unrest, and violence, as in 1979–80, 1990–91, and 2003. The key determinants leading to such events were external crises in the Middle East or domestic non-oil factors. The Saudi rulers also were able to use saved investments, domestic borrowing, and tactics designed to raise world oil prices, thereby averting grave threats to the regime from low oil prices.Toby Jones in chapter 3 similarly argues that the benefits of oil wealth are sometimes overrated. Saudi Arabia has remained entirely dependent on oil revenues rather than using wealth to diversify the economy. The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which opened in 2009, was meant to re-emphasize the earlier role played by science and scientists in the centralizing of the state, the creation of its institutions, and the development of a political narrative emphasizing progress and development. Here, Jones discusses agriculture as a case study in the use of science by government, a process described at greater length in his book, Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (Harvard University Press, 2010).In chapter 5 Giacomo Luciani examines the often-volatile price of oil on the world market and consequent challenges to long-term planning and economic investment. After 1985 the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) as a whole and Saudi Arabia in particular have not been able to play the role of price maker, leading the author to note that “statistically, our ability to model or project prices into the future is essentially nil” (74). Volatility has been increasing, as seen in dramatic swings in oil prices in 2007–9, and, one might add, more recently in 2015–16. Political-military upheavals also increase volatility, though Saudi Arabia has in the past increased marginal production of petroleum during such periods, as in 1990–91. Luciani argues for several changes in oil pricing policy that Saudi Arabia should, in his view, undertake; many of these proposed changes relate to the growing importance of China, Japan, and India in world oil consumption. The author predicts that barring such changes the international oil market as presently constituted will collapse.A very different analysis of oil's impact may be found in chapter 7, where Bernard Haykel first briefly discusses opinions and writings about oil among popular poets (Bandar bin Surur), among the ulama (ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ibn Baz), among Arab nationalists (ʿAbd Allah al-Turayqi), and among the royal family and technocratic bureaucrats. A particularly effective discussion involves the religious-legal claims of the state to ownership of mineral resources (134–35). Even more valuable is Haykel's analysis of al-Qaʿida's radical views on oil wealth that should lead to Saudi oil wealth being shared by all Muslims, and al-Qaʿida's changing opinions on the advisability of attacking oil facilities.In chapter 6 Steffen Hertog describes the regional impact of central government oil revenues, pointing out the key role of this money in the Saudi political economy and in the creation of an integrated business elite. The Najd in the central part of the country has received a higher proportion of spending than its population would warrant. Hertog argues that the most disadvantaged regions are neither the oil-rich east nor the cosmopolitan Hijaz in the west, but rather the southern regions close to Yemen. Government employment, promotions to high office, population growth, registration of private companies, real estate loans—in all these matters government most promotes the Najd, then the Hijaz, and last the southern regions. This argument expands upon and revises the earlier work of Kiren Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth (Cornell University Press, 1997).The second theme of the book is the role of Islam in Saudi Arabia. Chapters by David Commins, Nabil Mouline, Stéphane Lacroix, Saud Al-Sarhan, and Thomas Hegghammer discuss various aspects of Islam in the kingdom.In chapter 8 David Commins addresses the terminology used to describe the strand of Islam begun by Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab in the eighteenth century, often labeled Wahhabism. Foreign defenders of this approach first labeled it as a variety of Hanbali Sunnism that followed medieval thinkers like Ibn Taymiyya. After the third Saudi state led by King ʿAbd al-ʿAziz conquered the Hijaz in the mid-1920s some supporters in Egypt, including the influential Rashid Rida, argued that so-called Wahhabism was a variety of Salafism, seeking to return Islam to the practices of early Muslims. By the 1970s establishment Saudi clerics used the term Salafism to describe themselves, though they rejected the liberal strand of Salafism. Identification with Salafism became a tool used by Saudi religious figures against the pretensions of the Muslim Brotherhood and various Muslim radicals.Nabil Mouline's chapter argues that the Saudi political authorities sought to gain ascendancy over the Wahhabi ulama by the creation in 1971 of the Committee of Senior Scholars and a raft of similar groups designed to curb and organize the clerical power. However, the ulama expanded their own organizations, bureaucratized them, and adapted themselves to the new challenges of the 1990s. Mouline examines the powers, working arrangements, and political importance of the Committee of Senior Scholars. In this regard his chapter could be usefully supplemented by reading Muhammad al-Atawneh, Wahhabi Islam Facing the Challenges of Modernity: Dar al-Ifta in the Modern Saudi State (E. J. Brill, 2010), though both works need to be revised to include recent changes.One aspect of Islam in Saudi Arabia that has gained a great deal of attention since the 2003 attacks on New York City by al-Qaʿida Saudi recruits is radical terrorism. Stéphane Lacroix in chapter 9 looks at the opposite of this phenomenon: urban Islamist networks, particularly in educational institutions, that implicitly mobilized support for the regime from the 1960s onward. Employing social movement theory, Lacroix discusses the Islamic networks' effective opposition to al-Qaʿida in the Arabian Peninsula in 2003–5, thereby denying al-Qaʿida support from most Saudi religious youths. The Islamic networks played a dominant part in the 2005 municipal elections as well.In chapter 10 Saud al-Sarhan adopts a more familiar point of view, by analyzing the ideas and actions of three jihadi-salafist radicals—Humud ibn ʿAbd ʿAllah al-ʿUqla al-Shuʿaybi, Nasir ibn Hamad al-Fahd, and ʿAli ibn Khudayr al-Khudayr—for the years 1997–2003. These three opposed the monarchy, the official ulama, the alliance of Saudi Arabia with the United States, and the prevalent Saudi interpretation of the obligation to wage jihad (holy war), but their influence waned after 2003.Chapter 11 contains an informative essay on the causes of the weakness of violent radicalism in Saudi Arabia written by Thomas Hegghammer. In his view, “transnational Islamist militancy” is divided into those favoring “foreign fighter activism” such as ʿAbd Allah ʿAzzam and those espousing “anti-Western terrorism” such as Usama bin Ladin (207). Saudis generally favored classical jihadist theory and practice, thus participation in anti-Russian fighting in Chechnya and post-2003 Iraq was far more popular than al-Qaʿida's attacks against the United States or its terrorism inside Saudi Arabia itself in 2003–5.The third theme of the book, social change, is treated in two chapters dealing with Bedouins and genealogy (chapters 12 and 13, both written by Abdulaziz H. Al Fahad), and two chapters dealing with Saudi women (chapter 14 by Madawi Al-Rasheed, chapter 15 by Amélie Le Renard).Abdulaziz Al Fahad looks carefully in chapter 12 at the lament of the Najdi Bedouin poet Bandar bin Surur for the ending of nomadic lifestyles as a means to show one of the crucial aspects of modern Saudi rule—a centralization of political power that represented the settled inhabitants (hadar) at the expense of the nomadic tribes. The Saudi government ended tribal raiding, so Bedouins like Bandar bin Surur had to pursue other careers—in his case, becoming a truck driver and itinerant poet who celebrated the heroism, hospitality, and anti-hadar values of his ancestors, but who despised the new social order. Along the same lines, Al Fahad in chapter 13 discusses the flood of genealogical writings that starting in the 1980s seemed to show “a reaction against the decline of traditional modes of social and political organization, the atomization of society, the homogenizing powers of the modern state, and the failure of civil society to take root” (265–66). Both tribal and town identities were diminished; instead, the author argues that the Saudi state insisted on direct power over individuals, as seen, for example, in a national system of allocating male names or in the state selecting tribal leaders. In response, family associations emerged as private kin groups filling a void in civil society. The author supplements the pioneering work of Hamad al-Jasir on genealogy with his own ample research on the topic.Madawi Al-Rasheed in chapter 14 begins her incisive discussion of contemporary changes in the role of Saudi women by outlining the masculine state's subordination and exclusion of women from the public sphere through rulings by the ulama, regulation of women's attire, revival of polygamy, channeling of women to certain limited occupations, and in many other ways. However, in the 2000s there took place especially for female elites an “increased visibility of women [as] a product of modernizing authoritarian rule, economic liberalization, and, finally, the war on terror” (302). The author's analysis is presented at greater length in her book, A Most Masculine State: Gender, Politics, and Religion in Saudi Arabia (Cambridge University Press, 2013).Amélie Le Renard discusses the importance of shopping malls in Riyadh for young Saudi women, who thereby gain access to urban public spaces despite strict gender segregation. The author discloses the negative practical consequences of religiously inspired social rigidity, while also pointing to recent changes in education and employment that have opened some new opportunities for middle-class women to interact with each other in a consumption-oriented milieu. Her analysis is more fully presented in her book, A Society of Young Women: Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia (Stanford University Press, 2014).This excellent collection of essays is highly informative and well worth reading. However, it does contain a few weaknesses. More contributions from Saudi scholars would have been beneficial. Some authors invoke theoretical frameworks in which they situate their work, but many do not. A dominant question among scholars who study Saudi Arabia is whether the kingdom is so exceptional that it cannot be usefully compared to other countries, though some researchers reject this exceptionalist narrative. In this book Gause, Jones, Lacroix, Le Renard, and the three editors in their introduction might be put in the anti-exceptionalist category. A more explicit discussion of this topic by the other contributors would have been welcome.One problem found in most of the chapters is that they end their coverage in the decade of the 2000s and thereby do not cover recent developments in Saudi Arabia, even though the book has a copyright date of 2015. This problem is somewhat alleviated by the introduction as well as a brief afterword written by Bernard Haykel, in which he discusses the Saudi ban on the Muslim Brotherhood enacted in 2014, the addition of women to the Majlis al-Shura, the spread of social media, and rising expectations among young people because of great wealth that accrued to the state when oil prices were high. The reader who wishes to pursue in greater depth the topics discussed in this book is encouraged to take a close look at the thorough bibliographical coverage presented in J. E. Peterson, “The Arabian Peninsula in Modern Times: A Historiographical Survey of Recent Publications,” Journal of Arabian Studies 4, no. 2 (December 2014): 244–74.

Studying abroad is considered to be an important factor behind the social changes happening in Saudi Arabia especially among Saudi women(Alhazmi, 2010). When abroad, some Saudi womenexperience a change in their values and beliefs which affect their social behaviors. Drawing on an Islamic feminism perspective,Norton’s investment theory, and SLA theories,this study explores the experience of female Saudi international students in Australia and the role of English in the development of these women’s identities. It discusses how learning English and living in an English speaking country impact upon Saudi women's social identity. The participants were five postgraduate Saudi female students, currently studying in Australia. The research methodology utilized a qualitative approach and data was generated from self-completion questionnaires and in-depth face to face interviews. The findings indicate thatthe Saudi women valued their traditional roles as mothers and felt empowered by performing the task of motherhood. However, they reject their traditional roles as wives and the mandates on women’s roles in Saudi culture and seek different roles. They do that in line with their religion by reinterpreting the Islamic teaching i.e. Islamic feminism, and learning English linguistically and using English to access different cultures. The findings also emphasize the importance of the English language, and socialisation in the new environment in developing the identity of the Saudi women, and how it is considered a resource which learners can optionally draw on. The findings also show that the Saudi women are investing in learning the target language as a way to provoke change (within themselves, their family and the Saudi society). This study helps to fill a gap in literature as almost all the literature found in this topic was conducted by non-Saudi researchers, who, as outsiders, could miss the changes happening in Saudi Arabia, so there is a need to discuss the identity of Saudi women with an insider perspective.

<i>A Society of Young Women: Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia</i> by Amélie Le Renard

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the obstacles to women’s advancement in Saudi Arabia. The paper addresses the question “what are women’s experiences of becoming leaders and what influences their leadership practice?” It does this by drawing on gender and Middle Eastern literature, as well as empirical evidence of the perceptions, experience and challenges of women in Saudi.Design/methodology/approachThe study contributes a consideration of the academic literature, supported by empirical findings from 25 interviews with professional women in Saudi Arabia. The data identify the perceptions, experiences and challenges of professional women in Saudi. It concludes by outlining the practical need for the review and promotion of policies to eradicate inequalities in the workplace.FindingsThe data show that the challenges faced by professional women in Saudi Arabia are social, religious, cultural and organizational. The findings reveal that women’s relationship to self, others, place and work are key influencers in how they perceive and experience leadership. The findings also indicate the need for a review and promotion of policies to eradicate inequalities which prevent women from becoming leaders.Research limitations/implicationsThe research limitations are that it focuses on a small number of professional women in Saudi Arabia (n = 25). However, Saudi Arabia is a country where research access is difficult; therefore, this research has significant implications for beginning to understand women and their experience of leadership in Saudi. It also addresses a gap in the scant research which does exist in this area.Practical implicationsThe study highlights that unless significant barriers are removed, women will not progress to higher leadership positions in organizations. The future role of women as leaders in Saudi Arabia will require society, organizations and women themselves to change the traditional role-expectations of women. The paper considers what can be done to create a more levelled platform for women to operate in organizations at senior levels.Social implicationsThe findings and recommendations will prove useful in raising awareness among policymakers and practitioners regarding the experiences and the obstacles faced by women in Saudi Arabia because of the social, religious and culture context in which they live.Originality/valueThis study contributes to enriching the gender and leadership literature in a country that has been poorly addressed so far. Its originality lies in the context of Saudi Arabia. The research is significant in that, in examining women’s perceptions of the challenges and opportunities of leadership in the workplace, it provides an understanding of women’s experience of leadership in Saudi that has not previously been considered in the literature on women in the Middle East. This study therefore contributes to understanding the how and why of leadership by listening to the ways in which women learn and practise leadership.

The Saudi Arabia’s “Fundamentalists” the position runs counter in the basic religious doctrine with, and People's Republic of China ’s “Communist” and “Socialism” the idea, also can affect the Saudi Arabian imperial family’s benefit and the stability. However the Saudi Arabia actually purchases the missile to the People’s Republic of China, and established diplomatic relations in 1990 . The Transformation in Diplomatic Relations between Saudi-Arabia and China was really worth studying and the discussion truly. Because in 1973 the petroleum crisis took Saudi Arabia the huge economic interest, enable Saudi Arabia’s government to have the abundant financial resource to foster the talent, but caused in this border to have the social structure change, because the group accepted the higher education or overseas abroad study return to homeland, dominated the political power to Saudi Arabian’s Government and the traditional royal court to be discontented, finally urged Saudi Arabian’s King to implement the reform as well as the cabinet carries on the reorganization, in addition, also enabled the sand country tradition political power abandonment passing the country to have to “the communism” first impressions ares most lasting the hostility, and after suffered US ‘s Parliament to go back a promise to sell the Saudi Arabian F-15 fighter plane, originated the policy using the disperser arms sale to purchase missiles form People’s Republic of China. In the international environment aspect, the Saudi Arabia after the excavating petroleum, is admires the US military force to protect its petroleum benefit, but because US's Israel's policy, causes the Saudi Arabia to the American confidence vacillation, however, this time People’s Republic of China actually unceasingly (the People’s Republic of China using the United Nations Security Council), the economy (purchases petrified industry and wheat), the military (sells the missiles), the psychology (using religious relations), at that time Saudi Arabia is in order to maintain the Saudi Arabian leader regime stably, strengthens own national defense military force, by the consolidated this country in under the Islam world leading positions consideration, urges Saudi Arabia choose People’s Republic of China to purchases missiles, and establishes both sides official foreign relations.

BackgroundSaudi Arabia has undergone substantial development in the recent past with concomitant changes in living conditions, and economic and general health status that have affected the age at menarche in Saudi women. We evaluated the current age at menarche and reproductive events among Saudi women.Subjects and MethodsAge, age at menarche, age at marriage, age of first pregnancy, number of children, and number of abortions were collected for Saudi women attending King Khalid University Hospital (KKUH) over a 3-month period in 2002.ResultsFor 989 Saudi women, the mean age at menarche was 13.05 years. There was a decrease in the age of menarche over the past 20 years, an increase in the age of marriage, age of first pregnancy, and a decrease in the number of children and abortions. Compared with data from two decades, the age at menarche decreased significantly from 13.22 to 13.05 years.ConclusionThe decrease in the age of menarche among Saudi women indicates better socioeconomic status and improvements in health.

Few researches dealt with the mean age and the correlation between menopause and osteoporosis in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). For this reason the authors have the idea to study severity of menopausal symptoms and knowledge, attitude and practice towards menopause among Saudi women. In this cross - sectional study, a sample of 233 Saudi women from 45 to 55 years old was collected randomly in Primary Care Clinic, King Khalid University Hospital, Riyadh. The data collection was in a form of questionnaire. The sample was categorized into 3 groups: premenopausal, perimenopausal and postmenopausal women. The severities of menopausal symptoms using menopause quality of life (MENQOL) questionnaire were as follows: Menopausal symptoms experienced by women in sample recorded that 68.51% suffered from hot flashes and excessive sweating, 37.7% dryness of vagina and 30.7% sexual problems. In assessingknowledge attitude and practices (KAP) towards menopause, 57.5% recognized that menopause was concerned with stop of menstruation and 47.9% denying the physical and psychological effects of menopause. Concerning the severity of symptoms, the hot flashes and excessive sweating was the most sever and frequent symptoms among three groups. And the authors needed more awareness towards menopause in Saudi community. Key words: Menopause, menopausal symptoms, KAP towards menopause in Saudi.

A Society of Young Women: Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia

A Society of Young Women: Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia

Veiling is commonly practiced in many Muslim societies, but its prevalence, and enforcement in Saudi Arabia is extraordinary. With changing status, Saudi women have started to defy the practice; and it is suggested that its enforcement has also become less frequent. In contemporary Saudi Arabia, many women, following the dress code of the abaya (black cloak) and hijab (head cover), have started to discard the naqab (face veil). Does this indicate a widening of the margins so far as veiling is concerned? Or is it an indication that Saudi society is becoming amenable to individual choices? To conclude that veiling has become a matter of individual choice would stretch the point beyond fact, but suggesting diversity in veiling practice would not be wrong. Saudi women continue to face structural constraints and systemic discrimination, but their improving socioeconomic conditions have provided them the ability to choose the way they want to be dressed in public so far as the use of naqab is concerned. Though a minor development, contextualized in the larger discourse on women's empowerment, this is no small achievement and is indicative of ruptures in the established social norm of veiling.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES:Despite its relatively low incidence in Saudi Arabia, breast cancer has been the most common cancer among Saudi females for the past 12 consecutive years. The objective of this study was to report the results of the first national public breast cancer screening program in Saudi Arabia.METHODS:Women 40 years of age or older underwent breast cancer screening. Mammograms were scored using the Breast Imaging-Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS). Correlations between imaging findings, risk factors and pathological findings were analyzed.RESULTS:Between September 2007 and April 2008, 1215 women were enrolled. The median age was 45 years, and median body mass index was 31.6 kg/m2. Sixteen cases of cancer were diagnosed. No cancer was diagnosed in 942 women with R1/R2 scores, and only 1 case of cancer was diagnosed in 228 women with R0/R3 scores. However, among 26 women with R4/R5 scores, 50% had malignant disease and 35% had benign lesions. No correlation was found between known risk factors and imaging score or cancer diagnosis.CONCLUSIONS:Public acceptance of the breast cancer screening program was encouraging. Longitudinal follow-up will help in better determining the risk factors relevant to our patient population.

The Complexities of Gender Relations in a Masculine State Laleh Khalili (bio) Madawi Al-Rasheed’s A Most Masculine State: Gender, Politics, and Religion in Saudi Arabia, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013 A deep exasperation with banal clichés about women in Saudi Arabia opens Madawi Al-Rasheed’s absorbing, thought-provoking, and lucid A Most Masculine State. Al-Rasheed has no truck with the two stereotypical images of Saudi women as “either excluded, heavily veiled victims of their own religion and society, or wealthy, glamorous, cosmopolitan entrepreneurs benefiting from inherited wealth and state education” (1). So she sets out to tell her readers a deeply researched story about the trajectory of women as political subjects in Saudi Arabia since the end of the nineteenth century. Her central contention is that to understand Saudi Arabia, we need to analyze the peculiarities of Saudi “religious nationalism,” as well as the power of the Saudi state to shape both the ideologies pertaining to the position of women in Saudi society and the material conditions of their existence. The instruments for this process of social and ideological engineering are, inter alia, notions of piety and public propriety, laws around marriage and employment, provision of education, and labor regulatory regimes that make housework a job best suited to migrant laborers. It is the genius of the book that it also provides a persuasive analysis of why so many Saudi women are themselves invested in the maintenance of the rigid system of control in which the women are embedded. She further argues that what ultimately counts—far beyond ideological attachments of the women themselves—is their class location where “wealthy West-ernised elite women enjoy far more freedoms than young marginalised divorcees and mothers” (37). What makes the book so rewarding and useful is, first, the thoughtful, richly detailed historical context it provides for understanding women’s [End Page 314] education, the regulations of women’s bodies and sexuality, and the place of women in business relations in Saudi Arabia over the span of several decades. But Al-Rasheed is also very attentive to both the state-centered mythologizing and religious discourse-making that goes into the maintenance of gender relations, as well as the contestation over the boundaries of control. She provides an instructive chapter on “the new religious women” who are crucially engaged in the thoroughly modern “resort to an Islamic discourse in which they find solutions to gender issues such as gender discrimination, inheritance, marriage, divorce, and employment” (254). Their version of gender struggles entails a pious protection of the chastity of women and their role as mothers and wives. These women are compared with novelists who have become celebrities in the “West” because of their “cosmopolitan fantasy” and their sometimes fantastical representation of Saudi women not only as sexually active autonomous subjects but also as voracious neoliberal ones. It is a testament to the sensitivity and astuteness of Al-Rasheed that she sees both the cosmopolitan novelists and the pious preacher-women as people contending to be included “within modernity’s expanding horizons as guardians of a noble past” and as participants in the social and political life of Saudi Arabia. Because of her past political stances, Al-Rasheed is presumably unable to travel to Saudi Arabia. This means that the primary research for this book has depended on electronic conversations and meetings with a broad range of Saudi women outside Saudi Arabia itself (in both Europe and the Middle East), as well as a close reading and analysis of a vast corpus of texts (including novels, pamphlets, books, online documents, official statements and religious sermons, and lectures and treatises). Al-Rasheed has a broad enough set of contacts, extensive enough memories of living in Saudi Arabia, and deep enough knowledge of the place that her inability to travel there does not affect the quality or plausibility of the arguments she makes. However, her presence there would have enabled her to address an important lacuna in our knowledge about women in Saudi: the lives of poorer women—whether with Saudi citizenship, or especially the vast armies of domestic servants and migrant workers, some of whom have lived in Saudi Arabia...