Les nouveaux intellectuels religieux saoudiens : le Wahhabisme en question

Abstract

This article is about the “new religious intellectuals” who have played a key role in the debates which have shaken the Saudi kingdom since the late 1990s. Since that period, most of these intellectuals have become prominent figures in the “islamo-liberal” movement, which emerged out of part of the Islamist opposition, and calls for democratic reform within an Islamic framework, as well as a revision of the dominant Wahhabi religious discourse. In this article, we will mainly focus on the question of religious reform. We will show how these intellectuals have based their critique of Wahhabism on a plurality of modes, which correspond to the different legitimizing discourses of the reformist movement these intellectuals represent. We will finally examine the limits of this critique: while the regime can, if it suits its temporary interests, tolerate, and even encourage, a degree of religious criticism, it cannot let this criticism turn into what many of these intellectuals consider as its natural corollary, i.e. political criticism.