Abstract

This study presents an analytical observation of the history of the Islamic Awakening movement in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: its formation, activity, and discourse transformations. It is a movement that resulted from the intellectual hybridization of Wahhabi-Brotherhood thought, and adopted the Wahhabi Salafism as its reference, after presenting its interpretations of Islam and its visions of how the contemporary Muslim should be. These are strict interpretations that limit the common cultural coexistence and focus on the limited and narrow in Islamic jurisprudence, with the aim of tightening the Saudi society to maintain the conservative values and used the social movements and motives to present a new discourse. And for subjective and objective reasons, its discourse increased its social influence during the eighties, which witnessed accelerated events that complicated the social scene and increased its contradictions. However, it did not think politically to the extent that it appeared after the invasion of the Iraqi forces to Kuwait on the second of August 1990; as the thinkers of the Awakening movement succeeded in exploiting that great event, and turned the readiness for change in the Saudi society into an effective change movement, because of the possession of the Awakening thinkers of the mobilizing resources and their employment of the legitimate resources; the political jurisprudence. As a result, the cultural and identity discourse of the Awakening movement turned into a political discourse that established the explicit protest with political projects and initiatives, such as the demands letter, the advice memorandum, and the committee for the defense of the legitimate rights, until the political authority arrested the symbols of the Islamic Awakening movement in 1994. After restructuring the religious institutions to ensure its authority and the effectiveness of the religious institution in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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