Saudi Arabia

Non-Fiction Reviews
“The Battle for the Soul of Islam: Defining the Muslim Faith in the 21st Century” by James M Dorsey
10 September 202410 September 2024
It can come as a surprise that the largest Muslim (or perhaps more accurately, Muslim-majority) country is Indonesia, far from the religion’s origins in the Middle East. It is—probably as a result—not always included, or at least not centrally, in discourse about Islam. James M Dorsey, on the other hand, puts the country front and…
Read More “The Battle for the Soul of Islam: Defining the Muslim Faith in the 21st Century” by James M Dorsey
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj” by Michael Christopher Low
12 January 2021
The Hijaz, that part of the Arabian Peninsula which contains the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, was long subject to imperialism, but not of Western variety: it was instead subject to the Ottomans. Although nominally under Ottoman suzerainty for centuries, it was ironically 19th-century British imperialism that forced Istanbul to attempt to consolidate its…
Read More “Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj” by Michael Christopher Low

Sign up to the ARB Newsletter