Everyday Salafism in an Entangled World: The Saudi Spirit of Global Exchange in the Age of Bin Baz

FAIN: FEL-267666-20

Leor Edward Halevi
Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN 37203-2416)

Research and writing a book on the effects of economic pressures on religious principles, specifically how Salafist Islam has adapted to economic growth and globalization.

My book project is about the impact of global economic exchanges on an Islamic movement. Oil deposits and world trade radically changed Saudi Arabia, one of the poorest and most isolated nations in the 1930s, into one of the world’s leading importers of goods and services by the end of the twentieth century. I will analyze the effect of these and other economic changes on Salafism, a religious movement dedicated to reviving the doctrines and practices of the first Muslims. Specifically, I will focus on the codes of conduct that Salafist clerics designed to guide lay Muslims in everyday economic activities not only in Saudi Arabia but throughout the world. Political scientists and historians have studied the spread of Salafism across national borders and the emergence of rival Salafist schools. But they have not examined, as I will in this book, the ways that Salafists have tried to reconcile moral and material pursuits in the context of economic globalization.