Divine politics reconsidered: Saudi Islamists on peaceful revolution

Focusing on mutations of Saudi Islamism during the Arab uprisings, this paper examines the responses of Salman al-Awdah, one of the most influential Saudi Islamist scholars. As he reflects on peaceful revolution in the Arab world, al-Awdah combines his Salafi heritage with insights from western thought, thus producing a hybrid discourse that engages with the inevitability of political change. I argue that al-Awdah goes beyond the two now well-known Islamist strategies, namely jihadi militant struggle and Salafi acquiescent positions, that dominated debate in Saudi Arabia for several decades. His treatise on peaceful revolution offers a ‘third way’ between these two binary opposites. I assess whether a new Islamism that values peaceful action and mobilisation in the pursuit of political change has already reached maturity in Saudi Arabia.