Peaceful jihad: the islamic civil rights movement in Saudi Arabia

Intro -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Figures -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: The history of the Islamic civil rights movement -- Saudi political discourse: Power and dissent -- The Islamo-reformist debate of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s -- Rise and fall of the Islamic civil rights movement -- Chapter 2: Scholars, activists and intellectuals - HASM's social background -- Paths to activism - Biographies of HASM's main members -- The Islamic intellectual -- Chapter 3: Summarizing HASM's theory -- Breaking down the walls of oppression -- Towards a new Islamic culture of rights -- The shape of the Islamic state -- Civil society activism as Islamic obligation -- Chapter 4: Heroes or heretics? - Reactions to HASM -- Reactions to HASM in Saudi Arabia -- International reactions to HASM -- Chapter 5: The intellectual foundations of HASM -- Primary sources of Islam - Quran and hadith -- 'Classical' Islamic scholars -- Islamic reformers and modernists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries CE -- Contemporary Islamic authors -- European and American political thinkers and philosophers -- Contemporary academics and experts in fields other than Islamic sciences -- International symbols of political activism -- Islam is the foundation - Summarizing the analysis of the references -- Chapter 6: From words to proofs - The language and arguments of HASM -- Poems, lectures, treatises - The genres of texts -- Names and labels -- The political vocabulary -- Quran, logic and science - The arguments -- Identity, culture war and antisemitism -- Ambiguous translations - Comparing Arabic and English texts by HASM -- Chapter 7: Ideas and concepts - The building blocks of HASM's theory -- Oppression and the distortion of Islam - Defining the problem -- Islamic doctrine and the sharia.

"Human rights abuses and violations in Saudi Arabia attract international condemnation. But within the country, an Islamic civil rights movement, 'HASM', has called for change. While its members have received international human rights awards, the Saudi authorities have persecuted and imprisoned them. This book is the first to study human rights in the kingdom from the perspective of these prominent Saudi civil rights activists, uncovering the actual ideas that motivate their activism. Based on analysis of the group's texts, the book highlights that HASM neither supports an overthrow of the government, of which they are accused, nor are they "liberal" advocates of universal human rights. Their complex thought is a contribution to contemporary Islamic discourse because they make a case for 'peaceful civil jihad' through the protection of citizens' basic rights, but within a rigid, Salafist interpretation of social affairs that imposes heavy limits on politics, human rights and democracy. Furthermore, HASM's texts use war rhetoric and anti-Semitic language, with different arguments and words for domestic or international audiences. The most comprehensive text on this Islamic civil rights movement, the book employs detailed discourse analysis and includes sources from HASM texts in both Arabic and English."--