Robert Lacey

Inside the Kingdom

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Following on his 1982 classic, The Kingdom, British journalist and bestselling author Robert Lacey offers penetrating insights into the complex country of Saudi Arabia. Taking the reader from the dramatic seizure of the Grand Mosque in Jeddah in 1979 to the deepening U.S.-Saudi relations during the Persian Gulf War and the increasing alienation of such radical fundamentalists as Osama bin Laden, Lacey presents an unvarnished picture of a country where repression is endemic and religion rules all. Through conversations with a broad range of Saudis, from high princes and ambassadors to men and women on the street, Inside the Kingdom is a story of a people trying to reconcile the religious separatism of the past with the rapidly changing world in which they are increasingly intertwined.
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590 printed pages
Publication year
2009
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Quotes

  • Ksénia Filatovahas quoted9 years ago
    As part of the program to make the country more pious, thousands of Koranic study groups had been set up in the early 1980s in mosques and, during the holidays, inside government schools. Koranic recitation competitions featured regularly in the newspapers. Boys who memorized some or all of the Koran were rewarded by the Ministry of Education with awards of one thousand to two thousand riyals ($250 to $500)—money prizes that were especially attractive to children from poor backgrounds.
  • Ksénia Filatovahas quoted9 years ago
    ‘Look,’ ” Sultan remembers telling him, “ ‘we’re going to be traveling at eighteen thousand miles per hour. I’m going to see sixteen sunrises and sunsets every twenty-four hours. So does that mean I’ll get Ramadan finished in two days?’ The sheikh loved that one—he laughed out loud.”
  • Ksénia Filatovahas quoted9 years ago
    the Wahhabi establishment as “members of the Flat Earth Society.” But the sheikh was unrepentant. If Muslims chose to believe the world was round, that was their business, he said, and he would not quarrel with them religiously. But he was inclined to trust what he felt beneath his feet rather than the statements of scientists he did not know: he would go on believing the earth to be flat until he was presented with convincing evidence to the contrary.
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