Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

6 4Islam i n World Cult u r e sample, Egyptian political scientist Mamoun Fandy’s recent description ofSaudi Arabia:[The] eastern province is dominated by a Shi’a population, an oil industry, andan obvious American influence. Highways, shopping malls, and expatriate communitiesgive the impression that one is in an American city, especially when onesees the number of American soldiers and civilians in Dhahran, Damam, andK h o b a r. Except for scattered and sometimes diffuse native cultural practices ofclosing shops for prayers and veiling women, these cities are a microcosm ofglobal creolization. Even when one examines the local, one discovers that hijabsand abayahs (local dress) are made in Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as designerabayahs prepared in Paris and London. Prayer rugs with a compass indicatingthe direction of Mecca are made in Japan. Moreover, the local Shi’ismtranscends Saudi territories to reach Bahrain, Lebanon, and Iran. Even the holyplaces [to the west] in Mecca and Madina are not immune to the global effect.Almost all religious icons sold outside the Prophet’s mosque in Madina are madeoutside the country and sold to foreigners as if they were Saudi. Foreign workers,estimated to equal the population of natives, add to the peculiarity of the Saudistate. Saudi children are raised by Asian and European nannies and are frequentlybilingual. (Fandy 1999, 125–126)Islamist groups that criticize government corruption, political oppression, ordependence on U.S. mercenary troops nevertheless themselves use fax machines,computers, photocopiers, the Internet, cassette tapes, and other moderntechnologies to spread their ideas both at home and abroad. Some oppositiongroups make available toll-free telephone numbers that people can call forupdates, and they rely on the recruitment of Saudi students studying abroad inthe freer informational climate of the United States or Europe. The Saudi governmentand royal family, for its own part, use the same technologies of persuasion,reaching far beyond the country ’s borders through elaborate financialand informational infrastructures in London, Washington, and elsewhere.The Middle East, then, is a thoroughly internationalized place with long historiesof inter- and intraregional migration. Saudi and Sudanese studentstravel to Beirut and Cairo, Lebanese and Turkish businessmen cut deals in Rabatand Doha, Moroccan and Syrian pilgrims voyage to Mecca and Najaf, andEgyptian, Pakistani, Filipina, and Palestinian workers make their way to Kuwaitand Bahrain. People, resources, and ideas flow constantly across national borders,blurring the lines between local and international debates about Islam.There is seldom a clear line between what is authentic and what is imported,what is traditional and what is modern. In parts of southern Yemen, for example,a revival of local Sufi orders is opposed by groups supported by the Saudis,whose Wahhabi Puritanism forms the ideological basis of the Saudi state.