Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia with Madawi al-Rasheed & Jeremy Bowen
Tue., Dec. 8, 2020, 6 to 7 pm Greenwich Mean Time (UTC±0)
Register here.
In 2018 journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi regime operatives, shocking the world and drawing widespread condemnation. Mohammad bin Salman, the kingdom’s young crown prince, denied any involvement in the killing but his reputation as a modernizer was quickly tarnished. In contrast to the international persona he had built as a reformer by allowing women to drive and permitting concerts in Saudi Arabia for the first time, the brutal killing reminded the world that the kingdom was still one of the most repressive societies on earth.
On December 8, Madawi Al-Rasheed, a Saudi dissident and author of the new book The Son King, will come to Intelligence Squared to describe what she sees as essentially a con-trick: a purported program of reforms that mask a new regime of oppression. In conversation with the BBC’s Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen, she will discuss the Saudi regime’s new online strategy of disinformation intended to promote a progressive image to the outside world, while cracking down on diverse critical voices—religious scholars, feminists and dissident youth at home. Al-Rasheed will also challenge what she calls an Orientalist view of despotism in the West, that sees dictatorship as the only pathway to stable governance in the kingdom. Join Al-Rasheed and Bowen as they explore the challenges facing the fragile Saudi nation.
Speaker:
Madawi Al-Rasheed – Exiled Saudi Arabian professor of social anthropology at the Middle East Centre at LSE. She has written extensively about the Arabian Peninsula, Arab migration, globalisation, religious transnationalism and gender. She is the author of Salman’s Legacy: the Dilemma of a New Era in Saudi Arabia and the new book The Son King: Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia.
Host:
Jeremy Bowen – BBC Middle East editor since 2005. Previously he was the BBC’s Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem between 1995 and 2000, and the host of ‘Our Man in the Middle East’, a Radio 4 show based on Bowen’s real-life experiences in the region.
