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Inside the Kingdom : kings, clerics, modernists, terrorists, and the struggle for Saudi Arabia

-- Kings, clerics, modernists, terrorists, and the struggle for Saudi Arabia

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Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox: It sits atop some of the richest oil deposits in the world and yet its roiling disaffection produced fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. It is a modern state, where wealthy princes and tycoons raise futuristic cities in the desert, and yet its powerful religious establishment would roll back its values fourteen hundred years to the time of the Prophet Mohammed. To fully understand our interdependent twenty-first-century world, we must understand Saudi Arabia. With Inside the Kingdom, author Robert Lacey gives readers a remarkable portrait in full of this most enigmatic of lands. More than twenty years after moving to Saudi Arabia during the oil boom to write his groundbreaking epic The Kingdom, Lacey returned to live once again among the princes and the paupers, the clerics and the progressives. What he found was a society slowly recovering from the past. In this recounting, which takes us from the bloody seizure of Mecca's Grand Mosque in 1979 to the deepening of U.S.-Saudi relations during the Gulf War of 1991 to the fostering of a new generation of Islamic holy warriors led by Osama bin Laden, Lacey shows how Saudi Arabia came to the precipice at which it now stands, struggling to learn how not to be at war with itself. -- Back cover.

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Summary Note

Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox: It sits atop some of the richest oil deposits in the world and yet its roiling disaffection produced fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. It is a modern state, where wealthy princes and tycoons raise futuristic cities in the desert, and yet its powerful religious establishment would roll back its values fourteen hundred years to the time of the Prophet Mohammed. To fully understand our interdependent twenty-first-century world, we must understand Saudi Arabia. With Inside the Kingdom, author Robert Lacey gives readers a remarkable portrait in full of this most enigmatic of lands. More than twenty years after moving to Saudi Arabia during the oil boom to write his groundbreaking epic The Kingdom, Lacey returned to live once again among the princes and the paupers, the clerics and the progressives. What he found was a society slowly recovering from the past. In this recounting, which takes us from the bloody seizure of Mecca's Grand Mosque in 1979 to the deepening of U.S.-Saudi relations during the Gulf War of 1991 to the fostering of a new generation of Islamic holy warriors led by Osama bin Laden, Lacey shows how Saudi Arabia came to the precipice at which it now stands, struggling to learn how not to be at war with itself. -- Back cover.

General Note

Originally published: New York : Viking, 2009.
Sequel to: 'The Kingdom.'
Includes glossary.

Content Note

Part One: KINGDOM of GOD : Angry face -- The brothers -- Siege -- No Sunni, no Shia -- Vox populi, vox dei -- Salafi soccer -- Jihad in Afghanistan -- Special relationship -- Dawn visitors -- Stars in the heavens -- Into exile -- The dove and the east wind -- Vacationing Jihadi ; Part Two : KINGDOM at WAR : Desert Storm -- Battle for Al-Khafji -- Awakening -- Stopping the sins -- In from the cold -- Change of heart -- Enter the Crown Prince -- The students -- Infinite reach -- New century ; Part Three : AL-QAEDA COMES HOME : Fifteen flying Saudis -- Fire -- Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- Prodigal sons -- King Abdullah -- Girls of Saudi -- Illegitimate occupation -- End of the affair -- Condition of the people -- Epilogue -- Time line -- Glossary of names and Arabic terms -- Notes -- Suggested reading -- Acknowledgments -- General index -- House of Saud index -- Photographic sources.