Miriam R. Lowi, Refining the Common Good: Oil, Islam and Politics in Gulf Monarchies (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?
Miriam R. Lowi (MRL): In 2008, I went to the Gulf for the very first time. I had spent about ten years studying the political economy of oil-exporting states and writing mostly about Algeria, and I was asked by an editor to write a book on oil in the Middle East and North Africa, and its various effects on politics, the economy, and society. However, I could not possibly write a broad study of the sort I had agreed to without some fieldwork in the Gulf monarchies, home to roughly forty percent of the world’s oil and natural gas reserves.
When I arrived in Saudi Arabia and then Kuwait, I was immediately struck by the hyperbolic visual landscape and what could be described as the debauchery of merchandise. I was also struck by the heavy presence of Islam. Faced with this intriguing co-mingling of hyper modernism, consumption, and religiosity, I could not help but wonder how oil-driven abundance impacted the way Gulf Arabs live and Gulf rulers rule as Muslims. And I was curious about whether Islamic norms had any effect on the circulation of oil wealth in Gulf monarchies and whether oil wealth, in turn, had an effect on Islamic norms.
I found it so exciting to reflect in this way on the relationship between oil (a material resource) and Islam (an ideational resource), and how, if at all, that relationship impacts politics in these Gulf states, that I eventually abandoned the original book project and turned my attention to this new site and set of questions. The project evolved from there, and in unanticipated ways. I began by asking how oil revenues are allocated and religious norms invoked by ruling elites, and for what purposes.
The first step was to learn more about the Islamic normative tradition, focusing on key elements and concepts—justice, community, the common good—and discussions about resources and wealth, their attribution, distribution, and circulation. And I used that frame to explore the ways in which Islam (doctrine or practices), not unlike oil revenues, is used by ruling elites as a tool of governance to advance particular interests, indeed, regime priorities, related to what I came to understand as a project of community, nation, and state.
J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?
MRL: To explore the central questions, I examine four government-sponsored institutionalized practices associated with welfare and/or development, financed by oil and gas revenues and sanctioned, either implicitly or explicitly, by Islam. These are: government subsidies and transfers; the employment of foreign labor; charitable giving; and Islamic banking and finance. Focusing on four of the six Gulf monarchies—Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia—I explore how these practices are carried out, by whom, for what purposes, and with what effects. I consider, as well, what we learn through these practices and their variations among the four states about the circulation of (oil) wealth, the integration of Islamic norms, and the ways in which ruling priorities are served. And I found that, each in their own way, the four practices exemplify the conjoining and instrumentalization of (oil) wealth and Islamic doctrine for the purpose of social management and social control.
In the process of studying these institutionalized practices, I learned a lot about who gets what from the state and who is denied, and how relative inclusion in and relative exclusion from access to distributions of various sorts—to material/financial resources primarily, but not exclusively—contributes to the state’s efforts to both manage and control society and shape the nation. And I observed that when overriding secular objectives are at stake—as when, for example, the ruling elite needs to appease a particular segment of society (let’s say, business elites) so as to, for example, keep them happy and maintain their allegiance—a religious edict, such as the 2.5 percent rule of zakat giving, may be purposefully revised for that group (e.g. private companies who are required to pay zakat) and the percentage (their companies have to give) is reduced. In other words, a religious edict designed to promote equity and contribute to those in need is tweaked to benefit the rich, indulge their acquisitive interests, and thus keep them allied to the ruler. Furthermore, in the Islamic banking and finance sector, the watering down of religious principles and practice for the sake of material gain is especially noteworthy. Not only are several of the associated financial tools and banking procedures weakly Islamic, but also, efforts at oversight and regulation of the sector are mitigated by the overriding concern, even on the part of the sharia scholars at these institutions, for accumulation without constraints.
In conducting the research for this project, I engaged with several important bodies of literature (in addition to that on Islamic norms): on the organization and management of imported labor in the Gulf, the political economy of charitable giving, and the political economy of Islamic banking and finance in the MENA region and the broader Islamic world. Through these literatures, I thought a lot about government distributions as a form of coercion, consumption as an organizing principle of the state but also as a numbing agent of the state and society. I also thought about the coherence of accumulation and social management, and of course, religious doctrine as a mechanism for social control so as to achieve ruling priorities.
J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?
MRL: Over the course of my career, my research has considered the (natural) resource dimension of politics in the MENA. It began with the conflict over scarce water among the states of the Jordan River basin and the potential for cooperation, before moving to abundant oil and its place in Algeria’s political and economic development. On a very basic level, this new book grew out of my earlier critical engagement with the rentier state framework and “resource curse” literature. In my work on Algeria (2009, 2007, 2005), I challenged what I perceived as a type of “commodity determinism” in the literature, evident in the tendency to obfuscate contextual features that pre-dated (and/or had nothing to do with) the oil economy, on the one hand, and “choice” in leadership decision-making on the other hand. This critique is subsumed to some degree in my study of Gulf monarchies, but I also move well beyond it in several ways. For one, I treat not only oil, but also Islam (the belief system and associated set of practices) as a resource; and one that, similar to other identity-related variables, can be repurposed by well-placed individuals to achieve their (secular) interests and goals. And I note that in the process of its instrumentalization in Gulf monarchies, Islam (doctrine and/or practices) has at times been revised—or rather, refined—for the sake of meeting regime priorities. Indeed, politics trumps religion.
I should add that it felt particularly refreshing to not only think about Islam and politics in the Gulf—a fairly new topic of inquiry for me—but also to think about it in this novel way. Much of the extant literature treats Islam as a mobilizational resource with a focus on “Islamist” groups and movements, while the literature that links oil and Islam does so mainly in regards to the “re-cycling of petrodollars” to spread Saudi ideology and influence beyond the borders of the Gulf, or Gulf states’ spending of oil revenues to either encourage radical Islamist movements or, more recently, suppress the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, my focus on Islam in governance, Islam as a resource associated with statecraft, has been especially enriching in that it presented a number of different avenues to follow to explore the topic.
Methodologically, this book is quite distinct from my previous work. First of all, I immersed myself in the study of Islam as a normative tradition and examined different interpretations of concepts and related debates. Second, the field research was somewhat more anthropological in that I spent much time with members of different “communities” (e.g., religious scholars, business leaders, tribal heads, members of government and of ruling families, religious minorities, foreign laborers) as well as in institutional settings (e.g., charitable foundations and Islamic financial institutions) to conduct interviews, on the one hand, and learn about how they operate, on the other. In the interviews I was also interested in learning about how Gulf Arabs evaluate their government’s behavior relative to the circulation of wealth; and I share my findings in that regard throughout the book.
J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?
MRL: Beyond students and scholars of the MENA in general and the Gulf monarchies in particular, I hope this book will be read by those who: 1) have a particular interest in the “sectors” I examine: employment of foreign labor, charity and philanthropy, Islamic banking and finance; 2) study religion in politics and may be interested in how religion (discourse, doctrine, or practices) is incorporated into politics and how it becomes (or functions as) a mechanism or instrument of governance; 3) are interested in how, and in what contexts, identarian narratives gain currency and how they are successfully instrumentalized for political ends, and why they may fail or face significant push-back; and 4) have a special interest in states that are dependent on imported labor and the challenge of nation-building.
I hope that through this book, readers will understand that there are multiple ways to study and make sense of the place of religion in politics, that variables that do not seem to have anything to do with one another— for example, oil and Islam—may in fact be closely connected and exploited in similar ways, and that although ruling elites of these hydrocarbon-rich states insist to varying degrees and in multiple ways on their commitment to the faith, Gulf nationals view their government as a secular entity in which religion plays no role per se, and this despite the regime’s narrative and mythology.
J: What other projects are you working on now?
MRL: As I was completing the book manuscript in fall 2023 and preparing to send it to the publisher, the war on Gaza was underway. My attention has been focused on the ensuing genocide. With a group of colleagues, I have been working on a project that documents the lives of Palestinian scholars who have been killed in Gaza since October 2023.
Excerpt from book (from Chapter 8: Reflections on Islam and Politics in the Oil Era, pages 171 to 74)
What, though, do these findings suggest about politics in the Gulf? Autocracy in Gulf monarchies is, in part, a product of the particular ways in which royal families exploit a religious narrative to promote their ambitions. Ruling interests relate to political stability, conceived as rulers’ undisturbed power and control over society, which is in turn dependent upon uninterrupted revenue flows, coercion as a credible threat, foreign support, and society’s acquiescence to their rule. As the royal family’s right to rule is, to varying degrees, intrinsically weak, it is fabricated, and in ways that both instrumentalize and interconnect Islam and oil: first, through uniforming (religious) rhetoric -- a kind of ruling ideology-- and the flaunting of Islamic credentials; second, through a politics of oil-financed distribution and development that on the one hand, enforces society’s dependence on the state and on the other hand, parades ruling elites as agents of modernity and the wellspring of progress.
It is not simply that the state uses hydrocarbon wealth to buy allegiance, as the rentier state literature has repeated ad nauseum. More pernicious is the smothering, numbing effect of hyper-materialism and rampant consumption, introduced by the Europeans/Americans and encouraged by the example of the ruler alongside his development projects and distribution schemes. They offer appeasement, foster submission, and thereby facilitate social control. Besides, the model provided is one of greed, but also selective indifference. Having assumed the vast national wealth for himself, to exploit as he chooses, the ruler is insouciant to inequities. [Arguably, to be otherwise would be his undoing.] Following that model of behavior, the subject submits to commodity fetishism and to the ruler, purveyor of goods. They too disregard that which could disturb their comfort. (And the foreigner who has arrived to work – not so different, perhaps, from the musta’amin of yore – has instead become mustaghal (exploited).) Indeed, privilege depends upon hierarchy and exclusion. In this environment, therefore, community is not the umma, the de-territorialized community of believing Muslims and the protected non-Muslim residents. Rather, it is confined to those recognized by the state as linked to the ruler and his domain through parochial networks of privilege. As for the foreigner, they are, in fact, integral to the fashioning of the nation and, beyond that, a new moral order. They reflect the interests of rulers to contain, circumscribe and consolidate privilege, concentrate power and wealth, and intensify social control.
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As for charity and Islamic banking and finance (IBF), they are metaphors for politics. Charity functions as another numbing agent that promotes complacency in that it offers evidence to the giver of their goodness and adherence to the faith. At the same time, it supports the ruler’s priorities by providing ruling elites with sought-after recognition, legitimation, and a probing presence, while enforcing submission and consolidating the contours of community. In turn, Islamic banking and finance extends the fiction of a religious moral order, while encouraging consumption and enrichment. Accumulation by another means, IBF is supported by ruling elites in an effort to appease their populations and thus enhance their management of society, at the same time that they and their closest associates in the business and even the religious field profit handsomely from engagement with the sector and with each other.
Thus, religious doctrine is both reinterpreted and, like oil rents, instrumentalized. In the embrace of Gulf rulers, it too becomes a mechanism for social control. Even as a rhetorical device, its purposes may be coercive: to assert rulers’ right to rule and identify them with justice; to insist upon surface uniformity and enforce conformism and obedience. Manipulating Islamic doctrine and its interpretations thus facilitates social management -- hence, the state’s domination of society – and the fashioning of a new (moral) order. In the contemporary period, the particular ways in which Gulf rulers exploit and entwine oil revenues and Islamic doctrine are intrinsic to their dynastic ambitions, both political and material.