Islamic fundamentalist groups and movements in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The paper provides a brief analysis of the main Islamic fundamentalist groups and movements in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, including extremist organizations that actively use terrorist methods of struggle for the power. The main stages of the formation of Saudi Islamic extremist movements are studied. The first contacts between the authorities of the Kingdom and the Islamists represented by the Muslim Brotherhood took place in the second half of the 1930s. In the 1950s, some members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, fleeing repression by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, received jobs and shelter in Saudi Arabia. By the end of the 1960s, two trends of Islamic fundamentalism were actively developing in the Kingdom: al-Sahva al-Islamiyya and al-Jamaa al-Salafiyya al-Muhtasiba. The first was a relatively moderate current, advocating for political reform under the auspices of royal authority. It had many supporters and quickly became the mainstream of Islamic fundamentalist thought and practice. The second movement, on the contrary, chose the path of rapid radicalization in the 1970s, culminating in the tragic events of 1979 in Mecca. The war in Afghanistan and the deployment of a large multinational force in Saudi Arabia to liberate Kuwait have become the new factors in the radicalization of the members of Saudi Islamic fundamentalist groups and movements.