Please join the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Middle East program for a discussion of a book that provides an in-depth look at how Saudi Arabia’s religious sector continues to influence Islam across the globe.

COVID-19 creates specific challenges for Muslim religious authorities pertaining to assembly, practice, and policy. With public health measures affecting Muslim worshippers the most during the month of Ramadan, authorities must answer questions from individual citizens and political actors alike.

A dynamic region amidst great change, the Maghreb is also home to the conservative, literalist interpretation of Islam known as Salafism, which has emerged as a major social and political force.

Religious authority is an increasingly influential but poorly understood source of power in governments throughout the Middle East. Who speaks for Islam in the region? How do Islamists and fundamentalists harness and exert religious authority, despite Islam’s largely decentralized power structure?

Polarization in the Arab world may be the result of political systems that have opened themselves up to political debate, but not given healthy ways in which to translate political debate into political outcomes.