April 12, 2021

Booktalk episode 6: Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis

27 minutes

For our sixth episode of MEC Booktalk, guest author David Warren (Washington University in St Louis) discusses his recent book, Rivals in the Gulf, published by Routledge in January 2021. David Warren is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies at Washington University in St Louis.

This episode is hosted by Dr Usaama al-Azami (Departmental Lecturer in Contemporary Islamic Studies, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford).

Rivals in the Gulf is available for purchase online direct from routledge.com Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qa (routledge.com) . Use the promo code RITG20 at check-out for your 20% discount.

https://www.routledge.com/Rivals-in-the-Gulf-Yusuf-al-Qaradawi-Abdullah-Bin-Bayyah-and-the-Qatar-UAE/Warren/p/book/9780367280628

Extract about the book from the publisher’s website:

Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis details the relationships between the Egyptian Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the Al Thani royal family in Qatar, and between the Mauritanian Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah and the Al Nahyans, the rulers of Abu Dhabi and senior royal family in the United Arab Emirates. These relationships stretch back decades, to the early 1960s and 1970s respectively.

Using this history as a foundation, the book examines the connections between Qaradawi’s and Bin Bayyah’s rival projects and the development of Qatar’s and the UAE’s competing state-brands and foreign policies. It raises questions about how to theorize the relationships between the Muslim scholarly-elite (the ulama) and the nation-state. Over the course of the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis, Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah shaped the Al Thani’s and Al Nahyan’s competing ideologies in important ways.

Offering new ways for academics to think about Doha and Abu Dhabi as hegemonic centers of Islamic scholarly authority alongside historical centers of learning such as Cairo, Medina, or Qom, this book will appeal to those with an interest in modern Islamic authority, the ulama, Gulf politics, as well as the Arab Spring and its aftermath.

David H. Warren is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies at Washington University in St Louis. His research examines the politics of the Muslim scholarly-elite (the ulama), with a particular focus on the Arab Spring and its aftermath. He is the author of Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis (Routledge 2021).

Dr Usaama al-Azami is Department Lecturer in Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. His research explores the way in which Islamic scholars, known as the ulama, have responded to modernity, especially in the political realm. He is the author of a forthcoming monograph entitled Islam and the Arab Revolutions: The Ulama between Democracy and Autocracy.

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