DR. SAUD AND MR. DJIHAD - The Religious Diplomacy of Saudi Arabia, by Pierre CONESA

An exceptional study on the underside of the most powerful and secret kingdom in the world.
Saudi Arabia's religious diplomacy constitutes a strange black hole in the analysis of the radicalism that affects Islam today. Why has Salafism, the most intolerant and sectarian movement of Islam, become so conquering? Because among all the religious radicalisms that are rotting the planet, it is the only one to benefit from constant support from a country endowed with immense means: the Saudi kingdom.
This study, whose collaborators wished to remain anonymous, reveals how this kingdom with two faces, the conciliatory one of the Saud dynasty and the more aggressive one of Salafism, propagandist of jihad, has for decades developed a religious strategy to conquer the community. Islam, but also the West, without appearing as an enemy thanks to an original soft power, hybrid of the American and Soviet systems.
Today, this long-protected country finds itself threatened on its own territory by the jihadist Salafism that it has spread elsewhere.

About the Author: Pierre Conesa

Pierre Conesa, a history graduate and former student of the ENA, was a member of the Strategic Thinking Committee of the Ministry of Defence. A teacher at Sciences-Po, he writes regularly for Le Monde diplomatique and various international relations journals. He is notably the author of Guide du Paradis: comparative advertising of the beyond (L'Aube, 2004 and 2006), of The Mechanics of chaos: bushism, proliferation and terrorism (L'Aube, 2007) and of The Making of the enemy (Robert Laffont, collection “Le Monde comme il va”, 2011).