اقتراح لبحث حول الصحوة الإسلامية في الحجاز 1975-1980

In the year 1972, or a little before, Sheikh Muhammad Sharawi, the eminent Egyptian scholar (minister of endowments and Islamic affairs later on), started his lecture series on the exegesis of the Qur’an. These lectures were attended by people from all walks of life. When he left Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Muhammad Qutb took his place giving lectures under the main theme of “the methodology of Islamic Education”, and was as popular as Sharawi.

The day of the lecture which was Sunday of every week.

At this time, the cassette tapes of Sheikh Abdul Hamid Keshk reached Saudi Arabia. The cassette tapes shops were only selling tapes of singers, but with the popularity of Keshk these shops entered the competition by copying and selling of Keshk's tapes.

The resurgence had other elements and features, and this paper intends to examine this topic as follows. Firstly, we will provide a historical background to the intellectual and religious climate in Saudi Arabia before the advent of the resurgence. Secondly, we will highlight the main personalities who had a direct effect on this resurgence. Thirdly, the paper will discuss the siege of the holy mosque in Makkah by Juhaiman Al-Otaibi. We will then look at the  measures that the government took to slow down this resurgence and how the Islamic movement gained strength and almost reached its peaks just before the second Gulf war.

This paper will  mainly rely on my first hand experience as a student of history at King Abdul Aziz University (1974-1986) and then as a writer on, and observer of, this resurgence till today. I will also refer to other written sources on Islamic resurgence in Saudi Arabia.