The Call

In her important new book The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project, Krithika Varagur carefully and methodically investigates the sprawling Saudi proselytization efforts in two of the world's most populous countries, Indonesia and Nigeria, and in one politically fragile country in the Balkans: Kosovo, formerly a part of Yugoslavia....Varagur demonstrates that the Saudi dawa effort is both more complex and more influential than commonly believed. --The Times Literary Supplement Krithika Varagur's The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project is an incisive, salient, and comprehensive exploration of the sort of philanthropy that comes with a heaping side of religious proselytizing. Varagur brilliantly captures the complexities and contradictions of Saudi Arabia's export (intentional or incidental) of Salafism and portrays soft power for what it really is - messy, highly unpredictable, and a far cry from the puppet-master-like characterization it has recently received. - Washington Independent Review of Books An award-winning journalist follows the money to track the pervasive spread of Saudi Arabia's particular brand of ultraconservative Islam....In her three riveting, thoroughly researched case studies, Varagur investigates why the Saudi brand of Islam is so appealing: It is radical in its simplicity, clearly instructs behavior, provides direct access to important texts, and offers a sense of community to its believers worldwide....Varagur wisely allows many voices to be heard-and shows how Saudi influence is now more transparent but still insidious. -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review Varagur seeks to tell the story of Saudi Arabia's campaign to spread its version of 'ulraconservative' Islam around the world using the wealth it obtained through oil sales. She asks how the campaign was affected by slumping oil revenues and the increasing scrutiny of Saudi activities in the twenty-first century. -- Survival: Global Politics and Strategy The Call provides a first-hand deep dive into the facts of how Saudi Arabia spawned Salafi movements abroad that now are largely self-sustaining, as the kingdom yields to global pressure (and the reality of diminished oil revenues) by curbing its external spending to spread fundamentalist Islam. These days when so few journalists bother to dig for facts, preferring to pontificate, Krithika Varagur's work stands out. -- Karen Elliott House, author of On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines-and Future and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting A comprehensive analysis of Saudi Arabia's decades of proselytizing its ultra conservative Islamic views throughout the world. Based on meticulous research and field work, this is the best account in print of how our ally has spread its intolerance and extremism but also how that has evolved over time. A must read for Islam watchers. -- Bruce Riedel, director of the Brookings Intelligence Project and the CIA's former Saudi Arabia station chief