Refining the Common Good: Oil, Islam and Politics in Gulf Monarchies (Cambridge Middle East Studies)

How has Islam as a set of beliefs and practices shaped the allocation of oil revenues in Arab Gulf monarchies? In turn, how has oil wealth impacted the role of Islamic doctrine in politics? Refining the Common Good explores the relationship between Islamic norms and the circulation of oil wealth in Gulf monarchies. The study demonstrates how both oil (revenues) and Islam (as doctrine) are manipulated as tools of state power, and how religious norms are refined for the sake of achieving narrow secular interests. Miriam R. Lowi examines different institutionalized practices financed by hydrocarbon revenues and sanctioned, either implicitly or explicitly, by Islam, and uses evidence from Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia to show how these practices are infused with political purpose. The dynamic relationship between oil wealth and Islamic doctrine is exploited to contribute to the management and control of society, and the consolidation of dynastic autocracy.

Miriam R. Lowi is Professor in the Department of Political Science at The College of New Jersey. She is the author of Oil Wealth and the Poverty of Politics: Algeria Compared (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Water and Power: the Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Basin (Cambridge University Press, 1993).