ABSTRACT
In this chapter I aim to expand our understanding of civil society in Saudi Arabia, here exemplifying the Islamic world although by no means representative of Muslim countries. If we retain a narrow definition of civil society (limiting it to the emergence of independent and formal non-kin-based organisations as buffer zones between the individual and the polity, guarding the individual interests of citizens, regardless of their kin or regional identities, against those of the state), then Saudi Arabia does not pass the test as the formation of such formal organisations is banned under the present regime. However, political protest has been voiced in the last decade through various mechanisms, ranging from the formation of non-kin-based dissident groups, through petitions to the ruling elite signed by a cross-section of society, to the electronictransmission of critical literature, which are the seeds of an emerging civil society. Saudi Arabia, now immersed in modernity, is benefiting from new technologies used for purposes not anticipated by those who introduced them.
