Abstract
Sa’udi Policies Towards Migrants and Refugees: A Sacred Duty by Joseph Kéchichian and Fahad Alsharif is a comprehensive study of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s principles and practices in dealing with migrants and refugees. The book came as a counter to the spiraling criticisms by academics and media outlets in the West against the Kingdom for its alleged apathy toward those displaced in the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and its aftermath. As the authors state in the Introduction, the book aims to “elucidate facts and shed light on Riyadh’s policies towards refugees” (p. 5). The authors argue that Riyadh considers extending support to refugees as a sacred duty, which does not fit into the conventional Western standards. For this reason, it is unfair to judge Saudi Arabia using the yardsticks tailored by the West.
The authors of the book are Senior Research Fellows at the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies. Both have worked on Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle Eastern region for decades, and their enormous research experience is reflected in this book. The obvious question that may arise is how objective the authors can be, given their association with a Saudi-based think tank. However, the authors did not show any reluctance to illustrate the plight of migrants and refugees in Saudi Arabia and the challenges, including the limitations, that Riyadh faces while dealing with migrant and refugee issues.
The first chapter provides a theoretical perspective on international migration, sets the tone, discusses various theories, and argues that there is “no overarching theory that incorporated all facets of international migration” (pp. 19–20). Here, the authors also point out how the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol are inherently Eurocentric and fail to address the sensitivities of non-Western cultures. They call for a dialogue across cultures and civilizations to mend these differences.
In the second chapter, the authors directly enter the mission of debunking the Western narratives against Saudi Arabia and its policies toward refugees. The authors recognized the concerns of discrimination and human rights violations in the Kingdom. However, they flagged the unjustified and malicious attempts of Western media outlets, politicians, and experts to “dismiss every good deed” undertaken by the Kingdom (p. 41). In recent years, Saudi Arabia has introduced several reforms to improve human rights conditions within the country. The authors have also captured the trajectories of Riyadh’s relations with the refugees, taking the case of three stateless communities in the Kingdom—the Bidoons, Rohingyas, and the Palestinians. According to the authors, Riyadh shaped a “flexible” and “dutiful” refugee policy aligned with its societal conditions, contrary to the rigid norms of the West (p. 54).
The third chapter gives a religious connotation to Saudi Arabia’s policies toward refugees. The authors showed how the values enshrined in the Quran and Sunnah formed the crux of Riyadh’s “unwritten refugee policies” (p. 57). They traced it back to the Hijrah, the journey of the Prophet and his companions to Medina to escape persecution, and the traditional concept of “hospitality” preached and practiced in Arab and Islamic cultures (p. 60). Hence, it became a moral and religious obligation for the Kingdom to provide asylum to the refugees. The authors offer multiple instances of Saudi hospitality to the persecuted: the case of Rashid Ali al-Kilani, the Muslim Brotherhood refugees from Egypt, Burmese, Iraqi, and finally, Syrian refugees.
Meanwhile, the fourth chapter is a continuum of the previous one, where the authors link the global humanitarian assistance provided to the refugees by the Kingdom to the Islamic concept of Zakat (almsgiving), which is a religious obligation for Muslims. The authors have captured the dynamics and contours of Saudi humanitarian and economic aid, especially for Arab and Muslim countries. They argue that foreign aid was an “obligation that Riyadh identified for itself as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques” (p. 101), and, therefore, the Kingdom “extends its generous hand around the world” to fulfil its sacred duty (p. 114).
The subsequent chapters look at different migrant and refugee communities in Saudi Arabia. The fifth chapter captures Riyadh’s “undeniable dilemma” as some pilgrims who arrive for hajj or umrah decide to overstay in the Kingdom, raising social, economic, and security concerns (p. 119). It sheds light on the plight of undocumented African migrants in Jeddah, with their testimonies that the authors gathered through snowball sampling, and Riyadh’s dilemma in handling them, that is, how the deportation procedures “stood in direct contradiction of Saudi society’s religious duties towards fellow human beings” (p. 143).
The sixth and seventh chapters highlight the ongoing conflicts and refugee crises in Yemen and Syria and the Saudi response. In the sixth chapter, the authors examined the “tense” relations between Saudi Arabia and Yemen (p. 145) and its influence on the several waves of migrants and refugees from Yemen into Saudi Arabia, most recently after the 2011 uprisings. The authors provide a detailed account of the Saudi humanitarian assistance to the Yemeni people, which continued despite the Houthi takeover of Yemen in 2015, which Western academics and media outlets “routinely ignored” (p. 146).
The seventh chapter dealt with the Syrian refugees in Saudi Arabia post 2011 uprisings. The authors point out that, unlike Syria’s neighbors, the Arab Gulf monarchies led by Saudi Arabia adopted “positive immigration steps” (p. 193) to integrate Syrian refugees into society as “legal residents” instead of confining them as mere “refugees” (p. 166), also neglected by the West. Meanwhile, in the final eighth chapter, the authors summarize their arguments and reiterate how helping refugees is a sacred duty for the Kingdom, its leaders, and its people.
The book would have been more enriching if the authors had incorporated first-hand experiences of more migrant and refugee communities in Saudi Arabia. Besides, by bringing the socio-religious dimensions at the core of Saudi policies toward refugees, the authors have given limited attention to realpolitik. For instance, the authors argue that King Faisal’s decision to welcome the Muslim Brotherhood refugees from Nasserist Egypt into the Kingdom was “a clear humanitarian gesture since he strongly rejected the persecution of fellow Muslims” (p. 77). Will Riyadh give the same consideration to the Brothers post-Arab Spring?
Nevertheless, the book captures the nuances of Saudi Arabia’s rationale for shaping and implementing migrant and refugee policies by discussing its engagement with various migrant and refugee communities since the Kingdom’s inception. The book may have also irked Western academics and practitioners because it bursts the bubble that the latter created to cover up the racist tendencies and ultranationalist surge in Europe against the Arab and Muslim refugees who sought help at their borders following the 2011 uprisings.
The book will be a valuable reference material for scholars from different disciplines, especially Middle Eastern studies and migration and refugee studies. Most existing studies on migrants and refugees have been based on theories, norms, and practices set by the West. Books like this will inspire scholars to juxtapose Western narratives and produce vigorous academic works based on the experiences from the Global South, including the Middle East.