Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Kindle
$10.49

Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial

Paperback
$11.70

$11.70 with 27 percent savings

List Price: $15.99

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Wednesday, May 15 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Select delivery location

Only 19 left in stock - order soon.

$$11.70 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$5.88

This is a used book. It may contain highlighting/underlining and/or the book may show heavier signs of wear . It may also be ex-library or without dustjacket. This is a used book. It may contain highlighting/underlining and/or the book may show heavier signs of wear . It may also be ex-library or without dustjacket. See less

FREE delivery Wednesday, May 15. Details

Or fastest delivery May 10 - 14. Details

Select delivery location

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$11.70 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Ships from and sold by onceuponatimebooks.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (29) from $5.88 & FREE Shipping

Follow the author

Krithika Varagur

+ Follow

More books from this author

The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project Paperback – April 21, 2020

by Krithika Varagur (Author)

4.6 33 ratings

See all formats and editions

Great on Kindle

Great Experience. Great Value.

Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.

View Kindle Edition

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$11.70","priceAmount":11.70,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"11","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"70","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"3b0o3iHMDdVPzx3da7qtjvLlCFx8j%2FbHaPvMvBnNrv%2FLoNuJQqtAEtKcd9LMyStZtwlrS7oPQ00qa65wrSdqXhF1YNAQcOO6nQ9XFgvNPPCNsJt5HKGp2lHOwwO4W2EZcDvcDAI8GKmCBmhc6Q4z%2FQ%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$5.88","priceAmount":5.88,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"5","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"88","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"3b0o3iHMDdVPzx3da7qtjvLlCFx8j%2FbHWtEeXkq8ukWvwn2kLQygR03P5IwvihqcYP%2BQSRUtNqQ64TmCPVAZfRbmq6veBWj4d0TTvtM%2BKuxoph%2BSLu5dZ5lepDU0VUArc8uA63zwHKPzDWf00RtC6Ioet9oi2AEjjhOfKlU1A0Y%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Everyone talks about "Saudi money," but no one really knows what it is. Journalist Krithika Varagur, a longtime chronicler of religion and politics, tells the story of Saudi influence as it has never been told before, in a book reported across the breadth of the Muslim world, from Nigeria to Indonesia to Kosovo.

The Call connects the dots on Saudi Arabia's campaign to propagate its brand of ultraconservative Islam worldwide after it became oil-rich in the 20th century. Varagur visits diverse outposts of its influence, from a Saudi university in Jakarta to a beleaguered Shi'a movement in Nigeria. She finds that the campaign has had remarkably broad and sometimes uniform effects, from the intolerance of religious minorities to the rise of powerful Saudi-educated clerics. The kingdom has spent billions of dollars on its da'wa, or call to Islam, at many points with the direct support of the United States. But what have been the lasting effects of Saudi influence today? And what really happened to their campaign in the 21st century, after oil revenues slumped and after their activities became increasingly subject to international scrutiny? Drawing upon dozens of interviews, government records, and historical research, The Call lays out what we really talk about when we talk about Saudi money.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“In her important new book The Call, 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.” —Times Literary Supplement

“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

“Krithika Varagur’s The Call 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

“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

About the Author

Krithika Varagur is an award-winning journalist who covers Indonesia for The Guardian and has reported widely from Southeast and South Asia for publications including The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The Financial Times, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times. She regularly corresponds for outlets like NPR, the BBC, Democracy Now!, and Deutsche Welle and her work has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the International Women's Media Foundation, the Overseas Press Club Foundation, the Rory Peck Trust, and more. She is a National Geographic explorer and a former Amtrak writer-in-residence. Varagur graduated from Harvard University and was a Fulbright scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Columbia Global Reports (April 21, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 230 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1733623760
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1733623766
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.75 x 7.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,359,469 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #86 in Saudi Arabia History
- #1,914 in Middle Eastern Politics
- #4,078 in Islam (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.6 33 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Krithika Varagur

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

33 global ratings

2 star

0%

1 star

0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Stl_md

Rare non-fiction gem

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2020

Verified Purchase

Got my copy after listening to an intriguing book talk featuring the author. I don’t even normally read much nonfiction but trust me this was worth the read and some of the journeys this author has been on in the process were so interesting to hear about. A real page turner regardless of your background knowledge (or in my case, lack of knowledge) on the subject. Couldn’t put it down.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Don S and TeamGolfwell

I liked this book very much.

Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2020

I found my knowledge of global affairs, and in particular religion and politics, was greatly expanded after reading this very intriguing book, “The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project” by a brilliant award-winning Harvard educated journalist, Krithika Varagur. In my opinion, her book is highly engrossing and loaded with a diversity of excellent research and innovative journalist reporting.

The author explains her book “covers the six-decade history of the Saudi soft power campaign, forged through personal relationships and billions of oil dollars, its initial goals and how it went awry and ended up fuelling terrorism, extremism, and intolerance.” If you want to know what is really going on in Saudi current affairs, and counterterrorism, extremism, the Middle East, and more, you will, as I did, find this comprehensive book extremely fascinating.

The author, a Fulbright scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, is not only highly intuitive but also very clear and precise in documenting and reporting on her personal interviews and discoveries on the world of Saudi money and how it is distributed and used to support Wahhabism, the official religion of Saudi Arabia.

In my opinion, this is a comprehensive and captivating book and, focuses on how Saudi money is exactly spread in three major Islamic countries of Malaysia, Nigeria, and Kosovo to support the official religion of Saudi Arabia. I felt this author boldly and irrefutably reveals how Saudi money is spread through these countries by building Mosques, boarding schools, Universities, the establishment of charities, providing scholarships for people who have since become very influential and prominent, and other revealing ways.

The author worked on this brilliant report over two years and not only provides an excellent history of Islam but a brilliant forecast of what to expect in the years ahead. She reveals in detail how Saudi Arabi was the major force in Islam and how that is changing in an old but new way in present-day to other countries such as Turkey,

“As seen in Kosovo and the greater Balkans, Turkey is the major new global Islamic power to watch in the next decade, with its bid for cultural and economic influence along with the territories of the former Ottoman Empire, but also even in places where it has no major historical connection. In the last fifteen years, Turkey’s trade with African countries has grown six-fold to $17.5 billion. There are now over forty Turkish embassies in Africa. Turkey’s largest overseas military base is in Mogadishu, Somalia, where there is also a Recep Tayyip Erdogan Hospital. There is a direct flight from Istanbul to Kano. Throughout the Balkans and now in Africa, Turkey positions itself as a more liberal Sunni alternative to Saudi Salafism and Iranian Shiism. Turkey is a new player in terms of modern global dawa, but from another angle, it’s a return to form: it was the Ottomans, after all, who were the custodians of the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina for more than four hundred years.”

All in all, I felt this book is excellent work and an excellent source of information and study and it is definitely not fake news in any way but a real hard and enlightening look at what happened and what is really happening in the world today. Very well done and highly recommended!

It was my pleasure to be given a complimentary copy of this book but that does not in any way influence this review.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

PSD247

Does anyone remember the ‘Glowing Orb’ ?

Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2020

First let me mention that I received free copy with the provision that I provide this review - which has in no way been influential.
Next I feel it’s rather ironic that before writing this, I just read a news article informing us that Hagia Sophia will be ‘repurposed’ as a mosque, thanks to and edict of Mr. Erdogan in Turkey.
This is indeed an insightful and well-written account of the Saudi aim of spreading their chosen branch of Islam in the world. The author is to be applauded for her extensive research and attention to detail in producing such a though provoking book. I would recommend it strongly to anyone interested in the Islamic religion and its worldwide outreach.

Helpful

Jason Galbraith

So Efficient As To Have Become Effectively Redundant

Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2020

Anyone who read and was enlightened by (I won't say "enjoyed") Kim Ghattas' "Black Wave" should follow it up by reading Krithika Varagur's "The Call." This book zooms in only on how the Saudis have spread their brand (or at least a collateral branch) of Islam in three countries: Indonesia, Nigeria and Kosovo. Varagur spent at least two, possibly three years writing this book and interviewed scores of people (mostly Muslim clerics and scholars) in all three countries.

Varagur has almost certainly forgotten more about Islam than I ever learned. She explains something I thought I would never understand, the real relationship between Wahhabism and Salafism (but does not rule out the possibility that the Wahhabis were simply the first Salafists). Both were inspired by Ibn Taymiyya, who may have been the most influential Muslim thinker of the second millennium (Western calendar).

From this book, we learn that the Saudi transformation of Sunni Islam and corresponding decreasing tolerance of other strands of Islam (to say nothing of other religions altogether) is a phenomenon not limited to the Middle East, even if it hasn't driven most non-Sunnis out of Indonesia and Nigeria. The book's granular level of detail is an asset (Varagur estimates for example that there are anywhere between two and nine million Shia in Nigeria). There is the occasional error, but only about Western governments (e.g. Bruce Riedel gave national security advice to four Presidents, but was not the National Security Advisor for four of them), so I didn't deduct any stars. (Indeed, having briefed the National Security Council about the Saudi relationship to other Sunni societies, Varagur probably knows more about Western governments than I know as well.)

Of all the people Varagur interviewed for this book, my favorite is Drilon Gashi, a moderate imam in the city of Peja, Kosovo, who tells his flock at the end of one sermon, "If you don't enjoy life here, you won't enjoy the afterlife." I believe what he is trying to say is that we should all enjoy the good things in life (since all religions will acknowledge you can't enjoy ALL of life). Movements like Salafism came about because (largely as a result of Western imperialism) Muslims who in previous centuries had had access to what they considered the good things in life did not by the nineteenth century, when Salafism became a strong movement in Islam. Anti-Muslim movements from India to America point to the rise of Salafism as justification for their stance but just as with the Salafists, the more their populations embrace and empower them, the more the good things in life, from bikinis to beer, will tend to disappear. Five stars.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Return this item for free

Follow the author

Image Unavailable