Columbia Global Reports
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.
“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
“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
“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.” —Antoaneta Tileva,
Washington Independent Review of Books
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