Robert Lacey is the author of The Kingdom (1982) and Inside the Kingdom (2011) and has contributed papers to previous Gulf Research Center meetings in Cambridge on Saudi attitudes towards suicide bombing (2010) and Saudi soft power in the context of the ‘Arab Spring’ (2011). His paper for the 2012 workshop on Islamic Charities in the Gulf will examine the adaptation of Saudi charities to the ‘Global War on Terror’ since the early 1990s and the way ahead for these organizations, and for government and semi-official giving, since the 2004 ban on private charitable initiatives abroad.