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Islam And Power In Saudi Arabia
In this section we will examine the relationship between religion and politics in Saudi Arabia. Items covered will be the nature and development of “Wahhabism,” the religious revival and reform movement founded by Muhammad Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab, Wahhabism’s connection to violence, debates over who speaks for Wahhabism, Wahhabism’s influence on the status of women in Saudi Arabia, and the impact of the global communications era. Also addressed will be the issue of whether Wahhabism can reform itself.
Introduction
Works or studies on Saudi Arabia generally begin with the assertion that Islam and politics have been intertwined in Saudi Arabia since an alliance was formed between religious revivalist and reformer Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and tribal leader Muhammad ibn Saud in 1744 A.D. This alliance established a working relationship between religion and politics in which the imam was responsible for religious and, in many cases, social and legal matters, and providing religious advice to the state, and the amir was responsible for providing political and military leadership, while following the religious advice of the imam.
This symbiotic relationship, initially formed between two individuals, evolved and became institutionalized at varying levels of relative power and influence through the current third Saudi dynasty and the official religious establishment in which the Al al-Shaykh family, as descendants of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, play prominent roles. Many Saudis today refer to the king as imam, demonstrating the conflation of these two previously separate roles and the evolution of this relationship over time due to both political necessity and the fluidity of the boundaries between religion and politics in Saudi Arabia. This article focuses both on the trajectory of religious thought and practice as intertwined with politics in Saudi Arabia and on the academic debates surrounding them.
The Nature And Development Of Wahhabism
The nature of “Wahhabism,” the religious revival and reform movement founded by Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, has long been a source of contention among scholars. The earliest comprehensive Western analyses of the religious movement (Philby 1928; Rentz 2005) focused on the central doctrine of tawhid (absolute monotheism) in Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s writings and the impact this had on state formation, arguing that religion and state worked together to found an empire based on Unitarian thought. According to this thesis, Wahhabism from its inception necessarily focused on the political dimensions of the religious message.
This thesis has been carried forward in the contemporary era by scholars who claim that three important religious concepts were outlined by Wahhabi scholars and subsequently used for state expansion, namely migration (hijra), excommunication (takfir), and militant and religiously motivated and legitimated warfare (jihad). All of these are posited to have contributed to the consolidation of the political realm via political centralization and domination, despite Wahhabism’s purported claim to represent “authentic” Sunni tradition. This claim to authenticity has been challenged by some scholars who note that Wahhabism itself has remained anchored in a single geographic region and has been propagated by people with clear regional genealogical connections, resulting in the Wahhabi Islamization of Saudi authoritarianism, rather than the Islamization of society (Al-Rasheed 2007).
However, an alternative analysis of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s writings from a theological, rather than political, perspective has found that various concepts associated today with Wahhabism were not necessarily present at its foundation. Although the central roles of tawhid and shirk (associationism) as the foundation of religious thought and practice are present in the writings of the founder, an expansive role for jihad is not. In Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s own writings, jihad played a limited role, largely following the classical parameters of limitations on military engagement and prohibition of attacks on civilians and abject destruction of property. Otherwise stated, the takfiri ideology (practice of declaring anyone who disagrees with you as an unbeliever who is to be fought via militant jihad) for which the Wahhabis became noted historically was not present in the foundational writings of the reform movement, suggesting that state formation and jihadist expansionism were not the central vision of the movement’s founder. Had jihad been a critical aspect of the original movement, one would expect to find immediate territorial conquests as the state expanded. However, in some cases, it took many years to add towns to Saudi territory because Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab insisted on genuine conversion to his religious reform movement as a gradual process requiring education and dialogue, rather than immediately and by the sword (Cook 1989; DeLong-Bas 2008).
Wahhabism And Violence
Although it is posited by some scholars that Wahhabism is a static tradition with violence at its heart in the form of takfiri ideology (Algar 2002; Abou El Fadl 2005), others (DeLong-Bas 2008) have noted change and even mutation over time, dating from 1773 when Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab withdrew from public life due to disagreement with Ibn Saud’s son and successor, Abdulaziz, about Abdulaziz’s desire to expand the role of jihad to religiously justify activities related to state consolidation and material and territorial conquest.
Saudi-Wahhabi power reached its height between 1792 and 1814 — after Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s death in 1791/2. By this time, Wahhabism had become a tool of not only state expansionism, largely due to the heavy incorporation of the writings of the medieval scholar, Ibn Taymiyya, into Wahhabi ideology by Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s descendants, but also homogenization of religious thought and practice within Saudi territory throughout the nineteenth century (Commins 2005). This trend is argued by some scholars to have had both religious and political dimensions as the ultimate outcome was the Najdization of the country’s culture and religion, negating other important intellectual and cultural traditions, particularly from the more cosmopolitan Hijaz region in which pluralism within Islam had long been practiced because of the cross-pollination of religious thought and practice produced by the mixing of pilgrims from many locations in the Hajj and important study circles in Mecca and Medina (Yamani 2004). Consequently, some scholars are working to reintroduce counter-narratives to the Saudi national story in order to show the impact of Wahhabization on other regions and interpretations of Islam (Al-Rasheed and Vitalis 2004).
Many scholars who have argued that takfiri ideology is the hallmark of Wahhabism have done so based on historical developments that occurred after Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s death, particularly citing the Wahhabi massacre of the Shi‘i inhabitants of Karbala and Najaf in 1802/3 and the often bitter conquests of the Hijaz in the early nineteenth century, as evidence of Wahhabism’s lack of tolerance for alternative interpretations of Islam (Algar 2002). This lack of tolerance is posited to have continued in a direct line from the eighteenth century through the present, resulting in a portrayal of Wahhabism as a monolithic, retrograde, ultraconservative, and, ultimately, jihadist school of thought seeking to eliminate any alternative religious thought or practice, particularly Shi‘ism and Sufism, versus more progressive, contemporary, and, ultimately, Westernized, thinking that seeks to embrace religious pluralism and contemporary realities (Abou El Fadl 2005). This approach suggests a direct, linear, and static progression from the time of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab through the participation of fifteen Saudis in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The result has been extreme polarization of the debates about the nature of religion in Saudi Arabia post-9/11.
Although such direct, linear progression makes for a neat and simple analysis, it fails to recognize the changes and even mutations that occurred in Wahhabi thought from the late eighteenth century through the present, including the pluralism that exists within Saudi religious thought today, in favor of highlighting only the most extreme and ultraconservative cases as normative and representative of an entire tradition spanning more than 250 years. They also fail to look more broadly at the use of religion and religious language and symbolism by parties with varying, and sometimes opposing, agendas, such as for calling for reform of the judiciary, religious establishment, and government (DeLong-Bas forthcoming), using Islam as the language of opposition to the state (Fandy 1999; Teitelbaum 2000), and working to institutionalize inclusion of the kingdom’s Shi‘i population within official structures and to expand public space for Shi‘i religious observances (Ibrahim 2006). They further suggest that the only organic processes in Saudi religious development are necessarily relegated to ultraconservatism and fear of the modern era, thereby necessitating foreign intervention into Saudi affairs in order to promote reform and progressive thought. Finally, they fail to distinguish between Wahhabism in its purely religious form, as found in contemporary Qatar, versus Wahhabism as carried into the political dimension through the Saudi national project, which raises the question of whether the political manifestations are responsible for the tendency of some toward violence and extremism, rather than the religious interpretation itself (DeLong-Bas forthcoming).
Who Speaks For Wahhabism — One Voice Or Many Voices?
Debates by both scholars and Saudis continue over whom one is talking about when one refers to “Wahhabis.” Does Wahhabism exist only within the state or does it also necessarily serve to critique and provide advice to the state in accordance with the original alliance? Does the nature of the relationship between the state and religion change and, if so, how does one predict in which direction that change will occur? Ultimately, who, if anyone, speaks for Wahhabism — the religious establishment, the Grand Mufti, the Council of Senior ‘Ulama’, shaykhs who are outside of the religious establishment, or the opposition? Some also debate whether Wahhabism itself is no longer a useful category for analysis because of the multiplicity of voices and relationships represented within this vague construct and because Saudis themselves do not use the term in self-reference, preferring to refer to themselves as Muslims, Muwahhidun, or, more commonly today, Salafis.
Scholars who assert that Wahhabism is represented only within the state portray it as the institutionalized, subjugated interpretation of religion that is subservient to political authority (Al-Rasheed 2007). Others include in their definition of Wahhabism those who critique and provide advice to the state because this was the function that religious leaders were intended to fulfill according to the terms of the original Saudi-Wahhabi alliance and because those offering such critiques and advice often do it with deliberate reference to this tradition (DeLong-Bas forthcoming). At the heart of the debate are the questions of how much relative influence the religious and political establishments have on each other, how much relative dependence therefore exists between the two, and how much impact either one has on the Saudi public.
Some scholars argue, for example, that the Saudi state from the beginning equated obedience to Allah with obedience to the ruler, thereby creating a state of consenting subjects who have transferred their presumed religious obedience to Allah to purported obedience to the umara’ (rulers) and ‘ulama’ (religious scholars), placing both rulers and scholars in positions of unquestioned authority parallel to that of Allah. According to this construct, anyone who resists the state is being disobedient to religion in the process, thus rendering such a person subject to jihad as holy war inflicted by the state upon its subjects. Jihad is necessary to keep the gates of ijtihad (independent reasoning, or a variety of legal opinions) closed in favor of a single, authoritative voice, namely, the state, in order to maintain public security and stability. Within this construct, the jihadist phenomenon becomes the logical outcome of the state’s policies, establishing jihadism as the only possible voice of political opposition (Al-Rasheed 2007).
Notwithstanding that such an approach violates not only the central concept of tawhid that lies at the heart of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s writings by placing the state in Allah’s position, but also Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s support for ijtihad as apparent in his citation of multiple legal schools of thought, none of which is given more authority than any other, it is also important to note that the assumption of abject obedience on the part of the Saudi public is perhaps overstated. Simply because the religious establishment speaks and asserts a particular position does not necessarily mean that the public will accept, support, and follow it. At the same time, movement toward greater inclusiveness of a multiplicity of voices has occurred most significantly since King Abdullah’s accession in 2005, as exemplified by the foundation of the National Dialogues to encourage public discussion of major issues facing Saudi Arabia and the March 2009 shake-up of the government that included the sacking of some senior ultraconservative Wahhabi ‘ulama’ known for their support of takfiri ideology in favor of diversifying the Council of Senior ‘Ulama’ to include representatives from multiple schools of Islamic law present within the kingdom, not just the Hanbali school (DeLong-Bas forthcoming).
Furthermore, with respect to jihadism, it is clear from the writings and speeches of jihadis themselves that their opposition is not strictly or even necessarily primarily political, but, rather, stems from youth questioning of the religious establishment’s credibility and leadership due to its failure to actively follow its own teachings through to their logical conclusion. One particularly famous case that became a matter of public debate was the martyrdom video of the self-proclaimed al-Qa‘ida of the Arabian Peninsula operative, Sultan al-‘Utaybi, posted posthumously on the internet in 2007. In this video, al-‘Utaybi details his frustration in trying to persuade the religious establishment to take action commensurate with its declared teachings, particularly where instances of shirk are concerned. Al-‘Utaybi’s interactions with senior scholar, Shaykh Saleh al-Fawzan, member of both the Permanent Committee of Ifta’ and the Council of Senior ‘Ulama’, demonstrate the ‘ulama’’s willingness to declare certain behaviors unacceptable in theory, but reflect their impotence to do anything to actively condemn them in practice. It was precisely because al-Fawzan refused to declare takfir upon those engaging in grave visitations and purported idol worship in his own voice with jihad against them as the prescribed outcome that al-‘Utaybi joined the jihadist movement where he felt that the actions upheld the teachings. For some youth, therefore, the attraction of the jihadist movement is the direct result of the religious establishment’s failure to uphold its own teachings rather than a political statement of opposition to the authority of the monarchy (DeLong-Bas forthcoming).
Wahhabism — Influential Or Not In Saudi Society?
In terms of relative influence, it is clear that the religious establishment wields power over certain aspects of government, such as the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and the Judiciary. It is assumed by most members of the public that these voices, including that of the Grand Mufti, as well as those that support them, such as the so-ca shaykhs, speak in the name of both the state and the religious establishment. However, this does not mean that the public necessarily listens to them or finds them credible precisely because it is known that they follow the establishment line and are perceived to be tools of the state. In some cases, the voices opposing them gain more credibility simply because they represent the opposition. Multiple voices of opposition via religious reference have become overtly public since the early 1990s with a variety of proposed alternatives to the state-supported religious agenda ranging from calls for peaceful reforms to more militant and, ultimately, revolutionary programs (Fandy 1999; Hegghammer 2010).
The central question debated by scholars is how dependent the state is on the religious establishment or to what degree the state is able to influence the impact and development of the religious establishment, even to the point of controlling it. The reality is that both trends have existed historically and that much of contemporary Saudi history is marked by the swinging of the pendulum of relative influence from one extreme to the other, with the state sometimes asserting greater levels of power and authority and the religious establishment sometimes acquiring greater power and influence over the state. It is important to note that many of the developments in Saudi religious thought and practice involve organic processes, rather than simply responses to external influences or issues.
For example, the era of King Faisal (r. 1963–1975) is typically portrayed as an era of modernization and development, during which much of the kingdom’s infrastructure was built, including schools for both boys and girls. Much of this modernization was initially opposed by the religious establishment. However, King Faisal and then Grand Mufti, Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Al al-Shaykh, joined together to provide religious justification and support for the kingdom’s progress, focusing on the development of the nation and the role of citizens, both male and female, in making a constructive contribution to society.
Saudi Arabia – In Brief
This demonstrates the capacity of the religious establishment to both oppose and support the monarchy simultaneously, a theme that recurs throughout the twentieth century. It also suggests the importance of recognizing a multiplicity of voices within the religious establishment.
Similar tensions between the state and the religious establishment over the country’s future can be seen in a change made following the Grand Mufti’s death in 1969 — the 1971 formation of the Council of Senior ‘Ulama’. Some have argued that this marked a progression away from individual authority by replacing the individual voice of the Grand Mufti with the collective voices of a Council of Senior advisors engaged in collective debate and decision making with respect to religious affairs, noting that the position of Grand Mufti was not filled again until 1993 when the power of the sahwah (awakening) shaykhs, who were outside of the religious establishment, had risen to the point where the state perceived a need to reassert a very powerful, state-controlled, and singular voice for Islam in the person of senior scholar Abdulaziz bin Baz, the first non-Al al-Shaykh to hold the position of Grand Mufti (DeLong-Bas forthcoming). Others have argued that the establishment of the Council was ultimately designed to weaken the religious establishment altogether by institutionalizing Wahhabism, thus placing it in a position of dependence on the state and altering the original symbiotic relationship by giving the state greater control over religious affairs (Al-Rasheed 2007).
Although it is clear that the state retained some control over the religious establishment through the 1970s, a crisis point was reached in 1979 with the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by armed and militant religious extremists (Trofimov 2007). In exchange for its legitimation of the contentious recovery of the Grand Mosque, which required both foreign advisors and fighting within the sacred precinct, the state was forced to concede power back to the religious establishment. This was seen most visibly through public demonstrations of piety and religiosity, including attention to public adherence to prayer rituals, more literal and rigid interpretations of Islamic law, and, especially, concentrated attention to women as the culture bearers, resulting in restrictions on their access to public space, requiring them to fully veil in public and the exertion of greater state and patriarchal control over them at the expense of their own ability to engage in personal decision making, all of which was at odds with the prior approach during the King Faisal era of expanding public space and visibility for women through access to public education and employment. All of this would appear to be evidence of the rising power of the religious establishment throughout the 1980s, rather than a lack of it (DeLong-Bas forthcoming).
At the same time, religious scholars themselves were divided over the appropriate relationship between religion and the state. Those who were part of the religious establishment owed their jobs to the state and were expected to support it in order to retain their positions. In opposition stood the sahwah (awakening) scholars who rose to visible prominence in the early 1990s following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and King Fahd’s subsequent “invitation” to US-led Western forces to protect the kingdom and restore Kuwaiti sovereignty, as legitimated by Grand Mufti bin Baz. The sahwah shaykhs charged that the religious establishment was failing in its duty to provide religious advice and counsel to the monarchy and instead was simply rubber-stamping whatever policies and plans the king presented. Highlighting the fissure between establishment and antiestablishment religious voices, these shaykhs presented petitions and letters offering “advice” to the king that they expected him to follow in keeping with Wahhabi tradition. When this did not happen, some responded by openly calling first for reform and ultimately, as in the case of Usama Bin Laden, for revolution (Fandy 1999).
In some cases, the monarchy responded by imprisoning those who challenged the authority of both the monarchy and the religious establishment. However, after the 9/11 attacks against the United States in which Saudis played a major role and, more importantly, the 2003 and 2004 series of terrorist attacks on Saudi soil, the monarchy recognized the need at least to engage these oppositional voices (DeLong-Bas forthcoming), if not co-opt them altogether (Al-Rasheed 2007). The result was mixed. On the one hand, the sahwah shaykhs who joined forces with the religious establishment were perceived by some to have sold out to the state, losing some of their credibility in the process. On the other hand, the credentials of the religious establishment were bolstered by the addition of these voices into the state apparatus. Although some have criticized the sahwis for purportedly giving up politics in favor of addressing social issues, thus ceding much of their influence, others have noted the potentially longer term outcome of mutual influence between the two groups, seeing in events since King Abdullah’s accession to the throne in 2005 evidence of movement within the religious establishment, including within the judiciary and the legal system, toward greater openness, willingness to reform, and, perhaps most importantly, shifting away from takfiri ideology, all of which are traceable to these changes within the religious establishment, whatever the impetus that brought those changes there. Within this reform movement, perhaps the greatest battleground between the state and the religious establishment has been the status of women.
Wahhabism And Women — Politics, Religion, Or Culture?
The status of women in Saudi Arabia has long well then you have to get hotter what do you want hell been considered a reflection of Saudi religious thought and practice, in which veiling and the politics of patriarchal protection, as exemplified by the ban on women driving and the requirement of a male guardian’s approval for every decision related to women, are understood to be religiously mandated. Certainly the religious establishment made its position clear through the 1980s and 1990s by issuing many fatwa (religiously based legal opinions) addressing matters related to women and gender, including dress, access to public space, subservience to male guardians, and other limitations based on biological differences between men and women, such as childbearing and menstruation. Many, particularly in the West, have concluded as a result that Wahhabism is the culprit in limiting women, thereby suggesting that “liberating” Saudi women is not so much a matter of politics as it is of liberating Saudi Arabia in general from Wahhabi influence over both state and society, particularly because of its literalist and legalistic interpretation of Islamic law (Abou El Fadl 2005).
Because the issues are so contentious, attention to historical accuracy and the foundational period of Wahhabism are particularly instructive. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab himself worked to create significant public space for women in his movement, asserting their right to literacy, to education in both the Qur’an and hadith so as to be able to think and interpret for themselves, as well as to evaluate any given scholar’s interpretations, to expand and support the grounds for women to initiate divorce, to protection from male violence, whether in the form of rape, forced marriage, or domestic abuse, to inherit according to Islamic law, and to own property and engage in business, including with men (DeLong-Bas 2008). Perhaps the most powerful evidence of his support for these rights for women comes from the biographical dictionaries of prominent women from his lifetime through the early nineteenth century, including his female descendants, and their work in supporting his movement and advancing literacy and access to books (al-Harbi 2008). This foundational period provides a solid religious basis for contemporary reforms.
Although the details have yet to be written, the broad scholarly assumption has been that the status of women followed the same trajectory as the status of religion throughout the nineteenth century in which a single authoritative interpretation based in Najd was enforced on the rest of the country. Historical accounts of women’s work and status in Saudi Arabia indicate differences between regions, with Najd being one of the most conservative areas by the twentieth century, particularly after 1979. Some scholars attribute the expanding limitations on women’s access to public space to the often forcible spread of Najdi culture to the rest of the kingdom, including the purported “revival” of polygamy and the insistence on full veiling in public, which were specific to Najd (Yamani 2004; Yamani 2008).
Others note the tendency to reduce women to literal subjects of Islamic law who needed to be controlled by males as a reflection of the state’s control over society. Although this is typically portrayed by the state as a matter of protecting women from the violence of society, it is viewed by some as yet another example of the violence inflicted by the state on the Saudi family by placing the state in a higher position of authority over a woman’s autonomy than her male family members. At stake is both the woman’s and the family’s honor, both of which these scholars believe are violated, rather than protected, by the state, as the state is essentially emasculating men religiously, tribally and as men by taking control over their women. By assuming the role of decision-maker, the state not only relegates women to the position of perpetual legal minor, but also increases its own legitimacy and power (Al-Rasheed 2007).
At the same time, there are others who note that many Saudi women look to the state for protection from ultraconservative clerics who seek to expand limitations on women’s access to public space, particularly employment, due to fear that women will become financially independent and, therefore, a threat to family and social stability. At heart is the question of whether women are subjects, objects, or agents within their families and society and whether rights and limitations are a matter of religion, politics, or culture (DeLong-Bas forthcoming).
Some scholars point to evidence of change over time as the most effective means of evaluating the role of religion in determining women’s rights. It is generally agreed that adherence to ritual correctness and the letter of Islamic law in favor of men is the hallmark of twentieth-century interpretation through the era of Grand Mufti bin Baz (d. 1999). For example, in the case of a woman married to a drug addict asking for permission to divorce her husband, the recommendation during the bin Baz era was for the woman to pray about the situation and leave it to Allah to change the man’s heart. If Allah chose to change the woman’s situation, she should be grateful; if not, then she should look forward to reward in the afterlife. However, after bin Baz’s death, a much more practical approach to such problems was suggested by the Permanent Committee of Ifta’, based on the principle of the preservation of human life outweighing the importance of ritual correctness — a principle originally asserted by Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab. Thus, the ruling on the case of the woman married to the drug addict changed to one of considering the potential harm to the woman and children in continuing to live with a drug addict, whether due to violence or disease, and concluding that the right of the woman and her children to safety and security was a higher priority than the preservation of the marriage. In other words, a noticeable shift away from ritual correctness and following the letter of the law to consideration of the spirit of the law is quite tangible, at least in fatawa. Much work remains to be done in terms of assuring that the court decisions reflect a similar consideration of circumstances and protection of human life and well-being, all of which remain at the heart of contemporary judicial reforms (DeLong-Bas forthcoming).
At the same time, attention should also be given to the state’s use of religion to justify expanding public space for women, particularly in business, medicine, and education. Women’s education and training in medicine was initially tied to their important roles in the family as mothers who were raising the next generation of children. Literate and educated women were posited as better mothers, particularly because of their important role in teaching children about religion at an early age. Similarly, medical training for women was justified on religious grounds as a matter of preserving female modesty and gender segregation.
Business has also provided important public space for women as the Prophet Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija, was a businesswoman and Muhammad himself always supported the right of women to engage in business and commercial matters. Thus, although women were not permitted to contest or vote in elections for the municipal councils in 2005, which were political positions, women were permitted to contest and vote in elections to the boards of directors for the chambers of commerce in the major cities in Saudi Arabia. Some even won election, while others were later appointed to the boards by the state. Ways have also been found around religiously mandated gender segregation through the use of modern technology, such as the telephone, email, and internet chatting, to enable men and women to work productively together and to collaborate while respecting the norms of physical gender segregation.
Wahhabism And The Impact Of The Global Communications Era
It would be difficult to overestimate the impact of the global communications era on Saudi society in general and with respect to religious transformation in particular. The dual arrival of the internet and satellite television access during the 1990s, particularly the introduction of Al-Jazeera in 1996, marked the end of state control over the media, including in religious matters. No longer bound by state interpretations of religion, the population has discovered a variety of alternative and often competing voices, some of whom enjoy state approval and others of whom do not. Although some have charged that such a process demonstrates the importance of outside voices being projected into the kingdom in order to promote change (Abou El Fadl 2005), others have noted that many of the voices being projected today are Saudi and that Saudis have always maintained the capacity to decide for themselves to whom to listen, even if it has come at the cost of imprisonment.
The terrain for listening to a multiplicity of voices was laid back in the 1960s with the spread of mass education that enabled people to find their own answers through reading rather than relying on the ‘ulama’ as transmitters of religious knowledge. This process continued through the 1970s with movement away from the singularly authoritative voice of the Grand Mufti to the inclusion of multiple voices on the Council of Senior ‘Ulama’ and then into the late 1980s and early 1990s through the oppositional voices of the sahwah shaykhs, all of which marks the arrival of global communications as a stage in the ongoing development of religious thought and practice in the kingdom, rather than as a complete revolution. The ultimate impact is that neither the state nor the religious establishment has a monopoly on religious discourse within the kingdom today (DeLong-Bas forthcoming).
Some scholars have focused on the potential political impact of unmediated space in Saudi Arabia, noting that the capacity for Saudis to debate history, theology, and politics necessarily undermines authoritarianism in multiple spheres, opening the door to breaking free of the state-sponsored narratives of exclusion, subservience, and obedience and requiring the state to reform how it looks at its constituents (Al-Rasheed 2009). At the same time, challenges remain for turning opposition to authoritarianism into effective action. The ability of Saudis to assemble for political purposes, to hold peaceful rallies or demonstrations, or to engage in acts of civil disobedience remains hampered by both the government and by fear of jihadism. Even the submission of petitions of reform couched in religiously appropriate language can result in state perceptions of disobedience on the part of the signatories, although it is interesting to note that the response of the state is not always uniform. For example, petitions submitted between 2000 and 2004 to senior members of the royal family, many of which are similar to petitions for reform introduced during the 1960s, are reported to have received responsive support from then-Crown Prince Abdullah while meeting with rejection and jail sentences from former Crown Princes Sultan (d. 2011) and Naif (d. 2012). The dual war that ensued against both jihadis and reformists, both of which were accused of causing chaos and discord, highlights the ongoing reality of the contested nature of the relationship between religion and the state, as well as between the state and its people.
Wahhabism And Reform — From Within, From Without, Or Simply Impossible?
The nature of the relationship between religion and the state remains a contested topic among both Saudis and scholars. Due to security concerns, much attention has been given to violence and extremism, both within Saudi Arabia (Hegghammer 2010) and abroad as exported by Saudis and incorporated into transnational movements, whether ideologically or financially (Mandaville 2007; Abou El Fadl 2005). These studies are important as case studies, but it should be recognized that they do not represent the fullness of religious debate within the kingdom.
In the end, the main question that both policymakers and academics debate is whether Wahhabism is capable of reforming itself or whether the entire religious approach is beyond the capacity to reform. Some scholars believe that reform is already occurring, much of it from the top-down and demonstrating the role of the royal family in pushing an agenda of reform through the religious establishment, such as the co-educational King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) that opened in 2009 with the full support of the king and the prompt sacking of a senior cleric who opposed it on religious grounds, while others point to senior royal family members, such as former Crown Prince Naif (d. 2012), who continued to assert a conservative interpretation of religion, particularly with respect to the state’s role in protecting women’s status and role in the home as her religiously assigned ideal role. In some cases, reforms have been in progress for decades, such as the shift from a single voice of authority to collective debate and decision making in religious and legal opinions, while others, such as women’s right to drive, make only incremental, periodic progress, often set back more by outside interference than by internal dynamics.
The ultimate point is that one should not look simply at 9/11 to understand the political and religious dynamics of Saudi Arabia. Although 9/11 certainly accelerated or gave a jumpstart to some processes of reform, many of these debates had already been underway and had internal, organic developments that are neither directed nor driven by the West, particularly the United States.
Islam And Power In Saudi Arabia
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