TERM PAPER

THE HOUSE OF SAUD IN ARABIA: IDEOLOGY, LEGITIMACY AND

SOVEREIGNTY

SUBMITTED BY:
KUNDAN KUMAR
M. PHIL./CWAAS/IST SEMESTER
NEW DELHI-110067

CENTRE FOR WEST ASIAN AND NORTH AFRICAN STUDIES

SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY
NEW DELHI
2006

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The kings of modern times, restrained by the limits of mere probability, have neither courage nor
desire. They fear the ear that hears their orders, and the eye that scrutinizes their actions.
Formerly they believed themselves sprung from Jupiter, and shielded by their birth; but
nowadays they are not inviolable.1

Some countries have sacrificed the soul of their culture in order to acquire the tools of Western
technology. We want the tools but not at the price of annihilating our religion and cultural
values.
−Bakr Abd Allah Bakr
Rector of University of the Petroleum and Minerals2

House of Saud: Social, Political and Religious Background

“The modern Saudi State has its origins in the conflicts of the 18th century when the
northern peninsula was temporarily united, by a coalition of tribes led by the Saudi tribe
from Najd in eastern Arabia”.3 This coalition produced for the first time since
Mohammad, a force capable of imposing a single authority on the whole area. No
adequate social explanation of this movement has yet been produced. Its ideology was
expressed through the teachings of a militant preacher named Mohammad Ibn Abd al-
Wahhab(1703-1792), whose version of Islam, Wahhabism, called for the purification of
religion. In particular, it traced the ‘oneness’ of God, opposing the worship of holy places
and excessive veneration of Mohammad; and on the other hand, it called for the firm
practice of Islamic legal punishments including the stoning of adulterous women, public
beheadings and amputations. Under the banner of this ‘pure’ Islam, the Saudi led tribes
conquered a large part of the peninsula in the 18th and early 19th centuries and were only
limited by the two outside powers then encroaching on the area: Britain, reaching out
from India, was gaining power in the region from Bahrain in the Gulf to Aden in south
Yemen, and the Ottoman Turks, enjoying a temporary revival, were reaffirming their
position in the north-west of the peninsula. Wahhabi expansionism was blocked and then
reversed in the 19th century by a series of campaigns launched by powers to the north and
north-east: armies from Egypt under Mohammad Ali and from the Ottoman Empire drove
the Wahhabis out of western Arabia, and the Hijaz, site of Mecca and Medina, was
annexed to the Ottoman Empire.

The Saudi led tribes, confined to their eastern Arabian terrain, were even there replaced
by a rival tribe, the Rashid. However, in 1902 a new Saudi counter attack began: under
the leadership of Abd al Aziz Ibn Saud they recaptured Riyadh, the capital of Najd, and
soon held the two provinces of eastern Arabia, Najd and Al Hassa, in their power. By
1925, the Saudis had conquered the western provinces of Asir and Hijaz, and driven the
Hashemite into exile. In 1926, Abd al Aziz Ibn Saud crowned himself king of the Hijaz

1
Dumas, Alexandre, The Count of Monte Cristo, Wordsworth Edition, Hertfordshire, 1997, pp. 89-90.
2
Oschenwald, William, ‘Saudi Arabia And The Islamic Revival’, in The International Journal Of Middle
East Studies, 13, 1981, p. 271.
3
Halliday, Fred, Arabia Without Sultans, Saqi Books, London, 2002, pp. 47.

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and on 23rd September 1932 announced that the whole of his territory had been united
under a new name, Saudi Arabia. This new state covered a larger area than had been
united since seventh century. Wahhabism, by uniting the previously divided tribes, could
even be said to have played a progressive role without which any future liberation would
have been impossible. It was this religious force which forced sedanterisation of certain
tribes and, attacked the nomadic structure of the peninsular society. But the state was
founded on the most backward ideology – unity of religion and loyalty to one family,
making Saudi Arabia the only state in the world that was titled as the property of a single
dynasty. “Moreover, tribal divisions were not abolished, but were manipulated by the
regime. Power was held in the hands of the leading male members of the Saudi family.
On its own this regime was an unstable anachronism: it required outside support to
survive. Oil and US imperialism fulfilled this function”.4

Experiences and Actions of House of Saud: An Outline

“The bulk of the Arabian peninsula (around 80% of it) was transformed in the 20th
century into Saudi Arabia – in effect, the Arabia of the House of Saud”.5 The history of
the House of Saud can be divided into three main phases. The first begins around 1744
when Mohammad Ibn Saud, the ruler of Diriyah in Najd, formed a political alliance with
the religious revivalist Mohammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The movement spread rapidly
and came to a significant point at the beginning of the 19th century. During this phase, in
1801, the Wahhabis sacked the Shi’ite holy city of Karbala in lower Iraq; and to
demonstrate their unique brand of piety, overthrew the domes of various tombs. In 1806,
they succeeded in expelling the Turks from Mecca and Medina. The second phase of
Saudi history begins with 1818 and extended throughout the rest of the century. In this
period, the Saudi faction, wedded to the Wahhabist version of Islam, continued to
struggle for power by being against the rival House of Rashid in Hail. The third phase
begins in 1902 when Abd al Aziz Ibn Mohammad Ibn Saud, known as Ibn Saud, captured
Riyadh and laid the basis for the struggle which ultimately resulted in the establishment
of a Saudi state three decades later. “Saudi Arabia is typically defined as a monarchy with
strong historical links between the government and the Islamic religion”.6

Importance and Use of Religion as a ‘Tool’ of Ideology, Legitimacy and Sovereignty

The Saudi Constitution and Political System

In fact, the Koran is regarded by Riyadh as the actual de facto and de jure constitution of
Saudi Arabia, with the powers and duties of the King defined according to Koran-based
Shari’ah law. The Article 1 of the Saudi Basic Law, introduced in 1992, states – ‘The
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an Arab and Islamic sovereign state, its religion is Islam, and

4
Ibid, pp. 49.
5
Simons, Geoff, Saudi Arabia: The Shape Of A Client Feudalism, Macmillan, London, 1988, pp. 144.
6
Ibid, pp. 300, quoted from, The HSBC Group: Business Profiles Series, The Saudi British Bank, London
and Riyadh, Fourth Quarter, 1996, pp. 4.

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its constitution the Holy Koran, and the Prophet’s Sunnah. Its language is Arabic and
Riyadh its capital’. Article 5 emphasizes the hereditary nature of monarchy. Article 6
demands the allegiance of the citizens ‘before the monarch in line with the Holy Koran
and the Prophet’s Sunnah. Article 11 declares that the Saudi society ‘is based on
dependence of Almighty God and cooperation’. “Hence Saudi Arabia is not a theocracy
but a hereditary monarchy with massive theological underpinning”.7 “There is no
semblance of political democracy, and political parties are prohibited; and any extra
territorial moves to establish elements of democracy elsewhere on the Arabian Peninsula
are bitterly opposed”.8 The first Consultative Council or Majlis al-Shura was created by
Ibn Saud in 1927 and during that time he remarked - “we have to follow what is stated in
the Holy Koran and the Sunnah in implementation of Allah’s orders to consult others in
the affairs of the moment”.9 King Fahd announced reforms to the Consultative Council
on August 21, 1993, but unfortunately again; there was nothing of democracy in this
reformed constitutional arrangement where the membership and deliberations of the
Council remained entirely subject to the will and whim of the King (as stated in Articles
3,5,6,7,9,10 etc).

The Council of Ministers is similarly subject to royal decision. This means the King will
appoint the Council’s members and approve all their decisions. This can be corroborated
by Article 1 of the General Rules of the Council of Ministers, which states – ‘the Council
of Ministers is an organizational body presided over by the King’. Similarly, Article 4
declares that no minister can assume his office before swearing the following – ‘I swear
by Allah the Great to be loyal to my religion, my King and my country, and never to
divulge any of the secrets of the State, and to uphold the interests and the systems, and to
perform my duties truthfully, faithfully and loyally’. Article 7 says that Council
resolutions can become final only ‘after the King has approved them’. “Thus the principal
constitutional organs of the Saudi state remain completely subject to Royal Decree and
Royal whim, a circumstance that affects every aspect of the legal system and the state
bureaucracy”.10

The Saudi Legal System

The Saudi legal system has represented as “one of the main impediments to the
Kingdom’s future economic growth”.11 In 1928, Ibn Saud established the main elements
of the Saudi Court System and subsequently issued various Royal Decrees like Civil
Procedures Rules (1936 and 1952); Board of Grievances (1955); Ministry of Justice
(1970); to modernize the system. “However, such Decrees (with Faisal’s 1962 Ten Point
Program and Fahd’s 1992 Basic Law Reforms) have no more than piecemeal and

7
Ibid, pp. 300.
8
Ibid, pp. 300.
9
Ibid, pp. 300.
10
Ibid, pp. 301.
11
Wilson, Peter W. and Graham, Douglas F., Saudi Arabia: The Coming Storm, Sharpe, New York, 1994,
pp. 200.

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arbitrary changes to an essentially archaic system that remains entirely subject to royal
diktat”.12 It is still substantially the case that the House of Saud including thousands of
princes and princesses with very land holdings and immense economic power remains
above the law. It is still a land “where a criminal financial institution that has been closed
by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) can be reopened by the defense
minister, Prince Sultan; where Fahd can in effect sack the chairman – elect of the Saudi
American Bank; where court decisions can be overruled by Prince Nayef on a whim”.13

The Saudi Judicial System and Bureaucracy

The most important problem is that the whole judicial system of Saudi Arabia is
completely rooted in the Koran which leads to inevitable tensions between religious
devotion and the secular needs of a modern society, and which duplicates in Shari’a
jurisprudence all the conflicting Koranic interpretations represented by the various
Islamic factions. While the Saudi ulema have inevitably resisted all attempts at legal
modernization, the Saudi kings are equally reluctant to countenance any effective erosion
of royal prerogative. Reforms have been generally partial and inconsequential. For
example, the Committee for the Settlement of Commercial disputes (CSCD), created in
1967 as a commercial reform measure, was kept under staffed until its abolishment in
1987/88 in favor of the Board of Grievances. The judicial system is full of corruption due
to its tiresome process and the practice of hostage taking and bribery.

The Saudi bureaucracy has long been criticized as “grossly inefficient, bedeviled by
nepotism, absenteeism and incompetence”.14 Having completely engulfed in the practices
of favoritism and endemic corruption, the bureaucracy, like the Shari’ah legal system, has
widely been depicted as a powerful impediment to Riyadh’s attempt to operate as a
principal player in the modern world. So, it is very difficult to believe that the essential
radical reforms in law and administration will be best accomplished by a feudal dynasty
characteristically reliant upon repression in order to survive.

Political Opposition and Reforms: A Historical Perspective

After the 1991 Gulf War, the House of Saud became increasingly sensitive to domestic
and external pressures for democratic reforms and also to the mounting problems of an
unaccountable dynastic succession. “Nobody in the Council is going to rock the boat.
They have all been chosen because of their loyalty”.15 After the announcement of a new
reformed Consultative Council consisting of sixty men in August 1993, it was sworn in
before meeting the first time in Riyadh as remarked by King Fahd – “you will find all the
support from me personally and from the cabinet. We are a country that follows the book

12
Simons, pp. 301.
13
Ibid, pp. 301.
14
Ibid, pp. 302.
15
Ibid, pp. 303.

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of God and will not deviate from that in any way. So, we are not bothered in any way by
those who object and say ‘why not have elections?’”.16 But it seems that this Consultative
Council was a sign of reluctant royal concession in conditions of growing public dissent
and disquiet and was also a sign of unease in the House of Saud. The King of Saudi
Arabia also carries the title of Prime Minister, suggesting a practical role with a strong
secular responsibility for the running of a functioning state in the modern world. The
King also bears the sacred title of ‘the Custodian of the two Holy Mosques, Mecca and
Medina’ which indicates a very peculiar link between the Saudi royal family and these
holy sites. It is very clear that the House of Saud, by assigning the King a religious role
and declaring the Koran and the Sunnah as the sacred heart of the constitution, attempts
to claim a special status in the Muslim world. But now the situation is different and this
very ambitious claim of the Saudi royal family is being widely challenged and disputed,
both within Saudi Arabia and outside, with various Islamic groups forwarding their own
Koranic exegesis while protesting at the demonstrable hypocrisies and carnalities of the
House of Saud.

King Fahd, as the Custodian of the two Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina, displayed
his commitment and dedication to Islam by personally supervising a number of plans to
facilitate the Hajj pilgrimage. In 1985, he expanded the two Holy Mosques – Mecca by
double of its size and Medina by tenfold. He also provided funds for the Al-Aqsa Mosque
in Jerusalem, the third holiest site of Islam and also for many other mosques and religious
sites. But in spite of these devoted manifestations in the name of religion, the critics of
the House of Saud pointed to the high profile venalities of the Saudi princes, the tolerance
of infidel military forces on Saudi territory, the drinking and gambling habits of King
Fahd, and many other evident and explicit violations of the Koran and Islamic doctrine. It
seems to me that the House of Saud is acting on its underlying basic premise that only the
correctly interpreted Koran can be more suitable as political ideology than any other
secular constitution. Saudi Arabia, with its own version of Islam, has always tried not to
allow churches, synagogues, temples, or shrines of other religions and this very act
caused many serious problems for foreign Christians and Jews on Saudi territory during
the 1990/91 Gulf Crisis.

Despite having so many problems of interpretations, the special status of Islam has
always been emphasized in the Saudi context. For example, a former Saudi Minister of
Pilgrimage and Endowments, Al Sa’yed Hassan Kutbi, while delivering a speech in 1975
in South Korea, commented: “Islam governed by the Holy Koran is not just another
religious doctrine, rather, it is unique among other religions as it penetrates into the whole
spirit of its adherents through the Holy Koran whether individually or collectively, for it
has put together authority in the form of a political state. It has been protected against
division between religious affairs and political affairs. Religion has been given the
authority for legislation and jurisprudence”.17 But this suggestion, that because God has
safeguarded the Koran, there are no divisions among the followers of Islam, should be

16
Ibid, pp. 303.
17
Paul, Kegan, Modernity And Tradition: The Saudi Equation, London, 1990, pp. 40-41.

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analyzed and evaluated in terms of the real and authentic process happened on the
practical ground. For example, on 20th November 1979, some 40,000 to 60,000 Muslim
pilgrims had assembled at the Grand Mosque in Mecca and seized it and declared that the
long awaited ‘Mahdi’ had arrived to cleanse Islam. The proclaimed Mahdi and his Sunni
fundamentalist followers called for a new age of Islam. Then after taking permission
from Ulema to take weapons inside the Mosque, some 2,000 to 3,000 police and army
personnel stormed the Mosque to crush the rebellion. This army constituted not only of
the Saudis only but also of Christians. This again refutes the claim of the Saudi system
that weapons and followers of other religions are not allowed inside the Mosque.

In fact the seizure of the Grand Mosque of Mecca by a group of Muslim fundamentalists
protesting alleged religious laxity in Saudi Arabia raised the issue of Islamic revival in
the very birthplace of Islamic faith. This dramatic action and the ensuing battle for
control of the holiest site in Islam, the Kaaba, caused concern and anxiety among
hundreds of millions of Muslims. It turned the minds of many to the phenomenon of
religious revival. “Although the immediate threat was suppressed by Saudi troops in
Mecca, the 1979 incident implied the existence of more fundamental problems involving
the relationship between Islam and the state in Saudi Arabia.”18

When Ayatollah Khomeini accused the American imperialism and international Zionism
as responsible for the occupation of the Mosque, many American and other kind of
rebellions took place not only in Saudi Arabia but also in other countries like Philippines,
Turkey, Libya, Bangladesh, India, UAE, Pakistan, Kuwait etc. In this wake of growing
Sunni and Shi’ite fundamentalist threat, the Saudi Arabia and the United States even went
on to believe that Saudi Arabia would go the Iran way as the fanatical religious groups
were “committed to the overthrown of a self-serving and repressive regime which had
lost touch with the people.”19 There has long been a very strong fundamentalist challenge
to the House of Saud and despite the rigors of Wahhabism there were always factions
prepared to espouse harder and stricter form of Islam.

In 1969, Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Baz, blind vector of the University of Medina, denounced
the American landing on moon as hoax. Influenced by him, a Sunni fundamentalist
Johaiman Saif al-Otaiba, in mid-1970s, surpassing the religious zeal and fervor of Baz,
urged “a return to pure Islam, denunciation of all western influences, an end to education
for women, the abolition of television, expulsion of all non-Muslims from Saudi territory,
and the use of oil revenues for religious purposes rather than personal and state
profligacy”.20 He denounced the House of Saud for spending money on palaces and not
on Islam by saying – “if you accept what they say, they will make you rich. Otherwise,
they will persecute and even torture you”.21 Proceeding further in his criticism of
monarchy, Juhaiman, in a pamphlet entitled ‘Rules of Allegiance and Obedience: the

18
Ochsenwald, William, ‘Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Revival’, International Journal of Middle East
Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3, August 1981, p. 271.
19
Simons, pp. 310.
20
Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage: The Wrath Of Militant Islam, Andre Deutsch, London, 1986, pp. 152.
21
Simons, pp. 310.

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Misconduct of Rulers’, expressed – “our belief is that the continued rule by the House of
Saud is a destruction of God’s religion even if they pretend to uphold Islam. We ask God
to relieve us of them all. Anyone with eyesight can see today how they represent religion
as a form of humiliation, insult and mockery. These rulers have subjected Muslims to
their interests and made religion into a way of acquiring their material interests. They
have brought upon the Muslims all evil and corruption”.22

In 1978, Juhaiman and 98 of his followers were arrested and interrogated and then
released only to be captured again after the Grand Mosque seizure for public beheading
in eight different cities. Then Saudi Arabia showed a very great kind of aggression to
curb and crush any violations of Islam. “Shopkeepers were compelled to close their shops
during the five daily prayers, newspapers were urged to be more vigilant about
provocative photographs, women were denied scholarships for foreign universities, and
the Saudi royals redoubled their efforts to bribe tribal elders”.23

Due to the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Saudi’s Palestinian Peace Plan of 1981, and
segregation of Iranian pilgrims from others, many new problems came up to the surface
in the form of the conflicts between Iraqi and Iranian pilgrims, Iran and Saudi rulers etc.
the Hajj has always exposed the Saudis to all sorts of problems. The contentious decision
taken by King Fahd to invite American forces into Saudi territory in 1990 added fuel to
the fundamentalist fires. There is no doubt in the fact that the flood of non-Muslims into
Saudi Arabia in 1990/91 eroded the Islamic authority of the King Fahd and even after
that the fundamentalist threat did not abate. During the 1991 Gulf War, sermons had been
preached against both the infidel West and Saudi domestic abuses which can be shown by
the fact that on 18th May 1991, a group of clerics presented a memorandum to King Fahd
demanding not only a move to a full-blooded theocracy but also the necessary corollary,
i.e., heavy restrictions on the powers of the House of Saud. It can also be said that the
Saudi policy of repression aided the fundamentalists. It seems that for tackling the
growing fundamentalist challenge, Saudi Arabia relied on American protection. In 1991
fundamentalist pressure in Saudi Arabia had succeeded in checking the American plans
to expand its forces in the aftermath of the Gulf War, when King Fahd requested America
to station at Kuwait or inside Iraq by saying that “the whole thing must not look like a
Saudi-American operation”.24 Saudi Arabia continued to fund extremist Muslim groups
in various countries and to use the Custodianship of Mecca and Medina as a political
weapon. For example, in 1994, Saudis hinted that Yaseer Arafat might soon be allowed
into the Kingdom to perform pilgrimage indicating a kind of improved PLO-Saudi
relations. It is clear that the House of Saud was unable to manage even the matters that it
constantly claimed were closest its heart. “The Hajj disasters over the years had come to
represent a potent symbol of Saudi failure, the plight of an archaic and repressive regime

22
Wright, pp. 152, and Simons, pp. 310.
23
Wright, pp. 155, and Simons, pp. 311.
24
Simons, pp. 313.

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unable either to adjust to the demands of the modern age or to accommodate what many
Muslim observers regard as the essential elements of true Islam”.25

In September 1992, a group of more than a hundred Islamic scholars and professors
petitioned King Fahd to introduce political change. This 45-page ‘nasiha’ (memorandum)
covered most areas of country’s political life including foreign relations, monetary
policies, social services, and the oil production rates. It demanded that Saudi Arabia end
its relationship with the United States, put more emphasis on relations with Muslim
countries, and stop supplying aid to those governments which oppose the more
revolutionary Islamic movements in the Arab World. But in response to this, the Supreme
Ulama Council accused the petitioners of sedition and serving the interests of the enemies
of Saudi Arabia. This petition was the fourth petition submitted to King Fahd by 1993
which signals the widespread concerns and disaffection throughout the Kingdom at that
time, but Fahd did nothing to these demands and in turn, in December 1992, he dismissed
half the members of the Council of Senior Ulema, the highest religious body, because of
discernible support among Ulema for aspects of this latest petition.

The petitioners had blamed the government for the total chaos of the economy and
society, administrative corruption, widespread bribery, favoritism and the extreme
feebleness of the courts apart from denouncing the lack of political freedom and torture
by security and police. These things show very explicitly that important areas of dissent
existed within the Kingdom, among religious minorities, the approved Ulema, and the
general public. Sheikh Yamani, the former oil minister, sacked by King Fahd in 1986,
returned to prominence in late 1994 and attracted disaffected religious leaders and
concerned members of the business elite. Yamani contradicted the official Saudi line on
energy policy and other matters by issuing reports from his London based Centre for
Global Energy Studies (CGES). By 1995, the House of Saud faced growing opposition
on many fronts like from Yamani with support from Hejaz based Sunni Muslims; from
the eastern Shi’ite Muslims; from various liberal factions; and from the London based
Wahhabist Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR).

In spite of mounting cracking down and repression, the public protest did not stop. In
March 1995, various Muslim groups made an unprecedented call for coordinated
demonstrations in Riyadh, Jeddah and Hail, to coincide with the visit of US Defense
Secretary William Perry to the Gulf region. Mohammad Siddiq, a dissident leader, wrote
on 19th May 1995 to US Vice-President Albert Gore about the lack of free speech in
Saudi Arabia, the scale of repression and suppression, Saudi propaganda lies and the
extent to which King Fahd and his brothers had looted the country in these terms – “Sir,
my mood turns instantly grim every time I see you shaking hands with King Fahd, who
during the past 30 years has committed outrages including arbitrary executions, torture,
kidnapping, and jailed hundreds of Saudis who disagreed with his policies”.26

25
Ibid, pp. 316.
26
Ibid, pp. 320.

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In early May 1993 Mohammad al-Yassini, a Physics professors at a Riyadh university,
had founded the CDLR, an organization that was immediately pronounced illegal by the
Supreme Council of Ulama. In April 1994, he arrived in Britain and established CDLR
and started preaching his views, ideas and opinions in favor of social, political and
economic reforms. Once he commented – “the House of Saud are like dinosaurs. They
should die out. The government is the monarchy, is the state, is the family, and is the
mafia”.27 Like many of the states, Saudi Arabia also was born in violence and unlike
most states, its constitution, the Koran, enshrines and celebrates violence. “The sword of
Ibn Saud is revered in tradition; just as a sword, accompanied by a pious accolade, is
carried on the national flag”.28Throughout its history the House of Saud has striven to
consolidate its power and ensure its survival by the use of force against competing clans,
religious minorities and political reformers. In response to the program of US supported
violence and state security, Saudi political and religious radicals have been encouraged to
resort to force as the only practical engine of change in the Kingdom. On all the fronts –
social, economic and political, the state of Saudi Arabia is not secure. “The economy is
bedeviled by corruption, reliance on foreign work force or labor, and royal profligacy”;29
the politics is bedeviled “by an unrepresentative feudalism indifferent to human rights”;30
and the religion is bedeviled “by superstition, dogma, and a bitter factionalism with deep
historical roots”.31 In today’s age of shrinking world increasingly committed to
ideological consensus, all these things indicate a way for inevitable political and social
instability.

Wahhabist Ideology: A Source of Socio-Political and Religious Legitimacy

The state in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is more identified with the religion than any
other country in the Muslim world. The Kingdom’s religious character was reconfirmed
in 1745 when Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab allied himself with Al Saud, the
ruler of Dari’ya in central Najd. Saudi Arabia is the center of Muslim prayers and
pilgrimages with the Koran as its constitution and Shari’a as its laws. Legitimacy of the
House of Saud is based on a combination of religious and tribal dynastic factors. Since
the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia in the 1930s, as modernization began to take place in
the areas of industry, education, communication, bureaucracy, and administration, the
political has sought to maintain traditional values while developing materially. The
traditional relationships between state, religion and society have been altering for a long
time now and to understand this, one will have to understand the complex processes
behind it. The alliance between state and religion continues even today. Islam, as the state
religion and as the source of political legitimacy, shapes state policies and activities and
serves as the moral code of the Saudi society.

27
Ibid, pp. 321.
28
Ibid, pp. 325.
29
Ibid, pp. 334.
30
Ibid, pp. 334.
31
Ibid, pp. 334.

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In spite of a fundamentalist ideological orientation of the Saudi state’s Wahhabi
character, it has been found out by many excellent academic pursuits that the Saudi
Kingdom has also done many things which show its slightly flexible nature as becoming
secular. For example, the state expanded its jurisdiction to many areas which were
formerly regulated by religion or religious establishment by incorporating the Ulama in
the state administration and by regulating their activities through state laws which
ultimately depicts that because of its monopoly of power and resources and its need to
maintain autonomy, the state does not want to tolerate an autonomous religious domain
that may compete with it for the loyalty of citizens. Thus it can be said that “the state
extended its jurisdiction to the religious domain and utilized religious leaders to
legitimate its policies”.32

“The theory of the Islamic polity in its classical form did not envision the separation of
religion and politics. Since Islam had no hierarchical religious institutions analogous to
the organization of the Christian Church, the historical experience of Muslims shows the
concentration of authority in the hands of temporal power”.33 Right from the time of
Caliph, who was entrusted with the administration of justice and implementation of the
dictates of the shari’a (Islamic Law), the religious scholars began to remove themselves
from the authority of the state in order to maintain a kind of autonomy to set themselves
as the guardians and the sole interpreters of the shari’a, but due to the new realities before
the Muslim societies in modern times like the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire
following the Word War I and the threat from the dynamic Western civilization, the
“Muslims were pushed to establish modern states of their own in order to maintain their
identity”34 by introducing some changes into the relationship between religion and state
in order to accommodate the new realities.

The Saudi state, because of its monopoly on force and on resources, as well as its need to
maintain a high level of autonomy, could not tolerate an autonomous religious domain
that might compete with it for loyalty and, therefore, it extended its authority to the
religious domain and utilized religious leaders and institutions to perpetuate its policies
by using religious values to strengthen its authority and legitimacy and by suppressing
religious institutions if they challenges state authority. Saudi Arabia is one of the few
surviving monarchies whose political and social systems still rest to a very great extent
on traditional principles and practices; and whose legitimacy is primarily based on a
combination of tribal and religious factors.

In so far as traditional Islamic political theories maintain that religion and state are one
and indivisible, any proper study of Muslim politics cannot be completed without
examining it in relation to religion ,but showing a strict adherence to the limits of this

32
Al-Yassini, Ayman, Religion And State In The Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia, West View Press, Boulder and
London, 1985, pp. xi.
33
Ibid, pp. 3.
34
Ibid, pp. 3.

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study and in spite of going into the details of the various historical and theoretical
developments of the relationship between religion and state in Islam, this presentation
will try to comprehend the authentic nature and character of the Saudi monarchy as an
Islamic state with all kinds of relationships which exist between the religious and
political spheres in terms of its ideology, legitimacy and sovereignty. These theories
propose that the purpose of the state has to maintain shari’ah and enforce its ordinances –
making the state obliged not only to accept the shari’ah, but also to maintain and enforce
its principles. But in the arena of Muslim politics, this theory couldn’t be realized in
reality making the tension between vision and reality more heightened and paving a way
for the government to rule by oppression and seizure.

This disparity between the religious ideal and reality occurred due to the fact that in spite
of the shari’ah being a progressive instrument to further Islam, “it gradually lost its
dynamism and degenerated into a rigid, archaic law as a consequence of the ulama’s
inability to innovate and adapt religious law to reality”35 and also due to the fact that
“while there was an institutional de-facto separation between religion and state, Islamic
political thought continued to claim the existence of a fusion of religious and political
functions performed by a unitary structure.”36 The secular rulers of Arabia implicitly
acknowledged all the ulama’s claims of influencing political power in order to receive the
consent and approval of their authority. Since the preservation and maintenance of the
socio-religious order were/are largely in the hands of the political authority, the ulama, to
a great extent were/are dependent on the state for their survival and it is clear that this
very symbiotic relationship between the ulama and the state resulted into the confinement
of the ulama’s political participation to the accepted and legitimate level of political
activity. But the disintegration of the mighty Ottoman Empire, the advancement of
Western imperialism into the Muslim world, and the resultant disruption of the traditional
system, altered the historical pattern of the relationship between religion and state which
ultimately made the governments, which in the past needed religion to legitimize their
rule, now to become less dependent on religion due to the availability and emergence of
many new sources of legitimacy.

The three most important responses to the decline and breakdown of traditional society
have greatly expressed themselves – the fundamentalist response which argues that
“change must be governed by traditional values and modes of understanding”37; the
religious modernist response which talks about an idea of engagement in a search “for
accommodation of the shari’ah with the needs of modern life”38; and finally the secularist
response which says that “the political obligations of the individual should not be defined
by his religious affiliation”.39 Due to a characteristic disparity and incompatibility
between the ideal and the realty of the Islamic state, the unity of the religious and

35
Ibid, pp. 19.
36
Ibid, pp. 19.
37
Ibid, pp. 19.
38
Ibid, pp. 20.
39
Ibid, pp. 20.

12
political spheres advocated and forwarded by Islam has existed mainly at the theoretical
level rather than at practical level against which the Wahhabi movement protested and
later on succeeded in forming the state of Saudi Arabia which is continuing even today to
impart it with a kind of ideological legitimacy whatever the nature and character of its
sovereignty may be.

One cannot study and analyze the relationship between religion and state in the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia unless and until one examines the manner in which the Islamic ideal
affected and influenced the politics of the Kingdom and also the extent and gravity to
which this ideal has been realized in its true sense. To fulfill his twin immediate
objectives of gaining both the recognition and protection from a political leader in the
Arabian Peninsula, Mohammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab forged an alliance with Al Saud in
1740 and provided the latter an ideological rationalization of his rule in Saudi Arabia.
After the institutionalization of the Saudi state, Abd al-Wahhab continued to play an
important role in the affairs of the Saudi polity and Al Saud found the doctrinal
formulations of Abd al-Wahhab to be highly instrumental in the propagation of their rule.

Like the Abbasid and Fatimid Caliphs who came to power on the crest of religious
movements, the dependency on religious movements for legitimacy of Muslim political
leaders, including the Saudi rulers of the 18th century, is not very surprising. But the
important odd thing is that the relationship between religion and state in 18th century
Saudi Arabia was harmonious and cordial in which both the religious and political
spheres shared a complementarity of objectives because of the dependency of one’s
existence on the survival and continued support of the other. Inquiring, evaluating and
testing this durability of alliance in the context of 20th century developments, one needs
to think that given its monopoly of force and resources and its need to maintain a high
level of autonomy to what an extent the state in Saudi Arabia can tolerate an autonomous
religious domain that could compete with it for loyalty?

“All forms of political domination are admixtures of charismatic, traditional, or legal

authority. The specifications and attributes of these ideal type categories provide a useful
analytic tool for the comparison, classification, and understanding of political systems”.40
Charismatic authority can be called as a certain quality of an individual personality
through which the individual is treated as different from ordinary men and as endowed
with some “supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or
qualities”41 and this individual, to be a charismatic leaders must be viewed by his
supporters as such, and time and again he must express his leadership qualities otherwise
his charismatic authority may erode or disappear altogether. Traditional authority is based
on the belief in the legitimacy of an authority that has for long been existing and the
individual, who is exercising power, enjoys authority by virtue of his inherited status
making his commands legitimate because of its being in accordance with the customs.

40
Bendix, Reinhard, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait, Anchor Books, New York, 1969, pp. 329.
41
Weber, Max, The Theory Of Social Organisation, Free Press, New York, 1947, pp. 358.

13
Legal authority is based on some rules and regulations which are applied judiciously and
administratively to the whole society with the aid of clearly defined principles.

“The belief of the followers in the legitimacy of their leader is supported by the latter’s
ability to satisfy the needs of their society.”42 “Every system of domination will change
its character when its rulers fail to live up to the standards by which they justify their
domination and thereby jeopardize the beliefs in those standards among the public at
large.”43 Under any of the abovementioned types of political domination, the ruler
himself is subject to the specified rules and laws, but if he uses these rules and laws to his
own advantage then no doubt the beliefs sustaining the normal order related to his
charisma or traditions or legal norms will decline. “The predominance of one or another
tendency of legitimation is determined by the type of historical configuration existing in
the society”44 and in pursuance of their material and ideal interests, rulers may emphasize
the type of legitimacy that is best suited to the existing situation. For example, they can
emphasize the traditional base of their legitimacy over the legal order to accommodate
the changing circumstances.

In the process of shaping the political system and territorial base, Ibn Saud invoked a
legitimacy based on a combination of charismatic and traditional factors by using his
charisma to mobilize the Bedouins and by invoking his family’s traditional domination of
the area and ties to Wahhabism to justify his conquests and the consolidation of his
power. After the completion of the territorial development, he created the modern
administrative structures to meet the demands of a modern nation state depicting a kind
of “patrimonial rule”45, which is an extension of patriarchal system in a manner that it is
“an extension of the ruler’s household in which the relation between the ruler and his
officials remains on the basis of paternal authority and filial dependence.”46 In
patrimonial system, the leader is the center and source of authority; he is “the model, the
guide, the innovator, the planner, the mediator, the chastiser, and the protector”47; and
although he may develop a complex administrative structure to assist him in the
implementation of policies, the leader remains the center of power.

For having a kind of basic idea, fundamental conception, comprehensive understanding

and pragmatic approach towards the Saudi monarchy in terms of its ideology, legitimacy
and sovereignty, one has to look into the following things –
• The various strategies adopted by the Saudi rulers time to time in the use of
religion and the religious establishment to create the Saudi state and to
consolidate their rule.
42
Easton, David, A Systems Analysis Of Political Life, Wiley, New York, 1965, pp. 278.
43
Bendix, pp. 296-97.
44
Al-Yassini, pp. 35.
45
Ibid, pp. 36.
46
Bendix, pp. 330-31.
47
Bill, James A. and Leiden, Carl; Politics In The Middle East, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1974,
pp. 152.

14
 • The position of the ulama toward the instituted political authority.
• The consequences of the interaction between the political authority and ulama.
• The changes introduced by the Saudi rulers to the pattern of legitimacy as a result
of the discovery of oil.
• The administrative institutions established by the Saudis and their functions in the
patrimonial society.
• The position of the ulama in the new administratie structures.
• The reaction of the ulama to changes in the Saudi laws.
• The areas where the ulama are most or least influential.
• The aims and objectives of the policies introduced by the rulers and the response
of the ulama to these policies.
• The underlying assumption behind the existing process of interaction between the
ulama, the state andd the society.

In his attempt to expand Saudi rule and consolidate his authority, Ibn Saud reaffirmed
Wahhabism as a state ideology and established religiously inspired institutions to
promote and implement his policies; and in his further attempt to maintain the traditional
alliance between his family and al-Wahhab, he projected his rule as a continuation of the
first Saudi state in which the relationship between the religion and state was very cordial
one. In spite o being generally supportive of the Saud’s rule, the ulama’s relationship
with him was not harmonious and though the ulama aspired to keep Ibn Saud united to
them by a common cause, the reality of political life shattered their vision and approach.

Religion and State in the 20th Century: Ambivalences and Ambiguities

Administrative Rearrangement and the Role of the Ulama

The new innovative demands of the 20th century created a condition in which, although
Wahhabism continued to be the state ideology, the ulama were stripped of their
traditional heritage despite of the fact that Ibn Saud needed Wahhabism very much to
legitimize his rule. In this new set up, the religious institutions were made to act
according t the political needs of the Saudi authority i.e., Ibn Saud who, in earlier period,
established and strengthened the religious institutions and, in later period, dismantled
some of these institutions and restricted the activities of others depicting a remarkable
shift in the methodologies of gaining ideological legitimacy and popular sovereignty. All
this happened just to meet the challenges of the new era, which confronted Ibn Saud and
his successors and compelled them to continue the use of Wahhabism as a state ideology
and to develop a modern state as well. The recapture of Riyadh by Ibn Saud in 1902
marked the beginning of the territorial shaping of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
He received Wahabism as a state ideology, stressed the traditional right of his family to
rule the area, and used his charisma to buttress his claims.

15
 In employing religion and religious establishment to enhance his political objectives, he
adopted a two pronged strategy. On the one hand, he founded and promoted religiously
inspired institutions that provided him with general support; created group consciousness;
and promoted a common identity that cut across ascriptive ties, offered symbols that
linked society to the Saudi family, provided an organizational network to control and
direct society, and gave the ruler a royal fighting force that enabled him to expand his
rule. On the other hand, he prevented these institutions from constituting independent
centers of power lest they challenge his authority in the future. Thus the political
structures and relationships that evolved shattered the hopes of the religious
establishment to keep the king united to them by a common cause in return for
maintaining their autonomy in the determination and transmission of values and dogma to
the populace.

The development of an oil economy in Saudi Arabia ushered in a period of increased

government activities, necessitated the expansion of state jurisdiction over areas formerly
dominated by the religious establishment; led to the creation of a complex administrative
structure to implement these policies; and finally with the support of this expansion of
jurisdiction and the corresponding increase in role differentiation between the religion
and political spheres, resulted in the bureaucratization of the ulama. Currently, the ulama
appointed by the King, are dependent on the state for their survival and all their activities
are regulated by the state laws. The introduction of the secular laws to regulate most of
the state activities confined the role of ulama only to the interpretation of the civil and
criminal aspects of shari’ah and expanded the role of the secular minded individuals to
the formulation and interpretation of commercial, labor, and international laws which
shows that the state took over religion for the purpose of restructuring the system to bring
its beliefs and institutions in conformity with the national objectives.

In fact, “the political sphere enhanced its legitimacy through the rationalization of
policies in religious terms.”48 There is no doubt that while religion remains to be an
important source of legitimtion, the ulama’s traditional role in evaluating government
policy and activities has been reduced. From its proclamation as a unified Kingdom in
1932 till 1953, Saudi Arabia survived without any elaborate administrative institutions
and during this period, Ibn Saud ruled personally and informally by administering the
country as a gigantic personal household, not allowing power to be concentrated at any
point in the system. But the expansion of the oil extracting industry in the 1950s and the
subsequent increase in government revenues brought about an increasing complexity in
administrative institutions and the expansion of the jurisdiction of the government over
large areas of the Saudi society. The death of Ibn Saud in 1953 did not allow the
disintegration of the state and the Saudi state survived and the subsequent successors of
Ibn Saud like, Al-Saud (1953-64), Faisal (1964-75), Khalid (1975-82), Fahd (1982-2005)
and now Abdulla have continued to establish modern administrative structures to enhance
governmental performance that complement the traditional base of the regime’s
legitimacy. It shows that the development of complex and modern administrative
48
Al-Yassini, pp. 79.

16
institutions has certainly enabled the Saudi rulers to control society and maintain their
traditional rule.

Apart from increasing the role differentiation between the religious and political spheres,
these complex administratie institutions have also routinized state control of a broad
range of areas that were formerly dominated by religion and the religious establishment
which finally led to a situation where ulama lost many of their traditional functions and
became a pressure group limited to exerting influence over the government activities and
policies but never acting as an autonomous center of power. To understanding the
position and role of the ulama in the newly founded structures, it is necessary to outline
the evolution and characteristics of the Saudi Arabia’s administrative system. Despite the
expansion of government jurisdiction and the increase in role differentiation, the
patrimonial character of the Saudi polity remains unchanged. Since the King is the focus
of the authority, the direction of political activities is decide by him personally with the
support of senior royal family members and a complex bureaucratic structure, so there is
no doubt that because of its large size and willingness to adapt to such changing
demands, the royal family has been able to maintain its traditional role. Usually senior
members of the family are in control of major cabinet portfolios, and youngsters, after
attaining the secular and specialized education and skills, control the moiré junior
positions that insure continuity. And now it can be observed very easily that religion and
religious institution no longer constitute the educational background required by the
members of the family in order to maintain their prominence.

There is a very little correlation between the secular education and the regime’s
orientation an the introduction of the former should not be seen as making radical
changes in the regime’s socio-political views because religion sill continues to be an
important source of political legitimacy, and change is still rationalized in religious terms.
“Despite the creation of modern institutions, parochial values and attitudes remain
prevalent”49 which shows that patrimonial rule still dominates the society. He reformist
nation building measures initiated by Al Saud were an attempt to fulfill simultaneously
both the needs of religious and secular elements within the Saudi Kingdom. Showing a
consistency with the regime’s patrimonial character, Al Saud attempted to balance the
interests and activities of both groups, but without affecting the noticeable changes in the
political sphere. While promoting material development, Wahhabism was reasserted as
state ideology in Al Saud’s reign.

Increasing Demand for Political Participation

However, the experience of Saudi Arabia shows us that the process of nation building
demonstrated itself in some other form of dominating developments. For example, due to
this, the various emergent groups began to demand political participation. Despite of the
development of a complex bureaucracy, expansion of educational system, and initiation
49
Ibid, pp. 105.

17
of some other developmental programs in Al Saud’s regime, the politics remains the
exclusive preserve of the royal family. As nation building, which was necessary to
survive domestically and externally, also created groups that demanded political
participation thus creating new problems for the then Saudi regime. This dilemma
whether to share political authority with emergent groups which would mean the erosion
of patrimonial rule; or not which would intensify opposition and led to the loss of
legitimacy, Al Saud was rescued by the contemporary society in which working class was
very small and apoliticized, intellectuals were less and weak, and finally the military was
supportive of regime. The nation building process which also includes the increased
urbanization, literacy, the influx of migrant workers, the number of Saudis going abroad
etc, also increased the erosion of traditional culture and relationships.

“Eighteenth century Wahhabism seems so antithetical to twentieth century reality that

many ulama have found themselves incapable of interpreting change or affecting its
direction”50 no one can deny that the continuous use of Wahhabi ideology without
seriously modifying its content to suit the modern day realities has certainly contributed
to the weakening of the regime’s legitimacy. The Mecca insurrection of 1979 directly
questioned the King Saud of moral and religious laxity and advocated the revival of early
7th century Islamic government. “Revivalists movements are often created to express
their members’ dissatisfaction with existing conditions and their desire of cultural
regeneration.”51 They are a “deliberate, organized effort by members of a society to
construct a more satisfying culture”52

Thus the consequences of interaction between religion and state and Al Saud policies
show an unique kind of developmental experience which includes – “a quasi-capitalist
mode of development in a semi tribal traditional society; abundant financial resources
and extreme affluence in a society governed by an austere and puritanical ideology; and a
quasi-secular polity in which the ulama continue to influence national politics.”53

“The introduction of state structures has not yet resulted in a significant weakening of
state’s reliance on religion as a means for ideological control. On the contrary, religion
remains one of the main elements in battle against political change.”54 A broad
understanding of the nature, type and strength of the opposition in Saudi Arabia requires
knowledge and awareness of the political context in which it operates. Political
opposition to the royal family and to the monarchical rule is strictly forbidden and no
political parties are allowed to show any kind of disagreement with the regime’s policies
which can threaten it. This was the reason that while joining the United Nations
50
Ibid, pp. 130.
51
Ibid, pp. 130.
52
Halpern, Manfred, The Politics of Social Change In The Middle East And North Africa, Princeton
University Press, New Jersey, 1963, pp. 31.
53
Al-Yassini, pp. 130.
54
Lackner, Helen, A House Built On Sand: A Political Economy of Saudi Arabia, Ithaca Press, London,
1978, pp. 88.

18
Organizations (UNO) in 1945, the Saudis refused to sign the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights on the grounds that the Koran covers all that is necessary.

The Saudi monarchy has not suppressed its opposition only through traditional means but
meantime it has also created and developed new instruments for this purpose. For
example, a ‘State Security Law’ was promulgated in 1961, which prescribes the death
penalty or 25 years imprisonment for any person convicted an aggressive act against the
royal family or state. In fact, “the intention and effect of these policies is to spread fear
and keep people in ignorance of alternative possibilities if political life.”55 Monarchies
have been overthrown and progressive regimes set up in many of the West Asian
countries, but this did not/has not happened in Saudi Arabia just because of its objective
situation and the weakness of the opposition. “In order to give the present territorial unity
of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia more permanence, the Saudi regime is trying to combine
in the person of the King all the various elements and symbols of political power
supported by religion that have evolved from secular traditions.”56

Monarchy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Identity and Attitude

The institution of the monarchy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has traditionally been
regarded as fundamentally congruent with the Kingdom’s basic socio-cultural
characteristics which has provided a kin of popular legitimacy and durability to the
monarchy. The Saudi monarchy evolved in congruence with the Wahhabi religious tenets
of most of the society. It has also evolved in congruence with the modernization process
by initiating oil industries and by utilizing oil income to further the country
technologically and infrastructurally. “The state building approach emerges from the
assumption that a state is flexible social institution that changes over time.”57 The Saudi
monarchy, showing its characteristic dilemma, has always been trying its best to maintain
its functions as a royal institution, as royal family, and as primary representative of
Wahhabi Islam. It is struggling on all the fronts as mentioned above to keep its legitimacy
and sovereignty intact.

“The royal family controlled the country, which it regarded as its mulk (property, or
seized power), and the population; emphasized Islam to legitimize its control and justify
its policies; and used the regular police, the army, the national guard, the intelligent
services, and the religious police to control the public and private behavior of its
subjects.”58 The monarchy’s claims to religious prestige and legitimacy are entirely based
on its functions to deliver and confirm to expectations of the relevant public. Abd al-Aziz
55
Ibid, pp. 90.
56
Lipsky, George A., Saudi Arabia: It’s People, Its Society, Its Culture, HRAF Press, New Haven,
Connecticut, 1959, pp. 108.
57
Kostiner, Joseph, ed, Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of Modernity, Lynne Reinner Publishers,
Boulder and London, pp. 132.
58
Hudson, Michael C, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1977,
pp. 168 and 182.

19
Ibn Saud assumed the title of the ‘imam’ of the wahhabi community from his father in
1915 and later on he changed his titles in 1921 as ‘Sultan of Najd’, King of Hijaz’ in
1926, and finally the ‘King of Saudi Arabia’ in 1932.though the Saudi monarch is given
wide ranging authority to organize justice and even to issue decrees in areas not regulated
by Islamic law, he is no longer considered a religious scholar himself and his role ids
now only the guardian of the faith which is determined by the ulama. In 1986, King Fahd
assumed the title of Custodian of the two holiest shrines of Mecca and Medina. “As
custodian of the holy places in Mecca and Medina, a patron of the pilgrimage, and
promoter of the Islamic causes throughout the world, the King, though lacking in
religious authority, acquired religious prestige and influence at home and abroad that,
however needed to be continuously confirmed by proper conduct and policies.”59

The Basic Law of Governance, formalized in March 1992, claims the Koran and the
Sunnah as the constitution of Saudi Arabia explicitly giving ulama a central place in state
and society but implicitly circumscribing and largely curtailing their role and influence,
which the Saudi state has been doing it since the defeat of the Ikhwan in 1929-30 and its
establishment in 1932 by subjecting the ulama to government control and by converting
them into state employees. “According to contemporary Islamic thought, it is not so
much the form of government that matters but its ethico-legal foundation and its function.
Government and governance are perceived as techniques to see essential values
implemented, and those values are Islamic ones or simply Islam itself.”60 It does not
matter whether the head of the state be called emir, king, sultan, prime minister, or
president, or whether he belongs to the family of Prophet; “what matters is that he fulfills
his duties as an Islamic ruler, defending the faith, implementing the shari’ah, and
guaranteeing order.”61

Most of the Islamists in Saudi Arabia do not question the institution of monarchy as such
but call for the basic reforms and renewal of the state and society in terms of the strict
observance of Islamic modes of conduct, the practice of shura, the respect for shari’ah,
equality of all before the law, the implementation of judiciary etc. the Saudi monarchy
has always been trying to tackle the continuous challenge of legitimizing and justifying
its rule and in this process, it has demonstrated the co-existence of its kin-based set up
with bureaucratic institutions and the achievement of state control and centralization on
the basis of a mixture of diverse groups maintaining a kind of legacy of flexible political
conduct according to the needs of changing times and circumstances. The legitimacy of a
monarchy cannot be coined in absolutist terms. “Monarchies cannot claim legitimacy
inherited in ‘substantive justice’ or eternal human rights but rather in monarchies’
permanence: laws, regulations, development ideologies, and the code that holds the
hierarchy of segments together.”62

59
Kostiner, pp. 260.
60
Beinin, Joel and Stork, Joe (eds.), Political Islam: Essays From Middle East Report, University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1997, pp. 71.
61
Kostiner, pp. 280.
62
Turner, Bryan S., Max Weber: From History To Modernity, Routledge, London, 1993, pp. 185.

20
Legitimacy means “the capacity of the system to engender and maintain belief that the
existing political institutions are the most appropriate ones for the society.”63 The Saudi
monarchy has been deriving its legitimacy from different kind of sources subject to the
suitability of the changing conditions and circumstances. Its legitimacy can thus be
divided into five types – ideological, traditional, personal, eudemonic, and democratic or
structural.

“More than any other of the Islamic nations, and more than any other Arab nation, Saudi
Arabia has retained the essential elements of a value system, a set of behavior patterns for
both elite and mass like, and a political system which is in most respects an anachronism
in the modern world.”64 The Saudi monarchy, for the sake of this legitimacy, has
assumed the responsibility of maintaining the religious character of the polity and
society. “Indeed, Wahhabism, as a form of Islamic ideology, has served as an ideological
instrument in the hands of successive regimes to expand, consolidate and legitimize their
respective rule.”65 The Wahhabi ulama, even today, act as the most important legitimacy
factor of the Saudi monarchy’s policies and actions on both fronts, domestic as well as
foreign. It is very clear that serving as guardian of public morals and guarantors of
religious sanction for government acts, the ulama has played an important part in
ensuring obedience to the monarchy, and their role as guarantors of the orthodoxy of the
regime makes the latter dependant upon them in many ways, and finally this is the main
source of the power, legitimacy and survival of the Saudi monarchy today.

In turn, the monarchy, being fully aware of the importance of the ulama, does its best to
integrate and institutionalize them into the ruling elites, give them their due share in the
existing power structure and honor them in matters of protocol to make them feel as
equal partners in sharing the responsibility for policy and political decisions. Islam has
also been used in the promotion of foreign policy of the country. Saud international
behavior, while emphasizing the primacy of Islam, pursues a close strategic alliance with
the dominant western powers, and promotes moderate or pro-western regimes in the
Arab-Islamic world, with the specific aim of serving two major goals – the stability and
the security of the Saudi monarchy. There is not even the slightest doubt that “the
concern for the regime’s ‘security and stability’ has been the hallmark of the Saudi
foreign policy since its inception.”66 “The Saudi government allows Islamic political
trends to manifest themselves only to the extent that they strengthen its own religious
legitimacy.”67 The maintenance and promotion of the Wahhabist Islam is required not
only to ensure the legitimacy of the Saudi monarchy but also to maintain the internal
unity of its fragmented tribal society. From the Saudi point of view, the governing

63
Niblock, Tim, Saudi Arabia: Power, Legitimacy and Survival, Routledge, London, 2006, pp. 9.
64
Wenner, M.W., ‘Saudi Arabia: Survival of Traditional Elites’, in P. Tachau, ed, Political Elite and
Political Development in The Middle East, New York, 1975, pp. 167.
65
Alam Anwar, Religion and State: Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia, Gyan Sagar Publications, Delhi, 1998,
pp. 172.
66
Ibid, pp. 192.
67
Bari, Zohurul, ‘Islamic Revival in the Gulf: An Overview’, International Studies, Vol.31, No. 1, New
Delhi, 1994, pp. 62.

21
ideologies of Ataturkist Turkey, Bathist Syria and Iraq, and Nasirist Egypt have largely
failed to bring about the accomplishment of the their secular goals, much less give
satisfaction to the religious aspirations of the masses to their citizens. “The inability to
secure widespread consensus on governmental legitimacy, economic development with
benefits broadly shared, and true military party with the developed states has discredited
the secularizers.”68

Concluding Remarks

To understand the present it is necessary to evaluate the past, and to understand a possible
new type of emphasis on Islam in Saudi Arabia it is necessary to see the Saudi experience
in the broader framework of the various actions taken by the House of Saud in the
process of maintaining its ideological legitimacy and sovereignty, which it has been
doing successfully till today. National and economic development rested in Saudi Arabia,
as in most Muslim states, upon a tacit agreement that the political leadership would not
challenge the traditional customs, beliefs and social habits associated with Islam. In Saudi
Arabia, the House of Saud has claimed Islam is the root of and pre-requisite to
satisfactory political and economic development. There is no doubt that a basic
reexamination of Islamic doctrine and rethinking of all aspects of Islam as part of Islamic
modernism has already happened. In general, Saudi Arabia has played a remarkably
small part in the 20th century trends in Islam and this lack of participation in the major
movements of the recent past has been a major contributing factor in the cohesiveness of
Islam within the Kingdom as fractionalization along theological, political and intellectual
lines has been relatively less than in other countries.

In Saudi Arabia from its inception, Islam has been the omnipresent and dominant factor
in public life. The legitimacy of the House of Saud and the ruling elite has rested upon a
religious basis. It has been their duty to carry out the commandments of the faith, to
uphold morality and justice, and to support and supervise such religious occurrences as
pilgrimage to Mecca. The constitution of the state has been and continues to be the
Koran. Its flag, containing the Muslim declaration of faith and the crossed swords
indicative of military support for Islam, has also graphically and dramatically presented
the role of Islam in the state. The highly divergent regions, tribes, and cities have been
held together by common religion as well as by the political policies of the royal family.

In a number of concrete ways 20th century Saudi history has shown the mutual
dependence of the political elite and the ulama and the former group has been the most
visible sign of support for the strict enforcement of Wahhabi doctrines on social behavior.
But in modern times, the House of Saud has been able to show the ulama that it remains
devoted to Islam while using western technology to achieve political and military goals.
Compromises have taken place on peripheral issues such as slavery has been outlawed,

68
Dekmejian, Hrair R., ‘The Anatomy of Islamic Revival: Legitimacy Crisis, Ethnic Conflict and the Search
for Islamic Alternatives’, in The Middle East Journal, 34, 1980, pp. 1-12.

22
the private but not the public showing of moving pictures has been tacitly permitted and
feminine education has been encouraged on some conditions.

Saudi identity is as much religious as national. The state is based on a common religious
point of view, gains its legitimacy through supporting those who believe in their point of
view, and is politically dependent upon one family who carries out the dictates of the
religion. The very name of the country reflects the central role of the House of Saud. The
history of the 20th century Arabia is the history of religiously based, conservative dynasty
that has not been able to meet the challenges of nationalism, liberalism, the growing
strength of the military, the great power rivalries and now, this Saudi blend of religion
and dynasty faces challenges of new nationalist identities, socialist doctrines, social
changes and globalizing capitalism.

While the Saudi rulers pride themselves on accomplishments in maintaining a just and
relatively crime free society and in spreading education, it is the pilgrimage that is at the
heart of their sense of accomplishment. The pilgrimage has a strong emotional impact
upon most Muslims who perform it i.e. the Saudis, who host and manage it; retain
feelings of pride and special religious purpose through their role. It has a unifying effect
upon the participants. Another more subtle consequence is to confer upon Saudi Islamic
practice a pride of place and to make Saudi Islam seem normative to many pilgrims.
Pilgrims perceive the Saudis both as guardians of the holy places and as heirs to the
Wahhabist revivalist doctrines. The relatively successful administration of the mundane
aspects of the pilgrimage by the Saudi authorities has increased the gratitude of pilgrims,
their respect for the regime, and its world prestige. The relationship between the Wahhabi
religious movement and the state is firmly rooted in the protection extended to the faith
by the House of Saud. Saudi Islam depends upon practical application by the dynasty and
the men of religion so as to maintain a society where Islam is the basis of all things,
including legislation and the economy.

23
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