8/11/2019 MEB28

1/8

The Sword and the Book:Implications of the Intertwining of the Saudi

Ruling Family and the Religious Establishment

Dr. Ondrej Beranek

Saudi Arabia is usually described as a country dominated byreligion. Yet not many studies go beyond this, to analyzethe various aspects of the relationship between the Saudigovernment and the official religious establishment, and to

examine how that relationship has evolved and changed overtime. Related issues include the effect (if any) of clerics onSaudi policy making; their current position in, and influenceon, Saudi society; and the prospects of potential attempts atreform.

This Brief explores the historical relationship between the Saudi ruling familyand the religious establishment (ulama). Drawing on some examples fromhistory, it demonstrates how their mutual cooperation works and what theresulting implications are for Saudi society. Additionally, it argues that the

monopoly that the ulama have been granted over public education for manygenerations, in exchange for their support of the regime, poses a major obstaclein the path of necessary reform.

Because there is no representative democracyin the secular, Westernmeaning of the termin Saudi Arabia, it is religion that is, for the Saudi rulingfamily, the main and almost exclusive source of its legitimacy. Saudi Arabia isthus an example of a country in which the religious establishment serves tosupport the regimein a quid pro quo arrangement from which, as we willsee, both sides profit. And because Saudi Arabia is much more a state thana nation, the Al Saud family had to seek a viable source for bringing about anational identity. It found one in the strict observance of Islam, and in its Salafi

April 2008

No. 28

8/11/2019 MEB28

2/8

2

Ondrej Beranek is a

Postdoctoral fellow at theCrown Center. He holdsa PhD from the Institutefor Middle Eastern andAfrican Studies at CharlesUniversity in Prague.

The opinions and findings expressed in thisessay are those of the author exclusively, anddo not reflect the official positions or policiesof the Crown Center for Middle East Studiesor Brandeis University.

interpretation in particular. I will first provide some background on the meaningof Salafiyya, and then discuss the evolution of the ulamaand of their relationshipto the Saudi state.

Saudi Salafiyya

The term Salafiyya, which in Western terminology is usually misleadinglyreferred to as Wahhabism, refers, among others, to the religious doctrine derivedfrom Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (170392), who based his approach toreviving Islam on the teaching of earlier Islamic scholars, mainly Ibn Hanbal(780855) and Ibn Taymiyya (12631328).1 Salafiyya invokes the basic conceptof Islam: Muslims should follow the example of the prophet Muhammad andof correctly guided ancestors (al-salaf). Saudi Arabs, when referring to theirinterpretation of Islam, almost always speak of themselves as ahl al-sunna wal-jamaa(people of Sunna and the community of worshipers), which according totheir traditional interpretation is a synonym for Salafi.

Labeling oneself Salafi distinguishes ones doctrine from that of ahl al-bida(people of innovations). Salafists frequently invoke a hadith (saying of the

prophet) according to which the prophet Muhammad said: My community willsplit into seventy-three sects, and all of them will go to hell but onethose whofollow my way and that of my companions. The derogatory term Wahhabismwas first coined by early ideological opponents of Abd al-Wahhabs teachingsBy naming the movement after its founder, Abd al-Wahhab, its opponentsemphasized what they considered to be the irreligious nature of a doctrine createdby a man. Recently, the term has been overused in the West to describe variousunrelated movements and individuals across time and space, whose only commondenominators are a tendency to extremism and militancy, suppression of womensrights, and a strict interpretation of the Quran.

The religious belief (aqida) common to todays Salafists is one that facilitatestheir application of religious tenets to contemporary issues. It is based on ferventadherence to the concept of tawhid(the belief that God is one and unique), and astrict rejection of human reasoning that is not based on revelation. By followingthe Quran and the Sunna (the praxis and sayings of the prophet Muhammmad)Salafists aim to eliminate the mistakes caused by human bias (which isthought to threaten the clarity of tawhid) and accept only the one truth of Godscommandments. From this point of view there is only one legitimate religiousinterpretation of the Quran, and Islamic pluralism (let alone political pluralism) isinadmissible. Salafists advocate strict adherence to traditional Islamic values, anduphold religious orthopraxy as well as religious orthodoxy.

Salafists are primarily oriented toward internal events in the Islamic worldinternational relations are not their main interest. This is the major differencebetween normative Salafists and their radical branch, which in Western mediais usually called Jihadi or Salafi Jihadi. Nevertheless, all branches of Salafiyyaaccept the same religious directives and cite the same authorities. They disagreeonly in their analysis of and explanations for the current world situation, and intheir different strategies for solving the problems that the world presents.2

To a large degree, there is also a conflict between the older generation ofpuristsmainly those official Saudi ulama (ulama al-sulta) who are membersof the Council of Senior Ulama (Majlis hayat kibar al-ulama)and their younger

8/11/2019 MEB28

3/8

3

followers from the entire Middle East, who in manyinstances are drawn to the concept of jihad. The issue ofwho is the legitimate representative of Salafiyya continuesto dominate religious discourse in Saudi Arabia, and theleading official clerics are fully engaged in a battle for thehearts and minds of the public. It is necessary to note,however, that the distinction between official andunofficial clerics is quite artificial. Most of the ulamaarepaid from the state budget: They are either employed indepartments of different ministries or teach in religiousuniversities. Even those who are not seemingly paid bythe state work for organizations funded by the state or forindividual members of the ruling family.

The other ulama are composed mainly of younger clericswho do not share their older mentors apologetic attitudetoward the ruling family. Instead, they energeticallyoppose both the regime and the defensive, conservativewing of ulama. The members of this younger generationresort to many uncomplimentary names for their mentors

on account of both the latters apolitical stance and theirfocus on orthopraxy, which reflects their strenuous effortto maintain control of the social sphere and preserve theirimportance in a changing world. Among the names mostfrequently invoked are the scholars of trivialities (fortheir obsession with a whole range of issues, from falseeyelashes to athletic centers), scholars of womens mensesand impurities (for their obsession with womens bodies,and their religious rulings concerning the permissibilityof sexual intercourse with a menstruating woman), andblind people living in medieval times.

Rebellious ulama had until now always been suppressed,or lured by money to the side of the regime. That wasthe case after the first terrorist attacks in the kingdom in2003, when the Saudi government called on the religiousestablishment and many independent Islamic thinkers,who had in previous years criticized the government, forsupport. All of them, unanimously, condemned the attacks.

Individual clerics usually undergo a similar evolution. First,they experience an early phase of defiance. Subsequently,after gaining some popularity, they are imprisonedor

they are co-opted by the regime and become part of theofficial establishment. This in turn brings fierce criticismfrom the younger generation of uncompromising ulama,who believe they have a better understanding of thecomplexities of the contemporary world. This cycle seemsto be fully embedded in Saudi religious culture and isunlikely to change so long as the regime has sufficientfinancial resources to tame more radical voices who claimthat the ruling family is illegitimate.

Evolution of the Religious Establishment

Even though the interconnection of the ulama with theSaudi ruling family dates back to the eighteenth centurytheir internal composition has undergone significantchanges from those times. For one thing, the descendants ofAbd al-Wahhab (the Al al-Shaykh family) gradually figuredless and less among the clergy. The Al al-Shaykh family didnot have an uninterrupted flow of young descendants, andeachunlike the members of the ruling familyusuallyhad only one wife, or at most two wives. One completebranch of the family was also sent into exile in Egypt at thebeginning of the nineteenth century, during the militarycampaign of Ottoman viceroy Muhammad Ali (17691849)the descendants of this branch never returned to SaudiArabia. Another factor was that many members of the Al al-Shaykh family had no desire to become religious scholars.

Detailed genealogical research also reveals that since the

1940s almost no marriages have occurred between theyoung princes of the Al Saud family and girls from the Alal-Shaykh family. This traditional family of Islamic scholarswas thus simultaneously weakened in two respects: Itsrepresentation in religious circles was diminished at thesame time as its access to the royal family was significantlyrestricted.3The deterioration in the political power of theulama meant that they no longer represented the religioussentiment in Saudi societywhich in turn led to theflourishing of Islamist movements and to an enhancementin the standing of the other ulama.

Since 1929, the clergy have been de facto officers in thestate bureaucracy, and their independence has come to bequestionable.Official ulamawere formally institutionalizedfor the first time during the reign of King Faysal, whoin 1971 announced the establishment of the Council ofSenior Ulama, led by Sheikh Ibn Baz. Its members, who areappointed by the king and have varied in number betweenfifteen and twenty-five, are the only clergy who canexercise substantive political influence on the ruling familyAccording to Faysals decree, the Council should express itsopinions in matters of Sharia; advise the king on political

questions; provide religious leadership for Muslims in theareas of belief, prayers, and secular affairs; and confirm thesuccessor to the throne. In essence, an organization wascreated which would, by means of its edicts on Islamiclaw (fatwas), books, and recordings of sermons, serve kingswhenever they needed religious sanction for their policiesIts establishment marked the completion of a centralizationprocess that made religion in Saudi Arabia dependent onthe authority of the state.

8/11/2019 MEB28

4/8

4

The power of todays official ulama is weakened by theirduty to obey the ruler; ulama themselves often point outthis obligation when discussing political problems. Yetaccording to the ulamas interpretation, even a ruler whoseized power by force is legitimate, because the institutionof government is indispensable. One of the most quotedsayings in this context, based on Ibn Taymiyya, goes:Sixty years of an unjust ruler [imam jair] is betterthan a single night without a ruler [sultan].4 The onlyjustification for disobedience is when the sovereign rulesat variance with Shariawhich is precisely what todaysgeneration of radical Salafists believes with respect tothe Saudi ruling family. Nevertheless, the fatwas from theofficial ulama, whether issued on their own or on ordersfrom the ruler, have led to an unprecedented expansion ofthe range of Islamic jurisdiction in the country, mainly inthe social sphere. The dominance of Sharia law has also ledto unpredictable decisions on the part of individual clericsand unclear doctrine in some areas.

The Most Prominent Ulama

Today we can find among the official Salafi ulama bothmoderatesAbdallah al-Hamid, Abdallah al-Subayh,Abd al-Aziz al-Qasim, and Abd al-Aziz al-Khudr, amongothersand hard-linersSheikh al-Jibrin, Nasir al-Umar, and Sheikh al-Hudhayfi, to name just a fewwhoare known for their intransigence with respect to otherschools of thinking. (In 1991, for example, al-Jibrin issued afatwabranding Shiites as unbelievers and demanding theirdeath.) These hard-liners are usually more favored by theyounger generation, who are prone to commit violence inpursuing their goals.

In the last decades, two prominent sheikhsSheikh IbnBaz, the former highest mufti of Saudi Arabia, and SheikhMuhammad ibn Salih al-Uthayminbecame embodimentsof institutionalized ulama. Sheikh Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz(191299) came to be regarded as a leading religiousscholar. A characteristic sign of Ibn Bazs doctrine wasopen animosity toward Christians and Jews, whom heconsidered to be polytheists. Ibn Baz also promoted a

new type of jihad: economic jihad (jihad bi l-mal). This ideawas notably implemented in the eighties and nineties,when Saudi philanthropists funded the propagationof Salafiyya throughout the world. At the same time, IbnBaz demonstrated how the ulama were prepared to givein to the king when it came to an important politicalquestionas when he issued a fatwa to authorize thepresence of foreign armies on Saudi soil in 1990, andwhen he endorsed the Oslo peace accords between Israeland the PLO three years later. His influence on the Salafi

movements was immense, and many of the prominentulamaof the kingdom today are former students of his.

Muhammad ibn Salih al-Uthaymin (19252001)contributed many fatwas in the area of religiousorthopraxy, mainly through the prism of the prohibitedand permissible. Both Ibn Baz and al-Uthaymin gainedwidespread popularity owing to their religious eruditionand as a result were able to successfully support thepolicies of the ruling family. Since their death there hasbeen a vacuum in the country, which the new highestmufti,Abd al-Aziz Al al-Shaykh, has not yet succeeded infilling.

Among the most quoted official authoritieswho fromtime to time may differ from one another regardingsubsidiary juridical matters (furu), while concurringwith respect to the fundamentals of law (usul)areMuhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (191499), a well-known hadith scholar and a fiery opponent of political

activism (harakiyya) and violence; Sheikh Salih ibn Fawzanal-Fawzan (1933), noteworthy mostly on account ofhis regard for Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab; andSheikh Rabi ibn Hadi al-Madkhali (1931). The last hasbeen active in battling both extremism and the blatantoveruse of takfir(branding others as unbelievers). He hasalso been conspicuous in labeling more radical clericswith the term Qutbiyya, derived from the name of SayyidQutb (190666), an important ideologue of the EgyptianMuslim Brotherhood who was executed for attemptingto overthrow the regime. Al-Madkhali applied this termin particular to Safar al-Hawali and Salman al-Awda, twoprominent ulamafrom the younger generation who gainedpopularity at the beginning of the nineties by criticizingthe Saudi government for allowing deployment of theUnited States army in the country. Al-Madkhali accusedthem of being influenced in their methodology (manhaj)by people like Sayyid Qutb and his brother MuhammadQutbwho, after his release from prison in 1972, tookrefuge with other Muslim Brothers in Saudi Arabia andalso became a teacher of al-Hawali. Al-Hawalis and al-Awdas main error, in the eyes of al-Madkhali, lay in theirincitement of youth and their encouraging the general

population to indulge in takfir with respect to othersand to rebel against the authoritiesbehavior that wasnaturally opposed by the official establishment.5

The Saudi government also mobilized some of its formerlymilitant clerics in a campaign aimed at stemming thecontinuing appeal of al-Qaedas ideology in the kingdomand reeducating hard-liners. An example of a nowmoderate official cleric would be Sheikh Abd al-Muhsinal-Ubaykan, who, together with the highest mufti ofSaudi Arabia, Abd al-Aziz Al al-Shaykh, called for calm

8/11/2019 MEB28

5/8

8/11/2019 MEB28

6/8

6

power and absolute submission to the ruling authority. The official ulamaargue thatsubordination to the legitimate ruler is better than anarchy and chaos. They areaware of the fact that the ascendancy of their interpretation of Islam is inseparablyconnected to the existence of the ruling familyon whose support, they believethe proper conduct of the society depends.

The official ulamacontinue to exert immense influence on Saudi society, but mattersof state politics remain out of the reach of their fatwas. Saudi Arabia operatesin some respects as a religious society, but its political sphere is permeated bysecularism and governed by thinking grounded in national security concernseconomic interests, and foreign policy issues generally. It is this contradictionbetween rhetoric and reality at the level of both the individual and society that isresponsible for the violence in Saudi Arabia, and the voices of dissent.6

Especially after 9/11, there has been a lot of pressure on Saudi Arabia to proceedtoward reforms and democratization. But many such calls reflect the lack of a deepunderstanding of Saudi realities. The very survival of the current Saudi regime isbuilt on the intertwining of the Sword and the Book. The ruling regime providesthe clerics with money and the means to spread their message. The official ulama, inreturn, provide the regime with legitimacy, and for the most part do not interfere

in the realm of politics. When they do so, it is usually with only one purpose: tosupport the regimes decisions and eliminate any potential voices of dissent. Thegovernment has the exclusive say in the areas of national security, defense, theeconomy, and foreign relations; the clerics control the public sphere, educationreligious indoctrination, and, to some degree, the dissemination of their teachingsabroadalthough in the last case their authority has in many instances beenovertaken by more radical elements.

In such a setting, it is hard to push for more religious and political freedom, or forswift reforms. It would be very difficult to forcibly reform a society that for manygenerations has been educated by a religious establishment telling it that theWest and its values constitute one of the main threats to its way of life and itsbeliefs. Consequently, reforms cannot be achieved without changing education inthe kingdom and opening the public sphere to alternative religious interpretationsBut the question is whether the ruling family could afford such reformswhichwould, ipso facto, deprive it of its raison dtre. If the regime separated religionand state, it would automatically lose its main source of legitimacy and appear un-Islamic in the eyes of its radical opponents.

Salafiyya today functions as both a moral code and unifying factor in Saudsocietyand as an ideological instrument of the regimes legitimization. But theulamas sway over the shaping of values and attitudes in Saudi society presents asubtle and silent threat to the regimes authority. As Saudi Arabia enters a period

of changecharacterized by population growth and the radicalization of someelements of the society, amidst a complicated regional situationthe ulama willikely raise a louder voice for adjusting the power-sharing relationship betweenthem and the ruling family and demand a more influential role in Saudi politics.

8/11/2019 MEB28

7/8

7

Endnotes

1 There are many debates over the teaching and terminology of Wahhabism.See mainly Pascal Mnoret, The Saudi Enigma: A History(New York: Zed Books,2005); Madawi Al-Rasheed, Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a NewGeneration(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); David Dean Commins,The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia(New York: I.B.Tauris, 2006); and NatanaJ. DeLong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad(New York:

Oxford University Press, 2004). Today the term is contested not only by the Saudisthemselves, but also by Western scholars. Some of them incline to Salafiyya;others keep using Wahhabism with the intention of preserving all of its negativeconnotations. And others adhere to this old name simply because a known erroris better than an unknown correctness (Madawi Al-Rasheed, Contesting the SaudiState, p. 2).2 For an excellent overview of this subject, see Quintan Wiktorowicz, Anatomyof the Salafi Movement, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism29 (2006): pp. 20739.3 For a more detailed account of the status of the ulamain the twentieth centuryand the changes in their ranks, see Alexander Bligh, The Saudi Religious Elite(Ulama) as Participant in the Political System of the Kingdom, International Journalof Middle East Studies17 (1985): pp. 3750.4 Ibn Taymiyya,Al-Siyasa al-shariyya fi islah al-rai wa al-raiyya(Beirut: Dar al-afaqal-jadida, 1983): p. 139.5 For the treatises of official ulama, see, primarily, www.salafipublications.com,along with their respective web pages (all in Arabic): www.binbaz.org.sa, www.bin-baz.org.sa, www.ibnothaimeen.com, www.alalbany.net, www.alfawzan.ws,and www.rabee.net.6 Madawi Al-Rasheed, Contesting the Saudi State, p. 58. For an explanation of theulamas insistence on total submission to political power, see mainly the firstchapter of this book.

* Weblinks are available in the PDF version found at www.brandeis.edu/crown

8/11/2019 MEB28

8/8

The Sword and the Book:Implications of the Intertwining of the Saudi Ruling

Family and the Religious Establishment

Dr. Ondrej Beranek

Recent Middle East Briefs:Available on the Crown Center website: http://www.brandeis.edu/crown

Asher Susser, Jordan: Preserving Domestic Order in a Setting of Regional Turmoil,March 2008, No.27

Dror Zeevi, Clans and Militias in Palestinian Politics, March 2008, No.26

Marc Lynch, The Brotherhoods Dilemma, January 2008, No.25

E. Roger Owen, One Hundred Years of Middle Eastern Oil, January 2008, No.24

Abdel Monem Said Aly, Understanding the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, December2007, No.23