Saudi Arabia and the Limits of Religious Reform

Abstract

Since 2016, Prince Muhammad bin Salman, the current Saudi crown prince and the kingdom’s strong man, has taken a series of groundbreaking domestic decisions aimed at reforming the Kingdom’s brand of Islam and transforming Saudi society. Though this first spurred enthusiasm among the Kingdom’s Western partners, there were reasons to remain skeptical. This essay is intended to analyze the shifting power dynamics in Saudi Arabia and, more specifically, how they are affecting the Saudi religious establishment, its ability to exert control over Saudi society, and its ability to export its brand of Islam to the rest of the world.

Keywords:

• Wahhabism
• Salafism
• Islam
• Saudi Arabia
• religious reform

Notes

1 This essay was commissioned by the Cambridge Institute on Religion & International Studies (CIRIS) on behalf of the Transatlantic Policy Network on Religion and Diplomacy (TPNRD). CIRIS’s role as the Secretariat of the TPNRD is generously supported by the Henry Luce Foundation. The opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of CIRIS, Clare College, the Luce Foundation, the TPNRD Secretariat, or any TPNRD-participating government.

2 Author interview with officer at the Ministry of Religious Affairs, December 2017.

3 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv4ujAULRgw.

4 Al-Maliki was the author in 2012 of a noted book, which spurred immense controversy among conservatives in Saudi Arabia, entitled “The sovereignty of the Umma comes before the implementation of shari’a” (siyadat al-umma qabla tatbiq al-shari‘a).

5 Interview with a (now jailed) Saudi intellectual, January 2018.

6 See for instance Hasan al-Maliki’s book about Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab “a preacher, not a prophet” (da’iyyatun wa laysa nabiyyun).

7 Al-Hamid is a veteran Saudi reformist who has been the intellectual inspiration for the demands for a constitutional monarchy since 2003. He has produced a great number of books about religion, society and politics in Saudi Arabia. In 2013, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stéphane Lacroix

Stéphane Lacroix is an Associate Professor at Sciences Po and a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Transatlantic Policy Network on Religion and Diplomacy. He is the author of Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia (Harvard University Press, 2011), Saudi Arabia in Transition: Insights on Social, Political, Economic and Religious Change (Cambridge University Press, 2015, with B. Haykel and T. Hegghammer), and Revisiting the Arab Uprisings: The Politics of a Revolutionary Moment (Oxford University Press, 2018, with J.-P. Filiu).