The Wahhabi mission’s two-hundred-year reign as a hegemonic regional religious culture is in jeopardy. Behind a shield of Saudi authority, its doctrine, leadership, Ulema and canon excluded rival Muslim perspectives well into the twentieth century. Wahhabi Ulema discouraged travel to other Muslim lands to trade, let alone to pursue religious studies. Their doctrine of separation was rooted in the apprehension that idolatry spreads like a germ through contact with ‘non-believers’.
The first line of communication with the Muslim world opened with the rise of sympathetic revivalist trends in Arab lands and India in the late 1800s. The wall between Wahhabis and other Muslims was lowered further as a result of Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud’s pragmatic accommodation with the outside world. His desire for international legitimacy led him to suppress the Ikhwan and to adopt a flexible religious policy in Hijaz. His need for funds prompted him to invite American petroleum engineers into the kingdom. Meanwhile, Islamic revivalist trends like the Muslim Brothers afforded allies for combating western cultural advances. The decision to receive Muslim Brother refugees and then to use them as part of an Islamic foreign policy bolstered the Wahhabi mission outside its homeland, but also undermined the Najdi doctrine’s historical monopoly in Saudi Arabia.
The ostensible compatibility between the Muslim Brothers, Jamaat-e-Islami and Wahhabism made them natural allies for many years, most of all in the triumphant Afghan jihad. But the Wahhabis’ subordination of idealism to the interests of Al Saud, even to the point of endorsing the decision to request military assistance from the infidel USA, ruptured the alliance. By that time, Islamic revivalism had made inroads inside the kingdom. As Muslim Brothers obtained positions in schools and religious institutions (alternate cadre), and as young Saudis turned to books and cassettes by Islamic revivalists (an alternate doctrine and canon), Wahhabism lost its exclusive grip on public religious discourse. Revivalism’s religious nationalist narrative of modern history and its critique of corrupt, inept rulers gained wide acceptance and steadily eroded Wahhabism’s hegemony.
Since the 1970s, it has been commonplace to speculate about the legitimacy and longevity of Al Saud rule. True, the kingdom has endured a prolonged stretch of unrest since 1990. And the arrival of al-Qaeda terrorism in May 2003 caught the authorities by surprise. Nevertheless, Al Saud have weathered many a crisis in their long history and they continue to skilfully wield a formidable array of resources. Petroleum income has proven to be a blessing and a curse both. On one hand, it affords the government the revenue to employ a large, well-equipped internal security force to muzzle dissent and combat al-Qaeda. On the other hand, the spectre of princely extravagance at public expense has damaged the dynasty’s legitimacy. Another asset for the Saudis is the splintered nature of the challenges to their regime. Liberal reformers lack an institutional base and a popular following.
The Wahhabi establishment has thrown its full weight behind the dynasty’s struggle against the jihadists and hopes it will keep liberal reformers in check. Except for the jihadists, none of these factions seeks to rid the country of dynastic rule.
Early in the 21st century, the truly novel element in the Arabian kingdom is not the dynasty’s troubles but the debasement of Wahhabism’s credibility. By recognising religious pluralism in the 2003 National Dialogues, Al Saud demonstrated they possessed the power to subordinate the Wahhabi mission to dynastic interest. That step also implied a judgment that Wahhabism could no longer provide a sufficient foundation for the dynasty’s legitimacy. Wahhabism lost that capacity because of the challenges from sahwa sheikhs and jihadists dissatisfied with senior clerics’ unstinting loyalty to Al Saud. In that context, it made sense to expand the field of public religious expression to encompass Shiites, Sufis and non-Wahhabi Sunnis. These marginalised groups are eager to break down the walls of discrimination and persecution, so they participated in the National Dialogues. Whether this represents a strategic choice by Al Saud to develop a durable system of pluralism or a tactical manoeuvre in response to pressures of the moment remains to be seen. For as long as Wahhabi clerics dominate legal, educational and religious institutions, other Muslim groups will be on unsure footing. Were a period of political calm to set in, for instance, Al Saud might again close ranks with the Wahhabi establishment and force other Muslims behind closed doors.
Much of Wahhabism’s 20th century experience has been the story of trade-offs for the sake of consolidating the position of its political guardian. The Ulema gained control over education, law, public morality and religious institutions. In return, they only mildly objected to the import of modern technology and communications and they did not hamper Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud’s dealings with the British, non-Saudi Arabs and Americans. The long-term effect of their concession to the necessity of dealing with the outside world was Saudi Arabia’s integration into the international political and economic system, but its isolation from modern norms, even those taking shape in other Muslim countries. That isolation did not persist, in part because of the political decision to receive Muslim Brother refugees and the ensuing infiltration of the transnational revivalist movement. Now there is no going back to the earlier historical phase of isolation because a generation of Saudi youth has assimilated the revivalist message alongside lessons in Wahhabi doctrine.
The introduction of the satellite dish and the Internet in the 1990s ensures a deepening of connections between Saudis and the outside world. Wahhabi Ulema have used these and other communication technologies to proselytise. At the same time, they provide channels, into the kingdom, for ideas and images far more worrisome to Wahhabi Ulema than anything contained in Ottoman polemical treatises. Unless Saudi Arabia were to electronically disconnect, the long term prospect for its citizens is increasing access to ideas about Islam and many other things, without travelling to study in infidel lands. The original condition of isolation and exclusion of other views has shattered. How the various factors of Saudi politics, economic distress, social tensions and cultural angst will play out is, of course, unforeseeable.