In the mass of popular commentary that considers the putative links between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Islamic militancy, one thing conspicuously absent is a sense of history or, more to the point, an accurate sense of history. The emotions of 9/11 dominate the historical understanding rather than the reverse, a situation that does little to restrain a reflexive leap towards accusatory phobia. As a result, much of the writing errs fundamentally in positing an identity between the understanding of the Faith that the Kingdom's government promotes as the nation's defining construct of moral principles and religious beliefs and a violent, politicized Islam. In insisting on this false identity, one obscures the deep complexity that is religious dissent in the contemporary Kingdom.

Although the phenomenon of Islamic fervor is rooted in the very origins of the Kingdom, it arose as a direct challenge to the then-existing establishment rather than anything akin to an ethos that directed the policies of its founder, Ibn Saud; and the very success of Ibn Saud's political vision was contingent on the defeat of such zeal.

Looking Back…

During the establishment of the Kingdom under Ibn Saud, the greatest threat to the coherence of the emerging order did not arise from other competing centers of political power in the Peninsula built around prominent families in control of strategic urban sites.  Examples included the House of Rashid based at Ha'il in north central Arabia, and the House of Hashim which controlled the principal cities of the Hijaz, the sacred sites of Mecca and Medina, and the port city of Jeddah. Rather and with no little irony, it came from a number of exceptionally powerful and independent Central Arabian tribes, so-called noble ('asil) tribes including the 'Ujman, 'Utaiba, Harb and Mutair, that had important roles in the extension of Ibn Saud's political dominion.

The weight of these tribes in Peninsular politics necessitated a substantial effort by Ibn Saud to envelop them in his order, an effort that embraced both 'social engineering' (settlement in agricultural communes - hujar) and ideological (sectarian proselytization) components. Although these programs did work to ally tribal interests with those of Ibn Saud - those who granted allegiance to Ibn Saud collectively became know as the Ikhwan (the Brotherhood) - there was at the root of this relationship a dynamic balance of tension¹.

The 'asil tribes imagined a political order in which the House of Saud did not dominate the emerging system but served as the first among equals. In broader terms, the tribal leadership resisted any form of unification that would undermine a defining aspect of Peninsular life - the balance of power between the nomadic and settled populations, the badu and the hadhar. However, Ibn Saud's determined pursuit to centralize power in his hands demanded that the political power of the tribes be marginalized.

The Ikhwan, in its efforts to attain the status of an elite within the emergent order, defiantly and defensively expressed a zealot's commitment to the Islamic ideology that infused politics. In a sense, the movement - and, in particular, the religious ardor that characterized it - may be considered an ideological expression of these tribes' drive to retain their political significance. The movement was a manifestation of the tribes' objection to their marginalization by Ibn Saud rather than an avid reflection of their service to him or, indeed, an accurate expression of the kind of order Ibn Saud hoped to foster. They deftly challenged Ibn Saud by adopting a 'holier than thou attitude' that questioned his support of and dedication to the Faith, precisely the grounds he sought to employ to legitimize his own political domination. Their fevered calls that chastised Ibn Saud for his supposed insufficient level of commitment to the 'true' Islam mirrored their desire to preserve what they considered to be the authentic social order.

Tactically, they sought through their ideological challenge to limit Ibn Saud's involvement with external powers, notably Great Britain, by denouncing them as unbelievers (kuffar) and prohibit his access to foreign technologies by condemning these as an example of illicit innovation (bid'a). The Ikhwan understood that it was precisely such relationships and such technologies (e.g., the wireless and the automobile) that provided Ibn Saud invaluable political, financial and material support. Their militant adherence to Islam sought to curtail the opening to the outside world that would contribute, ultimately, the upending of the prevailing homeostasis between settled and nomadic communities. This tension culminated in a rebellion in the late 1920s out of which Ibn Saud emerged victorious, a result directly dependent on his success in retaining the allegiance of central Arabian 'ulama for his political program against the militant expression of the Faith espoused by the Ikhwan.

The contrast between the imagined Kingdoms of Ibn Saud and the Ikhwan was made explicit during the Hijaz campaign. The Ikhwan reportedly acted like marauding Bedouin with a willful destructiveness justified by their purposeful militancy. But the imposition of a regime marked by an intolerant version of Islam would not have been acceptable to Ibn Saud, neither in the Hijaz nor anywhere else. Among other things, it would have disrupted pilgrim flows to the sacred cities, an important source of revenues, and undercut his government's acceptance by the wider Muslim world, jeopardizing the international legitimacy that formed a vital component to his state-building program. Equally, the Islamic militancy practiced by the Ikhwan would have jeopardized Ibn Saud's objective of unifying quite diverse regions within a single state structure.

The victory over the Ikhwan confirmed the nature of Ibn Saud's governance. Drawing on the support of 'ulama who rejected political turmoil (fitna'), Ibn Saud instituted an eminently pragmatic blending of religion and politics: a non-militant and moderate (at least by the standards of central Arabia) understanding of the Faith, enabling him to legitimate his regime while carefully engaging with the West - initially Britain but by the end of WWII predominately the United States - selectively absorbing technological expertise and materials, and establishing productive relations with external governments and organizations. That Ibn Saud was able to 'square the circle' was due to a complex mix of factors that included his own political prowess, acuity and breadth of vision; a prevailing outlook on the part of the Najdi 'ulama to disavow a destabilizing and destructive militancy; and the fact that the principal institutionalized form of technological and Western intrusion into the society during Ibn Saud's lifetime, and for quite some time thereafter, was the oil company. This latter type of organization presented a very minimal 'socio-cultural' footprint yet yielded substantial gains to the political order, not least in the form of a source of direct revenues and eminently useful technologies that supported infrastructure development.

…Towards the Future

The political order worked to forestall a reemergence of a militant form of Islam for a period of two decades after the death of Ibn Saud. However, the first harbinger of a reawakened militancy occurred, in a seemingly paradoxical manner, in 1979, the very decade whose outset was marked by a development - the quite extraordinary leap in oil income - that would have been expected to only strengthen the political order and preclude political opposition. The event was the violent occupation of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest site. One commentator² with a fair amount of creative license termed the event 'the return of the Ikhwan.' That it certainly was not; the ability, indeed desire, of the 'asil tribes of central Arabia to act as a powerful oppositional force had been curtailed by the House of Saud years before.  However, what the appellation captures is that the perpetrators represented a religiously legitimized, unequivocal and violent challenge to the rule of the House of Saud. The militants' religious zeal may have looked back to the rebellious tribes, but the roots of their militancy looked forward, an early reflection of a deep aversion to the nature of social change in the modern Kingdom.

This example of a contemporary militancy reinforces two basic points made earlier. First, militancy in the Kingdom is a profound and at times violent resistance to government policy; it is not, as some commentators insist, a phenomenon that evidences the ruling family's support for militancy to enhance a tenuous claim to power. (One does not feed a fire to contain it, one must isolate it.) Second, the Kingdom's interdependency of Faith and Realm remains problematic, with the simultaneous need to express fealty to the Faith while meeting the requirements of the Realm generating an inevitable source of tension.

Two other points should be made as well. First, militancy today does not appear to be grounded in traditional social structures. Rather, it is a reflection of the breaking down of those structures and, as such, can be likened to a symptom of modernity. Second, militant violence remains a rarity in the Kingdom - evidence that it is an event that occurs at the political margins and lacks general appeal - while a vocal political opposition appears to be growing. While both militancy and opposition are generally cast in religious terms, they need to be seen as quite distinct forms of dissent and requiring different responses. To lump them together and respond to both in a unitary fashion is likely to force all opposition towards a militant expression.

Change and Challenge

While the roots of today's religious dissent are undeniably complex, they reflect at a minimum two dominant aspects of the Kingdom's current social reality.  On one hand, they reflect the overwhelming sense of the presence of the external world in the domestic affairs of the Kingdom (perhaps the most visible and enduring aspect of which is the substantial number of expatriates engaged in the economy). On the other, they reflect a society that is increasingly urbanized. 

Equally important, the dominant method of enculturation raises difficulties just as it tries to resolve them. State sponsored efforts focused on development have included a massive investment in social programs, notably an educational system designed not simply to convey knowledge but to foster a sense of national identity among the Kingdom's young. Societal proclivities and governmental inclinations have resulted in an educational system with a distinct bias towards Islamic instruction, although, dating from long before 9-11, there has been clear evidence that a growing number of national leaders recognize the need to reassess the country’s educational system as a whole.   Failure to do so, many are aware, will likely do little, if anything, to address effectively the challenge of finding meaningful employment for the educational system’s graduates.  

While the programs for social and economic development run in parallel, they are not readily complementary. One much discussed example of this is a population of college graduates lacking in the requisite skills to effectively participate in and contribute to the needed expansion of the Kingdom's economy. Indeed, the juxtaposition of these programs generates a wide spread social dissonance. This, in turn, has had the virtually inevitable effect of stimulating a strong and vocal critique that will be expressed primarily in an Islamic idiom and voiced most persuasively by the 'ulama. This is not to say that the government has ignored the problem. It screens its textbooks for anti-Western passages; it is revamping its curricula and its teaching methods; and it is dramatically increasing the teaching of the English language.

Nonetheless, the foregoing suggests that whether the government likes it or not, an Islamic oppositional discourse has become a deeply ingrained facet of the Kingdom's political life. The political order is tasked today with reaffirming its legitimacy in a society wherein traditional structures are weakened, socio-economic problems are in the ascendancy and ideological appeals are freed of governmental control. The trick for the government is to be able to effectively distinguish between those who voice a widely resonant critique in an effort to rejuvenate the order, on one hand, and those with a militant agenda whose prime objective is to overturn it, on the other. Fortunately, the ruling family's history of separating wheat from chaff is quite good because not to do so is, in effect, to close off the possibility of dialogue, a state of affairs that can only serve to transform those individuals who are swayed by the critique into individuals who become proponents of violence.

Learning to Live With Criticism if not Love it…

The government cannot ignore the criticism and not merely because it is so wide spread. Critically, an oppositional discourse framed by reference to Islam challenges the political order where it is most vulnerable and in terms that the government may find most difficult to refute convincingly. For one thing, problems that beset the Kingdom's society - unemployment, falling income, an increase in criminality - will not necessarily be interpreted as complicated issues that are not easily resolved.  Given the opposition of various clerical figures to the country’s leadership, it is likely that some will attribute such difficulties to the government's failure to have acted in accordance with Islam. Problems will be judged almost reflexively from an ideological perspective, and since a 'true' Islamic society would not by definition engender such problems, there will inevitably be those who allege that the government must be derelict in its duty to promote Islam. Such vocal opposition never simply represents an attack on government policy, or lack there of; it is an attack on the very legitimacy of the political order.

Nor can the state easily contain it. The Kingdom's government has sought to ensure a state-sanctioned understanding of the Faith by enveloping senior 'ulama in the government bureaucracy. One example of this effort is the Committee of the Higher 'Ulama. But this does not assure the government of anything like the degree of control it would wish. For one thing, an effort to institutionalize the Faith goes against the weight of Islamic history, a history that impeded efforts to provide for a single incontrovertible source able to elucidate what is or is not authentic Islam. In addition, the government's educational system has created a cadre of younger 'ulama who are outside the boundaries of obvious state control. Their training has granted them religious legitimacy that includes the traditional authority to preach and issue religiously sanctioned edicts (fatwa).

Nor can the state simply repress it. Repression of those who articulate grievances that resonate widely can only enhance their status, undercut the government's credibility as an agency willing and able to address perceived problems, and, as noted above, potentially induce individuals towards militancy.

A key concern among a number of the younger 'ulama³ is what they perceive to be a growing 'secularization' of the Kingdom manifested in changing social attitudes among the population and promoted by governmental policy. The innovations (bid'a) against which the Ikhwan fulminated were often technological in nature; the innovations that so exercise these younger politicized 'ulama today are hardly those - they enthusiastically employ technological devices to spread their message - but the emergence of behavioral patterns and outlooks deemed inherently alien to the indigenous society, and indeed to Muslims anywhere. In their view, these developments threaten the very essence of the Kingdom with the source of such 'contaminants' identified as the West and more specifically the United States. For these 'ulama, nationalistic concerns mingle with religious ones, a blend that likely heightens their appeal.

A sense of subjugation to the United States that figures prominently in a good deal of contemporary sermonizing was lent weight and credence by the US troops based in the Kingdom in the aftermath of the war to liberate Kuwait in 1991. While the imminent removal of the vast majority of these troops will eliminate an obvious locus for this discontent, it will not eradicate the overarching problem of how to integrate a core concern of imagined authenticity with a process of development that necessarily involves the external world.

A questionable view has come to prevail within the US media that the Kingdom's leadership acts to deflect domestic concerns about pressing social issues by permitting, if not encouraging, denunciations from the pulpit of the US.  Yet, resentment towards the US and angst over social change cannot be traded off, one against the other.  The two are inextricably linked, a matter of which the Kingdom's leadership is undoubtedly aware.  Not only would such a ploy prove ineffective, it runs directly counter to a key aspiration of the political order originally enunciated by Ibn Saud:  engagement with the West to meet a broad array of development objectives.  Regrettably, the broad and unequivocal condemnation of the Kingdom in the aftermath of 9/11 by America's mainstream media served the interests of militancy by amplifying within the Kingdom's populace a perception promoted by fervent rejectionists that the US was indeed a direct and determined threat to Saudi society.  

While the younger 'ulama remain a direct and powerful challenge to government complacency, they also represent a potentially invaluable opportunity. Critically, a number of the most popular do not invoke violence nor do they reject outright a centralized political order controlled by the House of Saud. They are political 'lightning rods,' individuals who, with their popular appeal, their religious credibility, and their nationalism, could be of immense use to the government in containing and channeling discontent.

Importantly, there have been signs of a government effort to distinguish between those whom the government can and must engage, and those whom it must isolate. Two of the most significant of the younger 'ulama, Safar al Hawali and Salman al 'Auda, have been released from prison while in the last few months a number of the religiously trained individuals employed by the state to direct activities in the Kingdom's mosques have been removed because of incendiary rhetoric⁴. Such moves manifest a recognition that establishing a beneficial modus vivendi with certain oppositional elements is vital in defeating an Islamic militancy for whom compromise is out of the question.

…To Confront a Deadly Enemy

The Kingdom's struggle with Islamic militancy was thrown into tragic relief by events in the second week of May when bombs exploded in a number of residential compounds in Riyadh favored by expatriates. The tactics, both in methodology and target, strongly suggest the involvement of al Qaeda and certainly reflect that organization's central goal of eradicating the US presence in the Kingdom.

That residential compounds were selected was not due simply to the fact that they were 'soft' targets used by expatriates; these facilities are understood as symbols of 'foreign contamination' exhibiting a lifestyle that is allowed to avoid having to conform to the social and religious strictures of the broader society. Moreover, by targeting sites where not only expatriate employees would be but their wives and children as well only served to amplify the horror and reinforce for some an instinctive response to depart the Kingdom. It is also notable that while previous terrorist attacks during the 90s - the Saudi Arabian National Guard Training Mission headquarters in Riyadh and the US military barracks in al Khobar - were undertaken with an apparent effort to limit if not preclude Saudi Arab deaths, such a concern was not evident in the latest bombings. Indeed, it is not merely foreigners and their 'alien ways' that are under attack but those Saudi Arabs who would consort with the former and adopt the latter. In fact, two-thirds of the residents in the targeted compounds were Saudi citizens or other Middle Easterners. It was an attack, therefore, not merely on the United States, or more broadly the West, but on Saudi society and the manner of its adaptation to the external world.

For the Saudi state, the bombings should reverse any sense of complacency about the nature and imminent dangers of Islamic militancy. Crown Prince Abdullah's powerful and impassioned denunciation of the attacks, an address that, critically, highlighted the linkage between those whose words would incite or justify such carnage and the actual perpetrators, demonstrated an appreciation both of the problem and wherein a solution must ultimately lie. 

But in recognizing the need to respond appropriately and aggressively to this terrorism, it is important not to miscast the dangers.  There is nothing to suggest that the terrorists themselves are anything but a marginal element in Saudi society. The dimensions of the horror wrought by such explosions are not synonymous with the size of the group that carried them out. Indeed, the very timing of the attacks, no more than a week after the Saudi security forces uncovered a terrorist cell in Riyadh, does not necessarily indicate the beginning of a sizable campaign.  Just as plausible could be the possibility that the attackers decided to mount the campaign out of fear of being apprehended. 

More generally, and following on the insights of Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy, the recourse to terrorism is, arguably, evidence of a failure by the militants to mobilize the broader society to accept their political objectives. It is, therefore, essential that the government's response be both determined and subtle, attuned, as noted above, to the need to distinguish between those who are opposed to aspects of Saudi society yet seek a peaceful resolution, on one hand, and those who reject outright contemporary Saudi society with violence as the only recourse, on the other. It is equally important that the US agencies now gathering in Riyadh to participate in the investigation display sensitivity to the Saudi government's difficulties. President Bush's declaration that the terrorists will not escape 'US justice,' while understandable within an American context, may not resonate well within the Kingdom. The terrorists, above all else, must be brought to 'Saudi justice.'

It may be that the very horror of these attacks will, in the end, be the factor that works most effectively to isolate the terrorists from the broader society. By attacking a person's home, by murdering outsiders who are guests of the Kingdom, by slaughtering the innocent, and by pursuing violence without justified provocation, the terrorists have acted in violation of profound religious and social norms that frame Saudi society. Saudi society is not merely shocked but appears to be expressing a near universal anger and revulsion that must be exactly the opposite of what the terrorists would have wanted; not only have they put themselves beyond the pale, but they have demonstrated the horrific void that is their politics.

Usama bin Laden's effort through al Qaeda to reconstitute the ummah, the idealized global Islamic community, is the Islamic militant's riposte to the processes of globalization. Only through the ummah can the purported hegemony of the West in a globalized world be appropriately and effectively challenged. And with the heart of the Islamic world - the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina - located in the Kingdom, overturning the latter's political order, an order that has been predicated on a positive relationship with the West, becomes a critical objective.

The terrorism offered by al Qaeda challenges the Kingdom to devise a peaceful and more effective response to the encounter between Islam and modernity, reaffirming the vision of Ibn Saud that the country could indeed retain its Faith while partaking of the world's material benefits. It remains for his descendants, as they have done in the past, to not only imagine that Kingdom but make it possible, a goal that is not only critical to the Kingdom but to the United States as well.

End Notes

1.  See the excellent essay by the historian Joseph Kostiner, On Instruments and their Designers:  The Ikhwan of Najd and the emergence of the Saudi State, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (July 1985) for an evaluation of the relationship.

2.  See James Buchan's highly literate and insightful essay, The Return of the Ikhwan, published as Chapter 25 in David Holden and Richard Johns, The House of Saud (Holt Rinehart Winston, New York:  1981)

3.  An invaluable introduction to the background and thought of a number of these younger 'ulama can be found in Mamoun Fandy's Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (St. Martins Press, 1999)

4.  Press reports indicate that some 100 individuals have been removed from mosque-related positions representing about 1% of the total number of those employed in such jobs.

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