“Sixty years with an unjust imam is better than one night without a sultan,” Ibn Taymiyya wrote in the early 14th century, during the height of the Mongol invasions. He commented on the experience of earlier Sunni scholars, who emphasized that even under an unjust ruler, maintaining order and the functioning of society was paramount; as they expressed, “If only one of our prayers can be answered, let it be for the sultan.” These ideas later underpinned the Sunni principle of siyāsa al-sharʿiyya — the use of governance and authority to preserve social and religious order.

Today, this principle is actively realized in the Gulf monarchies. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other regional states demonstrate that the logic of stability and national interest outweigh doctrinal or ideological imperatives: religious institutions remain visible, but practical decisions are made pragmatically. This extends across a spectrum of policies — from historical precedents like the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, to contemporary Saudi-Iranian dialogue, cautious engagement with Israel without formal normalization, Riyadh’s pragmatic relations with China, and the abandonment of ideological export — all within the framework of Islamic legitimacy. In this sense, Gulf strategies represent an Islamic version of raison d’état (the European concept associated with Machiavelli), where stability supersedes ideology.

Even amid “liberalization,” religion and tradition remain subordinated to governance, while adaptive practices, once obscured by rigid interpretations of Sharia, are increasingly reintegrated into statecraft. The Arab Spring revealed the limits of rigid Islamism and accelerated the return of these flexible strategies through modernization, legal reform, and conflict management — showing how historical Sunni governance principles continue to shape practical statecraft.

For Western analysts, even those versed in Middle Eastern politics, Gulf modernization, liberalization, and apparent secularization often signal a departure from religion. Yet within the Islamic intellectual tradition, what is unfolding is different: a shift from literalist normative readings of Sharia toward a state-oriented fiqh — a return, in many ways, to pre-colonial political thought. Understanding this internal logic is crucial for interpreting Gulf states’ strategies, both in external diplomacy and in balancing legitimacy with societal expectations at home.

Historical Framework: From Legal Ideal to Statecraft

The principle later articulated through siyāsa al-sharʿiyya did not emerge as abstract theology but as a response to political crisis. Within the Hanbalite intellectual milieu — closely intertwined with periods of fragmented authority and unstable rule — jurists confronted a practical question: how can an Islamic society be preserved when ideal legal conditions no longer exist?

In this context, Ibn Taymiyya systematized governance as a legal instrument. Episodes such as the Treaty of Hudaybiyya or the policies of Caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb — including the suspension of theft punishments during famine and administrative decisions regarding conquered lands — were retrospectively understood as precedents of pragmatic governance aligned with public welfare rather than strict textualism. Over time, broader Sunni scholarship developed these ideas: Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī reflected systematically on public welfare, while Abū Isḥāq al-Shāṭibī formulated maqāṣid al-sharīʿa, emphasizing that law exists to protect religion, life, property, and social order rather than enforce discrete rules.

Later Islamic polities applied these principles in practice. Ottoman governance distinguished Sharia and qanun (the sultan’s administrative law) , allowing rulers to legislate beyond classical jurisprudence, while Mamluk and late medieval administrations used juristic endorsement to justify taxation, military mobilization, and administrative reform. The modern rupture came with colonial rule and the collapse of traditional institutions, when Islamic governance was reframed as a problem of religion-state compatibility and doctrines like istiṣlāḥ receded. The irony of the twenty-first century is that these sidelined traditions are returning — not as restoration, but as modernization. Gulf states are reviving an older grammar of governance developed precisely for periods of instability, transition, and state consolidation.

Saudi Arabia: State, Scholars, and Stability

On 22 February 2026, marking the founding of the Kingdom, the enduring alliance between the House of Saud and the Wahhabi religious establishment comes sharply into focus. Since 1744, rulers have exercised authority while the Al ash‑Sheikh family, leading the Council of Senior Scholars, provided theological endorsement. The alliance was not neutral to intellectual tradition: Wahhabi‑aligned Hanbalism, with its stress on obedience to authority and rejection of competing centers of religious power, created a doctrinal environment in which governance oriented toward order and communal integrity could be legitimized without empowering autonomous clerical agendas. This intellectual foundation made possible the later appeal of doctrines like siyāsah shar‘iyya in practical governance.

Since Mohammed bin Salman’s rise in 2015, clerical institutions have retained formal authority but increasingly operate to validate state decisions rather than initiate them. Vision 2030 provides the clearest illustration. Economic diversification, women’s rights reforms, administrative restructuring, and the curtailment of the religious police were all framed by official religious channels as serving Islam: preserving unity, preventing fitna (civil discord), and promoting public welfare. After MBS’s 2021 interviews redefining the scope of religious law, the Council of Senior Scholars issued a statement affirming that these reforms “clarify the sustainable path of the kingdom” in alignment with the Qur’an and Sunnah, effectively providing a religious seal on state‑driven modernization.

The mechanisms of religious legitimation operate through institutional practices. The Pilgrim Experience Program, launched under Vision 2030 and managed through the digital Nusuk platform, transformed the hajj and umrah: visas, accommodation, transportation, and services are now coordinated digitally, while the sacred ritual remains intact. Zamzam water, historically freely distributed, is now filtered, packaged, tracked, and exported under centralized supervision. During the 2025 hajj season, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and the Grand Mufti assigned scholars to guide pilgrims, respond to inquiries, and provide spiritual instruction across holy sites, reinforcing the state’s role as custodian of religious life under Vision 2030.  The same ministry has organized thousands of religious activities and digital outreach programs during hajj to enhance pilgrims’ understanding of ritual and Islamic values while aligning these efforts with broader state priorities.  Initiatives by the Presidency of Religious Affairs to expand women’s services at the mosques further illustrate how religious institutions incorporate state‑defined goals (such as inclusivity and empowerment within the hajj framework) into their output.  Figures such as Sheikh Abdulatif al ash‑Sheikh consistently frame state interventions as necessary to protect societal order and communal well‑being, channeling classical Hanbalite concern for unity into contemporary policy support.

A similar example is Al‑Ula, a region historically treated with caution in Saudi religious discourse due to its pre-Islamic heritage and association with the people of Thamud, who were destroyed for rejecting prophetic guidance. Early Wahhabi and Salafi scholars avoided promoting the site, emphasizing warnings from hadith and Qur’anic narratives. Under Vision 2030, the Royal Commission for Al‑Ula developed the area as a cultural, archaeological, and tourism hub, integrating international partnerships and economic programming. Senior religious authorities did not issue public fatwas against the project; instead, their statements and institutional guidance framed the development in terms of stewardship, preservation, and national identity. By reinterpreting sacred associations rather than rejecting them, the state reconciled religious sensitivities with practical objectives, turning a once-avoided landscape into a sanctioned site for cultural and economic engagement.

External Policy: Multi-Vector Strategy

When the internal transformation described above is extended outward, Saudi foreign policy appears less as a series of tactical adjustments and more as an adaptation to a changing regional environment in which stability can no longer be secured through fixed alliances or ideological blocs. The shift visible under Mohammed bin Salman is therefore not primarily ideological. It reflects a structural transition from a Middle East organized around camps and identities to one defined by overlapping risks, partial guarantees, and persistent uncertainty.

During the late twentieth century, Saudi external behavior operated within relatively stable strategic frameworks. Alignment with the United States, rivalry with revolutionary Iran, and support for broadly Sunni political causes formed a recognizable architecture of order. Religious language did not merely accompany policy; it helped define political boundaries. Sectarian vocabulary and doctrinal distinctions functioned as markers of alignment in a polarized regional system where alliances were expected to be durable and identities strategically meaningful.

The regional environment that emerged after the Arab Spring gradually eroded these assumptions. American security commitments became more conditional, non-state actors gained strategic weight, and regional conflicts ceased to produce clear victories capable of stabilizing political hierarchies. Under such conditions, rigid alignment increasingly generated vulnerability rather than protection. The question confronting Gulf leadership was no longer which camp to join, but how to avoid strategic over-commitment altogether.

Saudi diplomacy in the 2020s reflects this recalibration. Engagement with Iran aims not at reconciliation but at risk containment; cautious contacts with Israel remain deliberately reversible; relations with China expand economically without replacing security dependence on Washington; rapprochement with Turkey follows years of ideological confrontation; and the reintegration of Syria into regional diplomacy reflects acceptance of political realities rather than endorsement of past policies. Considered individually, these moves appear inconsistent. Viewed together, they reveal a coherent principle: preservation of maneuverability in an environment where permanence itself has become dangerous.

What makes this evolution analytically significant is that it does not require a rupture with Islamic political tradition. Classical Sunni governance thought developed precisely for periods in which political ideals could not be fully realized and rulers were forced to prioritize order over doctrinal clarity. Concepts associated with siyāsa al-sharʿiyya and maslaha allowed authority to justify decisions according to their consequences for stability rather than their conformity to fixed political alignments. In this framework, preventing systemic disorder constitutes not a compromise with religion but one of governance’s central religiously intelligible objectives.

The role of religious institutions in contemporary Saudi foreign policy reflects this logic. Unlike earlier decades, authoritative clerical bodies rarely issue issue-specific judgments on diplomatic initiatives or security partnerships. Their public discourse instead emphasizes general ethical principles — unity, prevention of chaos, protection of society — without prescribing concrete geopolitical positions. This relative absence of doctrinal contestation should not be read as secularization or disengagement. Rather, it signals that strategic decision-making has consolidated within the state, while religious language provides a legitimizing vocabulary flexible enough to accommodate changing realities.

This distinction becomes particularly important when contrasted with popular external interpretations of Islamic politics, which often assume that religious doctrine directly dictates political behavior. Much contemporary commentary — whether critical or sympathetic — treats concepts such as necessity, concealment, or doctrinal adaptation as evidence of ideological inconsistency or hidden intent. Yet historically these same interpretive mechanisms enabled Muslim polities to survive periods of fragmentation, asymmetry, and shifting power balances. What appears from the outside as ambiguity may function internally as a recognized mode of political prudence.

Seen from this perspective, Saudi Arabia’s multi-vector diplomacy is neither a rejection of tradition nor merely the personal pragmatism of a reformist leader. It represents the extension of a state-centered logic already visible in domestic governance into the international arena. Stability is pursued not through permanent alignment but through calibrated flexibility — a strategy aimed less at shaping the regional order than at preventing its collapse from imposing irreversible choices.

For Western and Israeli policymakers, the implication is subtle but consequential. Saudi caution, delay, or simultaneous engagement with competing actors should not automatically be interpreted as hesitation or contradiction. In a regional system where alliances no longer guarantee security, strategic ambiguity itself becomes a tool of order. Understanding this logic allows Saudi actions to be read not as deviations from past commitments, but as adaptations to a Middle East in which the preservation of balance — rather than ideological alignment — has become the primary condition of political survival.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)