Saudi Arabia

Situated between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and home to two of its holiest cities, Mecca (Makkah) and Medina. Deriving its name from the regnant Al-Sa'ud family, Saudi Arabia was founded in September 1932, but the ruling family's legitimacy dates back to an alliance brokered in 1744 with the Sunnī theologian Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792). al-Wahhab's sociomoral revivalist form of Islam continues to inform governance, culture, and commerce in the predominantly Sunnī Muslim kingdom.

Conjoining temporal and religious authority, the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia represents the third state formed by the Sa'ud family. The first state (1744–1818) cemented the Sa'ud's partnership with al-Wahhab and his adherents, the Muwahhidun. The first Saudi-Wahhabi state collapsed in September 1818 after capitulating to the Pasha Muhammad Ali's Egyptian army (backed the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II), but a second state was reestablished shortly thereafter (1824–1891). Beset with internecine struggles and local opposition (from the Ottoman-supported Rashidi family), the Sa'ud Dynasty could not sustain political control during the second state beyond the Ottoman eyalet of Nejd.

By 1902, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn'Abd al-Rahman Al Sa'ud, or Ibn Sa'ud (1880–1953) rallied Bedouin tribes and Wahhabi Ikhwan soldiers, and over the next 30 years, he consolidated territories and spread Wahhabi doctrine across the Arabian Peninsula. By the 1920s, restive Ikhwan, who sought a more aggressive campaign of proselytizing, fomented rebellion, which Ibn Sa'ud eventually quelled with British assistance.

From its inception in 1932, Saudi Arabia integrated Wahhabi clerics into government institutions. The most powerful Wahhabi consultative body, Council of Senior Ulama, continues to vet the monarchy's policies for adherence to Shari'a law. Moreover, the Saudi state invests clerical police, Mutawwa, with legal authority for ensuring the promotion of virtue and prevention of vices.

Since the discovery of oil in 1938, the kingdom has balanced economic interests and concomitant geopolitical implications as the world's leading petroleum exporter with historical commitments to Wahhabi devotional strictures. Complicated by petroleum's strategic importance, this equipoise has conflicted with political and religious fidelities to the kingdom's citizens as well as Muslims residing outside Saudi Arabia. During the 1990 Gulf War with Iraq, the government was criticized by clerics and citizenry for allowing the United States to station troops in Islam's birthplace. In response, the government reaffirmed its obligations to Islam in the Basic Law (1992). To emphasize the king's role as fidei defensor, Saudi monarchs since 1986 have taken the honorific “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” thereby accenting the kingdom's historic importance for Islam.