ABSTRACT
According to one source the Saudi ulama number in the mid-1980s 'at least 10,000', but it could well be that their number is far larger, that the three religious universities graduate several thousand students annually. Saudi Arabia's society is often described as a theocracy; its puritanical Islamic laws and regulations are maintained, it seems, more strictly than ever since the 1950s. Most ulama have become realistic since the 1950s. They tend to accept, to some degree, the limited modernisation efforts and their subordinate position in the Saud-ulama traditional alliance, since they nevertheless do enjoy a relatively high status and exercise a degree of control over everyday life in Saudi Arabia. The development of secular nationalism and pan-Arabism in the Arab world brought to Saudi Arabia, between the 1940s and 1960s, Muslim Brothers and other salafi refugees, who were persecuted by their governments, or unwilling to accept official ideologies and reforms.
