ABSTRACT
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. 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 several religious universities1 graduate several thousand students annually. Indeed, the most important fields of ulama activity — justice, education and Hajj — became formal ministries whose heads are members of cabinet chaired by the King. The Mecca rebellion of 1979, rather than exposing the regime’s vulnerability, underlined its strength and the dependence of the establishment Wahhabi ulama on their traditional alliance with the Sauds. The historic alliance between ‘church and state’ in Saudi Arabia and regime’s golden rule of consultation and consensus in its relations with the ulama thus clearly guaranteed the latter’s legitimisation of the Sauds.
