For decades, Saudi Arabian rulers relied on a religious establishment that oversaw religious worship, oversaw the Islamic law, and supervised the religious life of mosques and public entities. This relationship has changed considerably. Religious institutions are still important to Saudi society, but the state has begun exercising far more control over how they function. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is not attempting to remove religion from public life in Saudi Arabia. Instead, he is trying to determine who exercises religious authority and how the religious institutions function inside the state.
Religious institutions are still important to Saudi society, but the state has begun exercising far more control over how they function.
The clearest example of the transition came in 2016 when the government curtailed the power of the religious police. A new regulation prohibited the religious police from following, checking identity papers, interrogating, or making arrests. The government instead transferred those powers to the regular police and security services. Religious officials could still offer advice and admonition, while the state retained control over policing and criminal justice.
In addition, the government increased its administrative presence within mosques. In 2018, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs stated that it had dismissed more than 2,000 Friday preachers over the previous decade for unapproved replacements and violations of ministry regulations. The figure predates much of bin Salman’s tenure, but it illustrates the ministry’s administrative control over the mosque system.
The government also centralized control of the mosque pulpits. In 2018, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs formed a unit to monitor the speech of imams, preachers, and religious workers, including their social media activity, and announced that it would take action against those who misused their pulpit. In 2020, Minister of Islamic Affairs Abdul Latif Al Sheikh announced that the ministry had removed imams and preachers who did not follow its instructions to tweet out a statement from the Council of Senior Scholars. In 2022, the ministry removed Friday preachers who allowed others to deliver sermons on their behalf without prior approval, some of whom had spoken from the same pulpit for decades. The ministry now determines who can use the pulpit, under what rules, and whether they can remain there.
The government also targeted clerics with sizable followings outside of the bureaucracy. In 2017, Saudi authorities arrested prominent Sahwa leader Salman al-Awda. His arrest, along with that of several other religious leaders, underscored the limits of religious influence outside state institutions. In 2020, Sheikh Saleh al-Maghamsi, the longtime imam of Quba Mosque in Medina, also lost his position after publicly calling for clemency for prisoners, despite his previous public support for bin Salman.
The shift also appears in the government’s treatment of religious messaging. The Ministry of Islamic Affairs increasingly uses its administrative authority to standardize what reaches mosque audiences, particularly on issues the government considers politically sensitive. In 2020, the ministry instructed imams and preachers to communicate the Council of Senior Scholars’ position on the Muslim Brotherhood and warned that those who ignored its directives could lose their positions. The ministry also maintained that it would replace removed preachers with others it considered qualified. The issue, therefore, is not whether Saudi Arabia has religious institutions, but who decides what those institutions say, who speaks through them, and where the boundaries of acceptable religious authority lie.
Saudi Arabia continues to derive its legitimacy and identity in Islam and in its custodianship of Mecca and Medina.
The division was even more marked at the two most sacred places in Islam. In 2023, the government created the Presidency of Religious Affairs for the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. It oversees imams and muezzins, sermons, lessons, circles of study, and religious advice. King Salman appointed Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais as president of this institution, with the rank of minister.
The 2024 regulations formalized the arrangement further. The presidency has its own legal personality but remains organizationally linked to the king. It supervises the imams and muezzins, prayers, sermons, lessons, and religious study circles at the two holy mosques.
But this is not secularization. Saudi Arabia continues to derive its legitimacy and identity in Islam and in its custodianship of Mecca and Medina. The change lies elsewhere the state has narrowed the space in which clerics can exercise religious authority independently of its institutions. Bin Salman does not need to weaken Islam to strengthen the state; he needs religious institutions to operate within the system he controls.
