Muslim political culture

The ultra-conservative, anti-modern, and anti-pluralist ethos of the Wahhabi doctrine essentially serves the ruling regime in blocking most attempts at modernisation and expansion in the political arena, providing legitimacy and virtually unlimited powers to the Saudi ruling family who holds absolute control of state education and expression of public opinion.

The oil boom had been among the principal factors that helped keep up the royal family’s monopoly of political power. It had brought the prospect of strategic relationship with the US and other allies. The oil wealth had made it possible for the ruling regime to strengthen internal and external security through obtaining sophisticated weapons.

A militant variant of political Islam, similar to al-Qaida, took shape in Saudi Arabia during the 1960s, adhering to a “Qutbist-Wahhabi” philosophy. The radical trend in Muslim political movements is generally attributed to the political theory of a Muslim Egyptian thinker, Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966) who, being disillusioned with the shortcomings of the post-Enlightenment rationalism shortly after the World War II, sought to conceptualise an ideology that envisaged “a global Muslim polity under a single caliph (khalifah) charged with the duty of ensuring the practice and enforcement of the Islamic Law (shari’ah)".

The overthrow of the contemporaneous Muslim ruling regimes was deemed justified by any means including an armed struggle (jihad), as the states deterred from the “true” Islamic imperatives and succumbed to Western models.

Interestingly, analysts including Graham Fuller note some striking parallels between the radical Islamists and the radical Christian Protestant sects at the time of the Reformation.

Qutb’s theory bore some resemblance to Abd al-Wahhab’s thought. A “Qutbist-Wahhabi” integration among Saudi opposition movements emerged when a large number of members from the radical wing of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Nasser’s Egypt were allowed to enter Saudi Arabia as refugees, owing to diplomatic rivalry between the two nation-states. It was the newly emergent “Qutbist-Wahhabi” alliance between the Saudi opposition force and radical refugees from Egypt that generated a shift from politically quietist to radical ideology along with a conservative socio-cultural approach.

For the Saudi royal family, who co-opts the official religious establishment in order to render legitimacy upon the ruling regime, liberalising the political system would mean to have the kingdom’s Islamic credentials challenged by the opposition Islamist parties. The Saudi Arabian socio-politically conservative model of governance has been a corollary of multifaceted factors, including the historical tribal nature of the state, its vast oil resources and strategic alliance with the US, and patronage of Muslim holy shrines and use of religion so as to bolster legitimacy to the kingdom.

Iran

Unlike Turkey or Saudi Arabia, Iran’s historical power dynamics between the state and religious establishment reveal a weak state and strong Shiite clergy establishment. In contrast to the Sunni religious establishment (‘ulama), clergy in Shia Islam traditionally resisted control by the state. The autonomous clergy, in steady conflict with the Qajar dynasty (1781-1925), remained a powerful presence and were held in high regard by the masses for their revolt against Russian and British expansion, and their protest against the tobacco monopoly granted to British financiers.

Reza Shah’s (d. 1980) regime lacked legitimacy from the very beginning when he sought US and British support to overthrow popular Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh (d. 1967), who came legitimately to power through parliamentary election.

Shah’s White Revolution campaign brought him into fierce conflict with the clergy, who were vehemently opposed to it. The campaign, in effect, worsened the overall socio-economic condition of Iran and widened the rich-poor gap. Shah’s close alliance with, and dependence on, the US for the supervision of the modernisation process made him appear a treacherous leader in the eyes of Iranians that came from almost all segments of society.

All these factors led to the Khomeini-led Iranian revolution. The recent victories of the conservative non-cleric candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the Iranian presidential election held in June 2005, and the militant political party, Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), in the Palestinian parliamentary elections underscore two concerns.

First, they pinpoint the socio-economically disenfranchised masses’ desperate demand for economic reform, the quest for which has made them vote for the opposition party in both cases.  Second, these events underscore the popular anti-American sentiment in the minds of Muslims that has intensified not due to their resentment towards the values the West claims to espouse (for example, democratic values), but the West’s duplicitous foreign policy and interference in domestic affairs of Muslim societies.