Introduction
Saudi Arabia as a country bases its law on the Quran. The constitution of the country stands as the Quran. Sharia is the official criminal law, and the government derives its power from the Holy Koran. The religion does not allow political parties; therefore, the country has a monarchy as the final political institution of Saudi Arabia. The issue of legal rights remains with the monarch in power as stated in the fundamental law. The king remains limited by the sharia law with absolute powers (Ranko 19). Therefore, religion and politics remain entwined in an equal manner. However, the ruling elite try to manipulate the religion, and use it against their political adversaries. Many changes have happened including the removal of slavery and inclusion of education for women with the discovery of oil in Saudi. In order for the house of Saud to control the peninsula, the government needed to change the sharia law to allow the changes. The king was going to implement by calling the religious leaders and practitioners he legitimized the portions he needed to be amended (Rudolph 45). The religious leaders, who practice and preached against innovation, started justifying the reforms in the sharia. Instead, they checked the manifestation of the religious radicalism that went against the sharia law of the state. Religion in Saudi Arabia stands injected by the poison of religious radicalism influenced by the royal family because of political ambitions that do not bow to the law of sharia. They contradicted the religious practices because the Ulema did not want to go against the royal family. They put the religion in theory, but not in practice as the belief states.
Politics in Saudi play a significant role in the overall state of the nation. Saudi has changed due to the modernization it developed from a religious state to a country that makes its laws based on secular political ambitioned values. The people of Saudi believe in the fusion of religion and temporary power. The modernization overshadows the conservation nature of the Saudi state. Instead, the Saudi state has become overwhelmed by the westernization assimilated by the leaders and the countrymen of the Saudi state. The capture of the mosque the holiest shrine and the wish that the mosque remains undefiled by the military made the government forge the religious identity for the nation (Rudolph 46). The religion ensures that everything the government does remains involving of religion. Religion plays a big role in establishing and maintaining the economic standings of the nation. The religion supports the economy in funding of projects that promote the development of the poorer regions of the states into more flourishing ones. However, politics limits the power of faith and undermines it from within itself. The religious leaders remain coerced into supporting the government in its endeavors. The challenges used remain as the issues affecting the country. The Ulema supports the religion by going on and preaching radicalism while the government uses them as the front to co-opt and to get the conclusion it wants in the political arena. Indeed the monarch powers of Saudi use religion to justify and legitimize its actions against the same religion (Ranko 60). The state establishes schools for Islam to ensure that the citizens follow the laws by use of the religious police. In the desecration of the laws set by the prophet, the government went to the religion and welcomed non-believers to support the political course of the government. In doing so, the leadership violated the laws of the prophet that stated that there should only one religion in Saudi. The monarch accumulated non-Muslim United States military into the country to secure the Nation with the obtaining of the Fatwa.
Saudi Arabia has domestic bodies that affect the whole state in their actions. The first influential body is the royal house. The second is the Sunni reformist, conservative and traditional and community trends. The third groups remain specifically as the liberal and secular individuals. The royal house and the Sunni Islam domestic players have conflicts, but sometimes they work hand in hand to develop the country. The Sunni have become targets of threats from the inside and the outside that poses the religion a threat and the society as a whole (Rudolph 60). The United States could destabilize the state through forming alliances with individual domestic players such alliances such as with the Gulf Cooperation Council and forming an axis. The country could become an enemy of the Gulf axis therefore it is forced into the alliance. The three domestic players influence the role of democracy in Saudi. With the weights of the three players, democracy is indeed losing its power. The issue comes about because the government and the three players disagree with the decisions of the government in the process the government has to eliminate the issues in-house. Democracy in Saudi remains affected and overpowered by the power players causing some players in the community to lose their lives over their careers. Press freedom remained controlled to prevent the truth from being revealed. With the current issues between Yemen and Saudi, the state has been aided by the United States in weapons to fight the Yemen. Following the alliances by the Saudi, America and the Gulf many have been slain in the war in Yemen (Rudolph 112).
Self-expression is not a freedom in Saudi Arabia. Reporters without borders have been reduced because the state lacks pluralism, and itself has high levels of censorship. The levels of censorship have blocked more than two thousand web pages remain blocked by the state because of their content and sexual explicitly and other pages containing religious materials not supported by the state. Therefore, the Government prevents its citizens from expressing themselves. Travel bans have been put strictly for individuals who practice their rights of self-expression. The state doubles considerably in punishing individuals who dare to demand democracy and human rights and its reformation. Every member of the Saudi state tries to push for their freedom, but the rulers refused the idea and their petitions ignored with several imprisoned (Rudolph 160). A blogger was deemed blasphemous after tweeting about Prophet Mohammed and is sure to face death by hanging, even though the country the leadership is bound to lose to press freedom against the Islam religion. The Saudi elites push for democracy, and freedom of expression could eventually work for the modernist part of the elite. The central issue flanked by the government and the conservatives is that the government indeed tries to get stuff done through secular means. Some of the issues remain as the issues affecting the freedom of expression while the conservatives fight for a conservative state. In this manner, the state has pushed for radicalization by Osama bin Laden in his attempt to overthrow the government of Saudi. The government in its part approaches and uses more secular means to legitimize their authority.
The power of Saudi and its massive finances promotes its Wahhabi style of the Islamic religion to pursue and establish the religion dominance over more states in the world through infiltrating the Quran schools.Therefore, pushing people to wear the veil once more as a symbol of defiance of the habits of Christians and the Jewish population. The world does not adopt a firm stand against the religious practices that remain termed as aggressive in nature (Ranko 220). Saudi Arabia has increased its promotion of terror all over the world. The panic spreads from one Islamic state to another from the radicalism approach influenced by the top players who want Islam religion to overpower the other religions in the world for their benefits. The radicalism threat taught in the Quran schools has put a more definitive approach to terror across the globe for nations having Islam as a religion in it with the competition in the Middle East for leadership. A jihadist campaign started with terrorist groups becoming more sophisticated in the nature of their attacks and numbers. Saudi terrorists have played an even more significant role in attacking other religious based countries for the attacks such as the 9/11 in New York among others. The cause started a war against the Soviet Union Afghanistan and augmented as the jihadists began to fight other nations involved in the affairs of the Middle East under the leadership of Osama Bin-Laden (Ranko 299).
Saudi Arabia has pushed for Islamic radicalization by its religious leaders making it their business to sponsor and radicalize every youth going through their Qur’an schools. In the process, Jihad has taken over the power of religion and politics to make the state the friend of the West in the Middle East, and yet the leader in jihad wars all across the globe. In their strategy, the state uses money, faith and weapons to fight the non-Muslim nations or countries led by Christianity. The world at large is deceived to see that the Saudi state tries to fight the jihadist. The truth remains that the war on jihad is crimeless according to the sharia law of the state. Jihad is the vengeance for a fallen fellow; therefore, the sharia law does not sanction the actions of the individuals financing or the terrorists (Rudolph 108). In order for that to occur, the state has to take a more secular approach and change the constitution. The law used is the Quran, which does not condemn jihad. Therefore, the war on terror is fought by the elite few modernists and the royal family who are against the use of religion as the determinant of the state`s affairs. The other way that would work is the removal of radicalism that remained poisonous to the teachings of the Quran in the schools. With that, the government uses secular means to fight jihadists through criminalizing the participation in jihad wars. The government campaigns against the al-Qaeda ideology all over social media platforms and denying the involvement of a large number of Saudi Arabians in the jihad groups. Instead, the number of Jihadist from Saudi remains as a small number.
Works Cited
Ranko, Annette. The Muslim Brotherhood and Its Expedition for Hegemony in Egypt: State-
discourse and Islamist Counter-Discourse. Hamburg: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. 2015. Internet resource.
Rudolph, Peters. The Jihad in Conventional and Modern Islam: A Reader. Princeton, NJ:
Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004. Print.
