Takfirism or J.Lo: The theology of regime survival

For years, Mohammed bin Salman appeared determined to prove that Saudi Arabia could be modernized by exchanging the stern face of clerical authority for the smiling face of entertainment capitalism. The kingdom of injunctions would become the kingdom of investment forums, Formula One, celebrity concerts and carefully imported glamour. Then Ansar Allah advanced, Saudi security came under pressure, Washington grew less dependable — and suddenly Islam was summoned back from storage.

Theology, it turns out, had not been retired. It had been subordinated to the state.

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement signed on August 7 by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkiye formalized the proposition that an attack on one would be treated as an attack on all. Alliances are hardly mysterious: nervous states seek insurance. What is more revealing is how quickly that strategic arrangement has been wrapped in theological language.

The novelty is not that Pakistani ulema regard the defense of Mecca and Medina as a religious duty. It is the speed with which senior establishment clerics have blurred the distinction between defending the holy cities and preserving the Saudi political order.

Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Ashrafi, head of the Pakistan Ulema Council, went so far as to declare that the Houthis have “no connection with Islam,” converting a geopolitical confrontation into a test of religious legitimacy.

Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani’s intervention exposes the same dynamic from a different angle. One of the Muslim world’s most eminent jurists criticized Washington for failing to support Saudi Arabia more fully. The irony is severe: a scholar formed by a lifetime of jurisprudence reproaches an imperial power not for dominating Muslim societies, but for insufficiently assisting an authoritarian monarchy. Ilm may command reverence; it does not immunize its possessor from power.

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This is the sleight of hand on which regime theology depends.

Mecca and Medina possess sacred status; a ruling house does not. Yet once the security of the monarchy is rhetorically fused with the security of Islam, foreign policy acquires a kind of divine insulation.

Opposition to Riyadh becomes hostility toward the Haramain, military intervention becomes religious obligation, and geopolitical enemies are pushed toward the boundaries of respectable Islam. Sacred language is thus converted into an instrument of raison d’état.

And the spectacle is particularly rich because MBS spent years domesticating precisely the clerical establishment now being mobilized in his defense. Independent religious authority was extinguished, social regulation loosened and the kingdom repackaged for global capital as a playground of tourism, entertainment and consumption. Religion could remain ceremonial, certainly, but it was not to obstruct the nightclub, the megaproject or the investment conference.

Then danger arrived, and suddenly the ummah received an urgent callback.

The comedy is not lost on Muslim publics. Across Arab and Muslim political discourse, the sight of establishment clerics solemnly discovering that Saudi geopolitical interests constitute an Islamic emergency has generated precisely the kind of incredulity such choreography deserves.

People can distinguish between protecting Mecca and protecting a political order headquartered near it. No quantity of official robes, conference podiums or carefully issued declarations can erase that distinction.

The contrast with Ansar Allah makes the exercise still more awkward.

Whatever one’s assessment of its broader politics, Ansar Allah transformed its standing in the Muslim political imagination after October 2023 because it did something most vastly richer Muslim governments conspicuously did not: it imposed material costs in the name of Gaza. Its Red Sea campaign made Yemen — an impoverished country devastated by more than a decade of ruthless Saudi-led bombing and war — appear more willing to confront Israel and its supporters than states possessing enormous armies, sovereign wealth funds and decades of accumulated military hardware.

That symbolism mattered. Ansar Allah’s popularity rose well beyond its traditional constituency. Among Palestinians, a remarkable sense of solidarity, admiration and political kinship with the Houthis took hold. Across wider Arab and Muslim discourse, Yemen increasingly became shorthand for the humiliating comparison nobody in the palaces wanted made: those with the least appeared willing to risk the most.

And now comes the ulema to explain that the real Islamic emergency is Yemen.

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Here the problem is larger than one cleric. It is the recurring degradation of religious authority when scholarship becomes an auxiliary department of authoritarian power. Too many establishment scholars have perfected the art of discovering categorical religious imperatives precisely where ruling regimes require them. Their jurisprudence bends mysteriously toward the palace; their moral urgency intensifies as proximity to power increases.

When Gaza burned, caution acquired theological sophistication. When Saudi Arabia feels endangered, ambiguity suddenly disappears.

This is why sectarianization is so politically useful. It converts vertical questions into horizontal hatred. Instead of asking who owns the wealth, commands the armies, controls the state and determines foreign policy, ordinary Muslims are invited to debate whether other Muslims are sufficiently Muslim. Political economy disappears beneath doctrinal accusation. The palace remains untouched while the public argues over apostasy.

And beneath all of this lies the great false choice of contemporary authoritarianism: takfirism or Jennifer Lopez. The sermon or the concert. Social repression or consumerist depoliticization. Obedience decorated with religion or obedience illuminated by stage lights.

What must never appear is the third possibility: redistribution, social justice, democratic accountability, Palestinian liberation, popular sovereignty and freedom from both palace clerics and oligarchic capital.

That is the alternative concentrated power actually fears.

The Mecca pact may therefore reveal something larger than a new military alignment. It reveals the political economy of sacred language itself. When legitimacy weakens, Islam is summoned. When authority needs reinforcement, the ulema arrive. When uncomfortable questions about power emerge, sectarianism provides the diversion.

Takfirism or J.Lo.

Anything, apparently, except justice. 

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