Something I found on reddit, can some mena-pro give an oppinion on the validity of the statement?
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Would love to expend on this point, i met and talked with a Saudi friend once in London, great man i might add, studying medicine, and he told me something interesting. ''the monarchy is absolutely terrified of it(wahhabism, the clergy...etc)''
He gave a history lesson on how the first Saudi civil war begun. When the monarchy drew the borders with the British, especially. The monarchy agreed to respect them.
But the extremists, army officers mostly, hated this. They didn't recognized the borders, and were angry that they couldn't expend into Jordan, Iraq, the UAE....etc
So they turned on the monarchy, calling it heretical. The rebels though, fanatics hated ''western'' inventions like guns and used horses and swords. The Saudis and the loyalists had little problems using british made machine guns. They won.
But then in 79, things changed again with the Khomeinist revolution in Iran. In an attempt, fanatics, army officers mostly yet again. Occupied the holy mosque in Mecca and tried to incite to rebellion like Khomeini did.
Yet again, these people used the same pretext, calling the monarchy heretical. King Faisal was even killed later by a relative sympathetic to those people.
The monarchy, asked for a fatwa from the clergy, they needed to assault the holy mosque after all. What terrified them was that the clergy, while they did obey, they didn't condemn the rebels. that terrified them.
