What is it about?
This paper explores how Saudi Arabia has transformed religious authority since 2016. Rather than leaving Islamic guidance in the hands of independent clerics, the state has brought religious institutions, legal rulings, and moral standards under centralized government control. Through new laws, administrative structures, and regulated ethical norms, the kingdom is reshaping how Islam is practiced, interpreted, and governed in everyday life. The result is a new form of Islamic governance where religion and bureaucracy work together to guide society and support the state's modernization goals.
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Why is it important?
This study is timely because Saudi Arabia has undergone major legal, political, and religious reforms since 2016, yet these changes are often described too simply as either secularization or authoritarian control. My work shows that the transformation is more complex: rather than removing Islam from public life, the state is reorganizing it through centralized institutions, codified law, and administrative systems. What is unique about this publication is its focus on how religion is being managed bureaucratically—not only through legal reform, but also through the regulation of moral conduct, religious interpretation, and public ethics. It highlights how fatwas, legal institutions, and ethical governance are being reshaped to support state-led modernization while preserving Islamic legitimacy. This offers a new way to understand the changing relationship between religion and the state in Saudi Arabia and in other Muslim-majority contexts.
Perspectives
In writing this paper, I wanted to move beyond familiar debates that frame change in Saudi Arabia as a simple struggle between religion and modernity, or between secularization and Islamization. What I found more compelling was the way Islam continues to matter deeply, but in a new administrative form—less through dispersed clerical authority and more through centralized governance, legal standardization, and moral regulation. Personally, I hope this publication encourages readers to think more carefully about how states reshape religion rather than merely suppress or separate it. For me, this topic is important because it reveals how power works not only through force or ideology, but also through institutions, procedures, and the shaping of ethical life. I also hope the article contributes to broader conversations about governance, legitimacy, and social change in the contemporary Muslim world.
Dr. Jamil Akhtar
University of the Punjab
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: From Clerical Authority to Ethical Administration: The Bureaucratization of Islam in Saudi Arabia After 2016, Contemporary Review of the Middle East, August 2026, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/23477989261471618.
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