David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States

Historian David Commins, author of Saudi Arabia: A Modern History, talks with Tyler Cowen about Wahhabism as a state-building theology, how the least cosmopolitan corner of Arabia conquered the rest of it, the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque, why the small Gulf states survive, and whether Saudi Arabia can outlast oil.

Key ideas

1. Wahhabism was less a curiosity than a state-building engine. Commins steelmans it as a strong conviction about correct belief, and argues the Saudi nation could not have been built without it — a religious purification movement that gave scattered Nejdi towns a common cause to rally behind the Saud dynasty from the 1740s.
2. The least cosmopolitan part of Arabia built the state. Central Arabia (Nejd) was poorer and more isolated than the Red Sea coast (Hejaz) or the Gulf coast, yet it supplied both the Wahhabi mission and the dynasty; the richer, more worldly coasts had always been dependencies of outside Muslim empires and never generated the cohesion to conquer inward.
3. What distinguishes Wahhabism is an activist impulse. It is not enough to affirm one God — one must actively negate deviation, which turns theological disagreement into grounds for action against perceived heresy, unlike the mutually tolerant schools of the older Sunni tradition.
4. Western strategic protection, not internal strength, keeps the small Gulf states independent. Fear of annexation by larger neighbours (Iran over Bahrain, Iraq over Kuwait, Saudi over Qatar and the Emirates) is held in check by a security umbrella that runs unbroken from British gunboat diplomacy in 1820 to the present US presence.
5. The open question is life after oil. Commins thinks the post-2015 social opening is deep and irreversible, but is frankly uncertain whether Saudi Arabia can build a post-petroleum economy — it has rented technical skill from abroad for decades and may lack the K-12 base to grow its own.

Content

Wahhabism: theology, tolerance, and the holy cities

Asked to steelman a movement with a bad Western reputation, Commins frames Wahhabism as a strong conviction about a specific definition of true belief. Theologically, its distinguishing move comes from its founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab: affirming one God is not enough, one must actively negate any deviation, which lends the movement an activist impulse toward what it deems heresy or unbelief — a sharp break from an older Sunni tradition whose schools tolerated one another. He argues this new conviction would have left little mark had it not won the Saud family’s backing in the 1740s. The doctrine sits in visible tension with Mecca, which is open to all Muslims: when Abdulaziz annexed the holy city in 1924 he grasped that imposing a strict purge would alienate the world’s Muslims, so he installed Wahhabi clerics willing to work with other Sunni traditions — a compromise on strict doctrine. On the Shiites of the Eastern Province, Commins is candid that their legal status is that of Saudi citizens with few rights, that they have endured cycles of persecution, and that he cannot verify present-day Saudi claims of a new climate because reliable information no longer escapes the country.

The development of the Saudi state

Commins explains why the senior religious establishment is Nejdi: central Arabia was the homeland of both the Wahhabi mission and the Saud dynasty, and the region most thoroughly purged of the older Sunni tradition, so the bureaucratic religious institution built in the 1950s and 60s recruited there. He confirms Cowen’s inference that the least cosmopolitan part of Arabia built the state — the richer, more advanced Hejaz and Gulf coasts had always been dependencies of outside Muslim empires, lacking the cohesion to conquer inward. The conquest itself was accomplished ‘almost inch by inch’: it took thirty years just to take Riyadh, a feat Commins attributes to persistence, leadership, and religious commonality rather than resources, strategy, or firearms (a thesis he finds thinly evidenced). Ottoman rule was almost never real — an 1811–1818 invasion destroyed the first Saudi state and executed its ruler in Istanbul, but harsh communications made occupation impossible, and tribute was only intermittent.

1979 and the solidity of the nation

The 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque was carried out by a millenarian breakaway faction led by Juhayman al-Otaybi — theologically Wahhabi, but convinced the Saud family had betrayed true principles and that the Muslim messiah would appear on 20 November 1979. Commins likens it more to a David Koresh movement than to mainstream religion, and dismisses as a ‘convenient, concocted narrative’ the official Saudi claim that the country was moderate until 1979 and only then adopted extremism. On whether the nation is solid, he is firm: generations of kings, princes, and technocrats have integrated the population into a genuine nation, and even a sudden fall of the monarchy would not disintegrate the country as Syria, Iraq, or Lebanon might — the parts have too much at stake in one another.

Soft power, sports, and the export of Salafism

On why the Gulf states buy sports teams and leagues, Commins sees a mix of image-laundering (‘sports washing’) and genuine popular enthusiasm — Saudis love sport, and young Saudis are the monarchy’s main constituency. He reads Saudi-funded mosques abroad through three frames: Islam as an inherently proselytising faith, the Wahhabi mission’s long (and long-unsuccessful) history of proselytising, and soft power — ‘democracy promotion for the United States, exporting communism for Fidel, marketing Wahhabism for Riyadh.’ Wahhabism rebranded itself as Salafism (invoking the pious founders, the salaf), which spread widely, but Commins doubts it will win hearts and minds long-term: he cites Iraqi Sunnis’ exhaustion with intrusive Salafi busybodies during the 2006–07 surge, and thinks al-Qaeda discredited the tendency. King Salman’s curtailing of funding, he adds, will let Saudi religious influence diminish, leaving a residue.

Education and the post-petroleum question

Commins is sceptical that KAUST, the $10 billion research university, is thriving — the deeper problem is a K-12 system that has not been reformed to prepare students for challenging STEM, so ambitious families route children through private schools to the petroleum engineering university and on to American graduate schools. Fixing this would mean replacing most teachers, and the country lacks the cadre to do it. This feeds the largest question he poses: what happens to the whole Gulf alignment when global appetite for oil fades? The states are trying to diversify but may lack the technical skill, having rented it for decades through high salaries to foreign experts — though Commins wonders aloud whether AI might reduce the need for a large technically-qualified workforce at all.

Yemen, the Gulf states, and Saudi Arabia’s future

Commins attributes the striking stability of the small Gulf states to a single abstract cause — fear of annexation by larger neighbours, held in check by Western strategic protection running unbroken from British suppression of Gulf ‘piracy’ in 1820 to today’s US naval base in Bahrain. Yemen is the exception: too poor to fund the national welfare system that bought Saudi cohesion, fractured by Houthi (Zaydi revivalist) ambition and outside intervention, much as Lebanon was for fifteen years. He likens Saudi Arabia’s 2015 Yemen intervention to Nasser’s disastrous 1960s Egyptian one, and doubts that grand strategy — as opposed to luck and experimentation — ever really works in foreign policy. On the future, he is optimistic about the depth and durability of the post-2015 social opening — women’s freedoms, the retreat of the religious police, a cosmopolitan current he traces back a century — while remaining frankly agnostic about whether the economy can survive the end of oil.

See also

• David Commins — speaker
• Tyler Cowen — host
• Wahhabism — the state-building theology at the centre of the conversation