#King of Saudi Arabia

[deadpresidents]

You have mentioned your interest in reading about Saudi Arabia and I share your interest, so I want to know if you think the crown prince will actually become king eventually?

Yes, without a doubt. The Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), is already the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and has instituted major economic, cultural, and religious reforms over the past few years that have dramatically changed Saudi Arabia. (Of course, he has also been responsible for some impulsive foreign policy disasters and brutal human rights violations.) With the possible exception of the Emirati leader, Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ), the Saudi Crown Prince is already the most powerful leader in the Arab world.

King Salman is still alive (at least he was a few minutes ago), so he is officially in charge, but the King is nearly 88 years old and it is believed that he has been in failing health for a while now. It's not unusual for there to be a de factor ruler while the Saudi King is still living, and in every instance that de facto ruler ultimately succeeded the King. King Saud was forced to hand over power to the future King Faisal because Saud was utterly incompetent and unfit to effectively rule the country. King Khalid, who had assumed the throne when Faisal was assassinated in 1975, handed the reins over to future King Fahd because his health was failing. Fahd suffered a massive stroke in the 1990s, and future King Abdullah stepped in as de facto ruler until he was proclaimed King upon Fahd's death. So there's a lot of precedent for the de facto ruler to eventually become King in his own right. MBS has taken about as much control over Saudi Arabia as possible while still respecting the position of his father, but he's undoubtedly the person calling the shots and he's seemingly (and, in some cases, publicly) sidelined any potential threats to his rule once King Salman dies or abdicates.

Unless there is some shocking turn of events -- and it would probably take nothing short of a revolution at this point -- MBS will eventually succeed his father as King. That will make him the first grandson of Ibn Saud, the founder of the modern Saudi state, to become King. Since the death of Ibn Saud in 1953, every one of his successors as King of Saudi Arabia has been one of his roughly 50 sons. And because MBS is still so young (he's only 38 years old right now), he will likely have the opportunity to rule Saudi Arabia and become the most influential leader in the Middle East for decades to come.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Donald has always been owned by the Saudis and the Russians. Here he’s pictured with Reagan who gave birth to America’s downfall.

[sincericida]

ANDREW GARFIELD

at the Red Sea International Film Festival 2023.

[foreign-minister]

King salman

[russellius]

GEORGE RUSSELL Thursday | 2023 SAUDI ARABIAN GP © Clive Mason

[deadpresidents]

You said you read a lot about Arabia and Islam and I have a random question that you might be able to help with. I know that for centuries there was a caliph who was like the leader of muslims and I always wondered why if the king of saudi arabia is in charge of the holy sites why isn't he considered the caliph or declared himself as the caliph?

It's a good question and there are a number of complex reasons why that didn't/doesn't happen which require a much deeper dive, but I'll try to give a simplified answer. First of all, the caliph was the spiritual leader of the entire Muslim world and while the caliphs also had a political role as successors to Muhammad, that role changed dramatically through the centuries as the Muslim world grew, Islamic empires rose and fell, and Islam itself branched into different sects. The last widely-recognized caliphs were the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, but even in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, there were disagreements throughout the Muslim world about the legitimacy of anyone's claim on the caliphate. The two main branches of Islam -- Sunni and Shia -- have entirely different ideas on how a caliph should be chosen and who the caliph is chosen by.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after the end of World War I, the Sharif of Mecca -- Hussein, a direct descendant of Muhammad as the leader of Hashemite dynasty (and great-great grandfather of the current Jordanian King Abdullah II) -- attempted to declare himself the new caliph, but was not accepted. In many ways, it was like a modern European monarch suddenly declaring himself the Pope; that's just not how most Muslims believed the spiritual leader of the Islamic faith should be determined. Plus, Hussein only had a tenuous hold on Islam's holiest sites (Mecca, Medina, and, at the time, Jerusalem) following World War I, and Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud was in the process of taking control of what is now Saudi Arabia. Once Ibn Saud became King of Saudi Arabia, he took over as "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" (Mecca and Medina), but the idea of declaring himself caliph was out of the question. Ibn Saud and the vast majority of his supporters were members of the deeply conservative, puritanical Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam and they believed that the caliph was chosen by all Muslims, not declared by one person. As the guardian of Islam's two holiest sites, the King of Saudi Arabia is responsible for ensuring that all Muslims capable of making the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca (and the lesser pilgrimage to Medina) can do so. Unilaterally declaring himself the caliph would undoubtedly have alienated many Muslims, particularly those from countries outside of Saudi Arabia and especially Shiites. In other words, it's not within the power of the King of Saudi Arabia to give himself (or any other individual) the title of caliph, and he'd probably get just as much resistance from his fellow Saudis if he tried to do so. There's no way that the Ikhwan -- the ascetic tribes and Bedouins who largely acted as Ibn Saud's military forces as he conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula in the first half of the 20th Century -- would have remained loyal to the first Saudi King if he had unilaterally proclaimed himself the caliph.

The Muslim people around the world -- the ummah -- haven't been united since the death of Muhammad, which is when the divide between Shia and Sunnis began over the true successor of the Prophet, so any caliph is going to be seen as illegitimate by a significant percentage of the population. And in the modern world, any political aspects of a potential caliph are going to be superseded by the temporal responsibilities of the heads of state or heads of government in every country, no matter how large or devout their Islamic population might be. So, a modern caliph would really have to be a spiritual leader, not a political one -- very similar to the Pope. But the Pope also has the unique position of being the head of state (and, really, an absolute monarch) of a sovereign nation. The Islamic world is too fragmented and divided by opposing theologies to allow a modern-day caliph to govern, command military forces, and provide religious guidance in the same manner as Muhammad's immediate successors or even during the 600+ years of Ottoman Sultans. A caliph would effectively have the same standing today as a modern-day Doge of Venice or Japanese Shogun; it's an anachronistic position of leadership and somewhat outdated concept in the world we currently live in -- you know, like the Iowa Caucus or Electoral College.

[gabriel19900]

yuki’s saudi dump :)

[allegedly-human-uwu]

Zlatan jumpscare 😳

[justanotherdrfan]

Daniel’s catching the pack, Daniel’s catching the pack!

[sheltiechicago]

Saudi Arabia accidentally printed thousands of textbooks containing this image of Yoda sitting next to King Faisal while he signed the 1945 UN charter

[theinfinitedivides]

aight ok now that i've watched ep 7 i see some folks are review bombing KTL on MDL bc of the Arab prince storyline,,,,,, what are our thoughts

[hadi37]

King Abdullah Financial Center

[russellius]

2024 SAUDI ARABIAN GP : Thursday

GEORGE: .. right now it's a little bit too early to say because- well, I actually don't know really, because I've not seen- I have not actually seen the lap times!

[hungrigbuffel]

Let me kiss Zielu and Szczęsny in the mouth :*

[deadpresidents]

How many absolute monarchs are there in the world?

•King Salman of Saudi Arabia •Pope Francis •Sultan Haitham bin Tariq of Oman •Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei •The King of Swaziland (now Eswatini): King Mswati III of Swaziland (AKA Eswatini) •United Arab Emirates: Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed (Each of the seven Emirates that form the UAE have their own absolute monarch and Sheikh MBZ, as leader of Dubai, is the overall ruler of the nation.)

Did I miss anybody? I think those are the only absolute monarchs still in power today. The rest of the world's royalty are constitutional monarchs, so they reign but do not rule.

(There's an argument for including Kim Jong Un on the list of absolute monarchs despite the fact that he's not a King and North Korea is a Communist country. He's obviously a dictator, but the Kim dynasty has virtually ruled North Korea like a secular monarchy for nearly 75 years with the supreme leaders inheriting their power through hereditary succession. Kim Jong Un took over immediately upon the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, who had assumed power when his father -- North Korea's first paramount leader, Kim Il Sung -- died in 1994. Of course, North Korea isn't officially considered a monarchy, but the manner in which the Kim family has ruled the country and transferred power from father-to-son for three generations and counting resembles the structure of an absolute monarchy more than a "traditional" totalitarian dictatorship.)

[oodlenoodleroodle]

He had 10 twitter followers.

Finnish people please sign this Amnesty petition.