The Council of Senior Scholars is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's highest religious body, and advises the king on religious matters. The council is appointed by the king, with salaries paid by the government. As of 2009, the council was made up of 21 members. Saudi King Fahd continued the precedent set by earlier kings of meeting weekly with Council members who resided in the capital, Riyadh. In 2010, Saudi King Abdullah decreed that only members of the Council and a few other clerics could issue fatwa in Saudi Arabia.
History
Prior to 1971, the council met informally, headed by the Grand Mufti. On 29 August 1972 King Faisal ibn Abd al-Aziz issued a royal decree establishing the Council. Until 2009, the body was restricted to members of the Hanbalimadhab. On 14 February of that year King Abdullah expanded the Committee to include scholars from the other three Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence. Despite the newfound diversity, observers note that the scholars continue to hold very similar positions in regard to ʿAqīdah. As of 2020, the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh, is still the head of the council.
While the ulema of Saudi Arabia and the Council are sometimes used interchangeably, in fact, of the estimated 7,000 to 10,000 people that made up the ulama and their families in the 90s and which might have reached 20,000 in 2011 as per Sherifa Zuhur, only thirty to forty of the most senior scholars "exercised substantive political influence".
Oversight
According to Simon Henderson, the council must give a fatwa of approval before a new king is crowned. According to the Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism, the council serves in theory to guide the Saudi king and to verify his "fidelity" to the Islamic principle of "absolute obedience" to Islamic law upon which "the absolute authority of the sovereign" over the Saudi population rests. However, in practice the council "virtually never expresses opposition to any proposal from the royal family".
Support for monarchy
The Council is often used to provide religious support for government edicts. For example, in 2011 it issued a fatwa ruling against protest demonstrations calling them "deviant intellectual and partisan connections". Demonstrations "and anything that leads to disunity and fragmentation of the nation" were not allowed under Sharia. Reform could only come from giving advice and counsel, "and not by issuing and collecting signatures on intimidating and incendiary statements that violate what God the most High has commanded" . It is rarely in opposition to government policy, and when it does disagree, the Council generally expresses it by silence. Observers differ as to how much influence the Council has. Many believe the government generally consults the Council prior to issuing legislation, while other believe that "more often than not", the government does "as it likes and then seeks approval after the fact". According to Christopher Boucek, the influence of the Council and ulema in general varies according to how "secure" the royal family feels. Great levels of royal confidence lead to less disregard shown to, and greater control over the religious establishment. Unlike other ulema, Saudi scholars do not have income-generating lands or endowments to fund them and are dependent on government salaries. In 1992 King Fahd pressured seven members of the Senior Ulema into retirement after they failed to sign a letter condemning conservative attacks on the al-Saud family. In 2009, another member—Sheikh Saad bin Nasser al-Shithri—was pressured to resign after he opposed gender mixing at the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the first co-ed university in the Kingdom.
