March 5, 2025
by Dr Walid Phares
Many in the West do not understand yet that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has, in just one week, launched the deepest and most powerful wave of reform – all while sitting in his armchair, simply by having a conversation with a journalist scholar.
In a conversation with al-Arabiya News, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, known as MBS, has clearly opened the path for re-interpretation of the Islamic Theological texts and documents. His statements do not come out from a void but are based on conclusions drawn by modernizing Islamic scholars and theologians – and not just those in the Kingdom, but from around the Muslim world, as far as Indonesia and Morocco.
MBS confirmed that Ijtihad (jurisprudence and interpretation) is now wide open and Muslim scholars have the duty to adapt theology and religious obligations to meet the truths of universal knowledge, including scientific understanding. “What was known a 100 years ago has to be adapted today,” he said.
He even interpreted what Mohammad bin Abdel Wahab, the founder of Wahabism, might have thought “if he emerged from his grave and saw the modern world.” And that included a very powerful statement about the need to reform Wahabism from the inside and, more importantly, to reform the reading, studying and teaching of the Islamic religion worldwide.
MBS had stated a few years ago that while the Middle East is reforming and rejecting radical Islamism (which I coin Jihadism), Europe has failed to confront the radicalism and seems unable to encourage change and reform on its own continent.
MBS, and his enlightened allies in the region, such as Mohammed bin Zayed, head of the UAE, along with other Arab Muslim leaders, are the global hope for a world consensus on combatting armed Jihadism. In fact, what the Crown Prince and his reformist Muslim allies are doing is to allow “Ijtihad” to isolate “Jihad.”
Although the entire Arab Muslim world is buzzing about the statements MBS made, most of the comments flying around in the West comments completely miss the depth of what just happened.