Besnik Sinani’s Sufism in Saudi Arabia Since 1979 explores how Sufi life persists despite pressures and marginalisation, challenging the view of Saudi religious life as strictly Salafi Wahhabi. Based on 2018 fieldwork, the book makes the argument that orthodoxy is a political project that contends with alternative religious forms, including Sufism. It uses 1979 as a turning point marked by events like the Iranian Revolution, which intensified Wahhabi promotion (daʿwa) and made Sufism a sensitive issue. Despite suppression, in the 1990s, the Saudi state recognised marginalised groups like Sufis, and later, new media and political shifts fostered debate and reform. The study traces the development of Sufism in the Hijaz region, particularly Mecca and Jeddah, highlighting the roles of al-Mālikī and BaʿAlawī scholars rooted in traditional Islamic authority, and examines their influence amid changing political conditions.Footnote ¹

The book is organised in seven chapters, each addressing a distinct dimension of this polemical relationship. Chapter One identifies the Prophet’s tomb in Medina as the locus of contested practices – specifically, the Salafi Wahhabi charge that Sufi visitation of the tomb constitutes grave-worship. Chapter Two introduces the leading Meccan Sufi scholars who defended these practices and articulated their place within the Islamic scholarly tradition. Chapter Three examines Wahhabi responses to al-Mālikī’s writings against the backdrop of Saudi state power. Chapter Four, arguably the most analytically ambitious, focuses on al-Mālikī’s polemical arguments against Wahhabi excommunicatory tendencies through what Sinani calls “technologies of connectivity with the Prophet” – the construction of scholarly genealogies that establish Sufi authority and legitimacy. Chapter Five establishes the BaʿAlawī as bearers of genealogical and scholarly tradition, tracing their influence through their Hijazi diaspora. Chapter Six introduces the next generation of Sufi scholars, students of both al-Mālikī and the exiled BaʿAlawīs of the Hijaz, showing how traditional forms of Islamic legitimation have maintained their appeal in the face of modernity. The book closes with Chapter Seven on the recent changes in Saudi religious policy under Crown Prince Muḥammad ibn Salmān (MBS), whose political centralisation, Sinani argues, has proven detrimental to the limited expressions of religious diversity that expanded under the late King ʿAbd Allāh, bringing an abrupt end to the kind of space Sufism had briefly recovered. However, it is necessary to reconsider MBS’s stance on religious reform. The developments in Saudi Arabia since 2018 (the period during which Sinani conducted research there) indicate a trend towards openness to inter-Islamic and intra-faith dialogues, as evidenced by the hosting of the world’s first multi-faith conference in 2022 and its inaugural international philosophy conference in 2021. Consequently, the role of Salafi Islam is being redefined, shifting from the austerity associated with traditional Wahhabi Salafism towards what is termed “modern Islam” within the framework of Saudi Vision 2030. This ongoing socioreligious transformation necessitates continuous scholarly observation in a heterogeneous Islamic country, laden with orthodox Salafi tradition.Footnote ²

Sinani’s theoretical framework draws on anthropological and sociological approaches to orthodoxy, treating it as a social project rather than a theological given. In this account, Wahhabism constitutes the orthodoxy of the Saudi religious field: institutionalised, backed by political power, and capable of enforcing its creed and punishing heresy. Sufism is examined as a discursive tradition grounded in pre-existent language and concepts and oriented towards establishing connectivity with the Prophet Muhammad through a path already trodden by exemplary predecessors.

Sinani’s Sufi scholars are both devotional and intellectual, defending a premodern Sunni Prophethood. Despite Sufi aversion to politics, at the end, Sinani shows that Wahhabi and Sufi scholars have sought a “unity of orthodoxy” on political theology, indicating a major debate shift.

The book’s strengths are its originality, empirical seriousness, and conceptual precision. Its topic is underexamined, and Sinani’s fieldwork in Saudi Arabia provides a distinctive empirical basis. The combination of fieldwork, interviews, and close reading reconstructs Sufi networks and ideas. The focus on the BaʿAlawī diaspora’s role in the Hijazi Sufi revival adds a unique transnational perspective, showing how Hadramawt scholarly lineages influenced Saudi Sufism in the late twentieth century.

Some limitations merit acknowledgement. The focus on a small number of key scholarly figures – above all, al-Mālikī and the BaʿAlawī network – means that the internal diversity of Sufi communities in Saudi Arabia remains, at best, partially visible. Sufism encompasses multiple devotional styles, pedagogical orientations, and regional variants that cannot always be captured through the careers of prominent scholars, and readers will want to bear in mind that the book’s account is necessarily selective. The BaʿAlawī regional influence is central to the argument, and the book’s treatment of this order will be the natural reference point for readers already familiar with Hadrami scholarly traditions; those readers may find themselves wanting more detail on the order’s internal organisation and its relations with non-Hadrami Sufi communities in the Hijaz. However, this approach to Sufism in Saudi Arabia laid the groundwork for further research employing an analytical framework for comparative perspectives, contextualising Saudi Sufism within wider Gulf, Indian Ocean, or transregional Muslim networks.

Overall, Sufism in Saudi Arabia since 1979 significantly contributes to scholarship by reaffirming Sufism as a dynamic, contested part of Saudi religious history, challenging simplistic narratives, and offering a theoretical view of orthodoxy in a modern Islamic state. It is essential for specialists and scholars of Saudi and Gulf Sufism and Islamic politics, raising broader questions about the survival of tradition under state power, scholarly authority, and shifting orthodox boundaries in contemporary Islam.