By Dominik Krell
Introduction
Over the last decade, the Saudi government has introduced foreign law on a large scale. In many areas, legislation borrowed from Europe and North America now dominates to the extent that Islamic law sometimes appears to be limited to a set of abstract principles rather than serving as a significant source of law in its own right.[1]
As of 2026, more than 450 codes (anẓima, sg. niẓām) are in force in the Kingdom. Fewer than ten are codifications of Islamic law.[2] While much of the law borrowed from foreign jurisdictions addresses commercial matters, including how to set up a company or how to file for insolvency, it also regulates aspects of criminal law—a field traditionally central to Muslim jurists (ʿulamāʾ) (see my essay on criminal punishment).[3]
The rise of foreign legislation could be interpreted as evidence of a decline in the role of Islamic law in the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia prides itself on maintaining a distinctively Islamic legal system, one that not only applies Islamic law but also derives its institutions from Islamic legal doctrine.[4] When law borrowed from Western jurisdictions dominates large parts of the legal system, how can this system still be described as ‘Islamic’?
In this essay, I show why contemporary Saudi Muslim jurists nevertheless consider foreign law a natural component of a contemporary Islamic legal system. I argue that this position is partly a pragmatic response to political realities but that it is also the result of the doctrine of siyāsa sharʿiyya, which, from the perspective of the jurists, underlies the Saudi state. I demonstrate that some jurists even adopt a surprisingly broad understanding of what counts as Islamic law, one that can encompass norms with no direct origins in the Islamic tradition.
The Concept of Siyāsa Sharʿiyya
Debates about the introduction of foreign law are closely connected to the doctrine of siyāsa sharʿiyya. Often translated as governance in the name of the sacred law, siyāsa sharʿiyya constitutes a form of separation of powers between the religious establishment, on the one hand, and the ruler, on the other.[5] According to Saudi jurists, the ʿulamāʾ serve as the interpreters of Islam, whereas the king’s main function is to enforce the jurists’ interpretation. In 1992, King Fahd (d. 2005) enshrined the doctrine in the Basic Law of Governance (al-Niẓām al-Asāsī lil-Ḥukm), which serves as the de facto constitution of the Saudi state.[6] Despite the scholarly establishment’s loss of influence over the past decades, the doctrine nevertheless continues to influence political debates, particularly regarding the Kingdom’s legal system.[7]
The idea of siyāsa (governance) dates back to early Islam, but the doctrine as understood in Saudi Arabia today originates in the writings of the medieval jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328). Ibn Taymiyya developed siyāsa into a distinct concept of Islamic governance through which rulers can claim legitimacy even though they are neither caliphs nor able to legitimize their rule through lineage.[8] His concept of siyāsa was part of a larger project to enable the application of Islamic law amid the insecurity produced by the Mongol invasions, during which he saw the authority of Islamic law decline.[9]
Saudi jurists later picked up on the idea to provide intellectual support for Muḥammad b. Saʿūd’s (d. 1179/1765) pact with the Najdī preacher and activist Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1206/1792) in 1157/1744. Reference to the doctrine allowed the Saʿūd family to portray themselves as legitimate rulers despite lacking both religious credentials and a religiously significant lineage. From the perspective of the jurists, Saudi rulers remained legitimate as long as they fulfilled their role as enforcers of Islamic law.[10]
Modern Capitalism and the Need for New Laws
Modern capitalism reached the Najd (the interior of the Arabian Peninsula) comparatively late. While the nineteenth century saw the introduction of new (commercial) laws across much of the world, the pre-oil economy of the Najd remained largely subsistence based and only marginally connected to global capitalist networks. Saudi rulers only encountered the problem of how to regulate modern capitalism when King Ibn Saʿūd (d. 1953) conquered the much more economically developed Ḥijāz in 1926.[11]
The conquest of the Ḥijāz confronted the King with the question of whether courts should still apply Ottoman laws, which had governed the Ḥijāz before.[12] Ibn Saʿūd turned to the ʿulamāʾ to find a solution.[13] Yet developing new rulings for radically new institutions proved challenging. Najdī jurists saw themselves more as interpreters of the centuries-old tradition of Islamic law, had little understanding of modern capitalism, and were ultimately unable to develop rulings themselves.[14] As a result, the King, who was under pressure to react, decided to continue applying Ottoman laws.[15]
Over the subsequent decades, Saudi kings borrowed more and more laws from other jurisdictions and introduced them into Saudi Arabia.[16] However, these codes did not address central areas of Islamic jurisprudence such as family law or contract law. Saudi kings were cautious about the jurists’ skepticism of ‘man-made’ laws. To express this, they avoided calling the codes qānūn, the common term for codes in other Arab countries that the jurists associated with the abolition of Islamic law.[17] Instead, kings decided to use the more neutral term niẓām, best translated as “regulation.”[18]
What Makes Law Islamic?
To understand why Saudi jurists accepted the introduction of legal transplants, we must consider the distinctions they make when it comes to law. On the one hand, there is the established doctrine of Islamic jurisprudence and texts derived directly from it. This includes codifications of Islamic law such as the recent Law of Personal Status (niẓām al-aḥwāl al-shakhṣiyya). Saudi jurists have long objected to the codification of Islamic law because they held that binding judges to a certain legal opinion is not permissible.[19] However, in recent decades, they have increasingly changed their opinions.[20]
On the other hand, there are laws that do not immediately concern matters addressed in the established corpus of fiqh. According to the doctrine of siyāsa sharʿiyya, issuing legislation is part of the ruler’s discretionary power in steering the Muslim community.[21] In this role, he may issue legislation whenever he considers it to be in the community’s interest. The only requirement is that the codes do not violate the Qur’ān and the sunna. [22]
Some Saudi jurists go a step further and argue that the King’s codes can become part of Islamic law itself, even if they are not derived from the established corpus of fiqh.[23]
Their argument throws an interesting light on the jurists’ thinking. Proponents of this view argue that fiqh itself is authored by humans based on their understanding of the sources of Islamic law and of the best interests of the Muslim community. For example, Zayd b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Zayd, the former head of the Judicial Institute (Maʿhad al-ʿĀlī lil-Qaḍāʾ) argues that the relationship between Islamic law and the codes is like that of a root to a branch, the code being a historically and geographically situated understanding of Islamic law.[24] Following this view, as long as the King’s codes fulfill the same conditions, they are not essentially different from the writings of a jurist.
Yet judges can, in principle, refuse to apply provisions of the King’s codes if they regard them as incompatible with Islamic law.[25] In my own research, I have come across reports from the 2010s in which judges have refused to apply such provisions. For example, in cases involving limited liability companies, some judges argued that the concept of limited liability has no basis in Islamic law and therefore declined to apply relevant codes.[26]
Conclusion
Let me return to the question I posed at the beginning of this essay: Is Saudi Arabia’s legal system still Islamic? To answer, we first need to clarify what it means to have an Islamic legal system. If we follow the understanding of Saudi jurists, such a system can incorporate non-Islamic law. Their approach is pragmatic, because legal practice that does not utilize law incorporated from foreign jurisdictions would be almost impossible. Yet we should not reduce this broad understanding of Islamic law to mere pragmatism, as their acceptance of foreign law is also grounded in the doctrine of siyāsa sharʿiyya. A central element of the doctrine is that the ruler has the authority to legislate when he believes this to be in the best interests of the community. Saudi jurists recognize that, in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world, the ruler’s legislative role will produce an expanding body of codes, which reflects how contemporary legal systems develop, whether Islamic or not. The key question, however, is the extent to which jurists will accept codes that, from their perspective, are inconsistent with Islamic law, such as a potential decriminalization of alcohol consumption.[27] Yet their opinion appears to be becoming less and less relevant in Saudi Arabia.
Notes:
[1] See Dominik Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia (Brill, 2025), 33.
[2] All anẓima are available through the Bureau of Experts’ (Hayʾat al-Khubarāʾ) website: laws.boe.gov.sa/BoeLaws/Laws/Folders/1, accessed February 16, 2026.
[3] One recent example is the Anti-Harassment Law. See Beata Polok, “Anti-harassment Reform: Creating Safer Workplaces in Saudi Arabia,” Kalam (Chatham House), January 6, 2026, https://kalam.chathamhouse.org/articles/anti-harassment-reform-creating-safer-workplaces-in-saudi-arabia.
[4] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 27.
[5] See, for instance, Baber Johansen, “A Perfect Law in an Imperfect Society: Ibn Taymiyya’s Concept of ‘Governance in the Name of the Sacred Law,’” in The Law Applied: Contextualizing the Islamic Shariʿa, ed. Peri Bearman, Wolfhart Heinrichs, and Bernard Weiss (I.B. Tauris, 2008), 259–94.
[6] The 1992 Basic Law (al-Niẓām al-Asāsī lil-Ḥukm) stipulates in its first article: “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic state. Its religion is Islam, and its constitution (dustūr) is the book of God and the sunna of his Prophet. Its language is Arabic, and its capital is Riyadh.” “1992 Constitution of Saudi Arabia (Original),” SHARIAsource, January 21, 2021, https://portal.shariasource.com/documents/4222.
[7] See Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, ch. 1.
[8] Ibn Taymiyya, al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya fī iṣlāḥ al-rāʿī wa’l-raʿiyya (Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1440/2019), 3 and passim.
[9] See Ovamir Anjum, Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
[10] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 25.
[11] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 31.
[12] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 31.
[13] Before that, Saudi ʿulamāʾ issued a fatwā calling for the end of the application of positive law in the Ḥijāz. Muḥammad b. Barrāk al-Fawzān, al-Tanẓīm al-Qaḍāʾī al-Jadīd fī al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-Saʿūdiyya (Maktabat al-Qānūn al-Iqtiṣād, 1431/2010), 57–58.
[14] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 31.
[15] al-Fawzān, al-Tanẓīm al-Qaḍāʾī, 58.
[16] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 33.
[17] Saʿd b. Maṭar al-ʿUtayb, Maqālāt fī al-Siyāsa al-Sharʿiyya (al-Bayān, 1434/2012), 23.
[18] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 32.
[19] See, for instance, ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad Āl Khunayn, “Muqābila maʿ Ṣāḥib al-Faḍīla al-Shaykh ʿAbd
Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Saʿd Āl Khunayn,” al-Majalla, no. 1086. The text is available at https://tinyurl.com/cr6p5f7c, accessed April 7, 2016.
[20] See, for instance, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Fāyiz, Taqnīn al-Aḥkām al-Qaḍāʾiyya (n.p, 1431/2010).
[21] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 31.
[22] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 28–31.
[23] Zayd b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Zayd, “Maṣādir Istimdād al-Anẓima al-ʿAdliyya,” in al-Niẓām al-ʿAdl fī al-Saʿūdiyya, ed. Muḥammad b. Saʿūd al-Bashr and Manṣūr b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ḥaydarī (Markaz al-Fikr al-ʿĀlamī, 1436/2010), 36.
[24] al-Zayd, “Maṣādir Istimdād al-Anẓima al-ʿAdliyya,” 36.
[25] The Procedural Code (Niẓām al-Murāfaʿāt al-Sharʿiyya) states in Art. 1 that “the courts apply the rulings of the Islamic sharīʿa to cases brought before them in accordance with what the Qur’ān and the sunna indicate and in accordance with the codes issued by the ruler (walī al-amr), provided they do not contradict the Qur’ān and the sunna.” The text is available at https://tinyurl.com/59ev8mfx, accessed March 16, 2026. On this point, see Dominik Krell, “Ibn Khunayn (b. 1376/1956) on Adjudication and Judicial Organisation,” in Islamic Law in Context: A Primary Source Reader, ed. Robert Gleave and Omar Anchassi (Cambridge University Press, 2023), 369.
[26] Interview with a Saudi lawyer, who was involved in such a case. Riyadh, October 2019.
[27] In February 2026, the Saudi government already allowed the sale of alcohol to non-Muslim expatriates, although subject to strict restrictions and limited to certain areas of Riyadh. There have long been rumours that a broader decriminalization of alcohol will eventually take place. Sameer Hashmi, “Saudi Arabia is Lifting the Alcohol Ban for Wealthy Foreigners,” BBC, February 5, 2026, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20260204-saudi-arabia-is-lifting-the-alcohol-ban-for-wealthy-foreigners.
Suggested Bluebook citation: Dominik Krell, Beyond Rights and Recognition: Muslim Personal Law in India, Islamic L. Blog (Apr. 16, 2026), https://islamiclaw.blog/2026/04/16/is-saudi-arabias-legal-system-still-islamic.
Suggested Chicago citation: Dominik Krell, “Beyond Rights and Recognition: Muslim Personal Law in India,” Islamic Law Blog, April 16, 2026, https://islamiclaw.blog/2026/04/16/is-saudi-arabias-legal-system-still-islamic.
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