By Dominik Krell
Introduction
In 2016, a short video clip circulated on the internet, in which the Saudi scholar Ṣāliḥ b. Fawzān al-Fawzān answered questions in a TV broadcast. A viewer asked whether it was permissible to post selfies with cats online (al-taṣwīr maʿ al-qiṭaṭ). Clearly unfamiliar with the dynamics of the internet, the then eighty-year-old scholar asked for clarification several times before stating that selfies with cats, like all selfies, were “not permitted” (mā yajūz) in Islam.[1]
From the perspective of orthodox Islamic jurisprudence, al-Fawzān’s answer was not especially controversial. Yet his harsh response and his visible confusion made him appear out of touch with contemporary life.[2] Internationally, newspapers portrayed the clip as yet another proof for the apparent backwardness of Saudi Islam.
Saudi Muslim jurists (ʿulamāʾ) have a long reputation for opinions that have irritated Muslims outside the Kingdom. Such opinions range from debates about whether the earth is round in the early twentieth century[3] to ʿAbd al-Muḥsin b. Nāṣir al-ʿUbaykān’s controversial proposition in 2010 that personal drivers should establish milk kinship (riḍāʿ), a recognised concept in Islamic law, with their customers by drinking human breast milk.[4]
While al-ʿUbaykān later lost his position as advisor to the King, Crown Prince Muḥammad b. Salmān promoted al-Fawzān to the position of Grand Mufti (muftī ʿāmm) in 2025, the highest religious office in the Kingdom. In this essay, I first outline how the role of grand mufti has changed over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I then analyse al-Fawzān’s approach to Islamic law beyond his most controversial public statements. In the conclusion, I discuss what his appointment tells us about the future of Islamic law in the Kingdom.
The Office of the Grand Mufti: A Brief History
Formally, the grand mufti is the highest scholarly authority in the Kingdom.[5] Saudi rulers first established the office in 1953 as part of a broader trend of formalisation in the legal system. Its establishment was connected to a particular scholar, Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm Āl al-Shaykh (d. 1969). Unlike other great Saudi scholars of the twentieth century, Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm remains relatively unknown outside Saudi Arabia. Yet no other scholar has had comparable influence on the Saudi legal system. As Grand Mufti, Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm served as a form of appeal court.[6] His published letters show that both princes as well as court presidents regularly sought his opinion on difficult court cases and that he had the de facto power to overturn decisions.[7] Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm also held broader administrative responsibilities. As Grand Mufti, he was responsible for the appointment of schoolteachers and imāms (prayer leaders) and oversaw the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue (Hayʾat al-Amr bi’l-Maʿrūf), often referred to as Saudi “religious police.”[8]
After Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm’s death in 1969, the office of the Grand Mufti remained vacant for more than two decades, until King Fahd appointed Ibn Bāz (d. 1999) as Grand Mufti in 1993. Like Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm, Ibn Bāz was a charismatic figure with a wide following. When he died in 1999, his influence extended well beyond the Kingdom. At the same time, however, the legal system and state apparatus had become more formalized: a new law established a formal appeal court in 1975 and, by the 2000s, the appeal court system had expanded further.[9] Nevertheless, Ibn Bāz still played an important role in legal debates. Before his appointment, he served for twelve years as a judge in the court of al-Kharj, a smaller city south of Riyadh.[10] Until today, his opinions remain widely cited in Saudi legal writings, alongside Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm’s fatwās.[11]
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd Allāh Āl al-Shaykh (d. 2025) succeeded Ibn Bāz in 1999; however, he lacked the charisma of his predecessors. Although he belonged, like Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm, to the al-Shaykh family, the descendants of the Najdī activist Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1206/1792) and founder of the Wahhābī movement, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz never became influential in religious debates, and even less so in the legal system. I have not yet come across any legal text that refers to or discusses ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s opinions. Instead, other scholarly institutions, such as the Council of Senior Scholars (Hayʾat Kibār al-ʿUlamāʾ) and the Permanent Committee for Scholarly Research and Counselling (al-Lajna al-Dāʾima lil-Buḥūth al-ʿIlmiyya wa’l-Iftāʾ), have become influential in debates on Islamic law.
Ṣāliḥ al-Fawzān: A Conservative Scholar (for Saudi Standards)
Ṣāliḥ b. Fawzān al-Fawzān’s appointment on October 22, 2025 came as a surprise, not least because the role of Islamic law in Saudi Arabia has changed substantially in the last decade.[12] On the one hand, its influence over public life has declined. The Saudi government stripped the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue of much of its powers in 2016,[13] while music concerts and other public events, previously difficult to imagine, became possible.[14]
The legal sector, on the other hand, has also undergone significant reform. Most significantly, the Saudi government began to codify Islamic law in 2022.[15] Earlier generations of Saudi ʿulamāʾ, including al-Fawzān’s, had rejected codification due to its alleged incompatibility with Islamic teachings.[16] In public debates, the Crown Prince and his Minister of Justice, Walīd al-Samaʿānī, framed codification through a language of “modernity.”[17] The Saudi personal status code, arguably the most controversial of the new codifications, would enshrine “international modern court practices,”[18] a concept that most scholars of al-Fawzān’s generation found objectionable.[19]
Even among other scholars in his generation, al-Fawzān was a conservative. Unlike other Saudi scholars, who argue against adherence to a single madhhab, al-Fawzān holds that lay people can follow a madhhab, although trained jurists cannot.[20] His most influential work on fiqh, titled al-Mulakhkhaṣ al-fiqhī, is an abridgment of Islamic legal doctrine largely based on the premodern text al-Rawḍ al-murbiʿ by al-Ḥajjāwī (d. 968/1560) and the writings of the Saudi scholar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad al-Qāsim (d. 1972).[21] In the introduction, al-Fawzān writes that he also includes his own opinions.[22] But whereas other Saudi scholars who write on fiqh also make extensive references to premodern scholars, their reasoning usually engages much more critically with premodern doctrine. For instance, Ibn ʿUthaymīn’s (d. 2001) influential commentary on the premodern book Zād al-mustaqniʿ, also by al-Ḥajjāwī, regularly deviates from mainstream Ḥanbalī opinions.[23]
Many of al-Fawzān’s views in Mulakhkhaṣ al-fiqhī are clearly anti-modern. For instance, he writes that the maximum length of pregnancy is four years, following the majority opinion of the classical Ḥanbalī school.[24] Another example for his deviation from the twentieth-century Saudi mainstream is the question of whether women can be disinherited through the establishment of a family endowment (waqf ahlī). Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb addressed this problem and rejected the concept of the family waqf entirely. Later Saudi scholars did not follow Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb fully, choosing instead to allow family endowments but restrict the use of waqf to exclude certain heirs. Al-Fawzān, by contrast, closely follows classical Ḥanbalī law and allows founders of family waqfs to designate beneficiaries of the waqf freely, thereby permitting arrangements that can, in practice, disinherit women.[25]
Conclusion: What Does al-Fawzān’s Appointment Mean for Islamic law in Saudi Arabia?
Born in 1935 and aged ninety when appointed as Grand Mufti, al-Fawzān certainly was not the only available option for the vacant position, given that Saudi kings had previously promoted several younger and more reform-minded scholars to the Council of Senior Scholars. One prominent example is Muḥammad al-ʿĪssā, who served as Minister of Justice under King ʿAbd Allāh and was involved in many reforms in the judicial sector. Al-ʿĪssā is also known internationally for his inter-faith dialogue and currently serves as Secretary General of the Muslim World League.[26] Other potential candidates from a younger generation of ʿulamāʾ include ʿAbd al-Bāqī b. Muḥammad Āl al-Shaykh Mubārak, a former judge at the High Court (maḥkama al-ʿulyā), or ʿAbd al-Salām b. ʿAbd Allāh Al-Sulaymān, the head of the Higher Judicial Institute (maʿhad al-ʿālī li-l-qaḍāʾ) in Riyadh.
Yet Crown Prince Muḥammad b. Salmān chose a different course. Rather than appointing a figure who would symbolise change within the religious sphere, he selected a member of the old establishment. The appointment of al-Fawzān is a deliberate statement. It establishes a connection between the current religious authorities and twentieth-century Saudi thought, and the generation of great Saudi scholars that shaped it, among them Ibn Bāz and Ibn ʿUthaymīn. Outside the Kingdom, that generation is commonly associated with Salafism and Wahhabism. This is striking because the Saudi government, and particularly the Crown Prince, has publicly distanced itself from Wahhabism and Salafism in recent years.[27]
The Saudi government has not published a detailed explanation of al-Fawzān’s appointment. For me, one possible explanation seems most convincing: al-Fawzān’s appointment was a signal to conservatives across the Kingdom, and within the legal system particularly, that regardless of public debates on the role of Wahhabism, the current reforms are not a break with twentieth-century Saudi Islam. Given al-Fawzān’s advanced age, the appointment was most likely a short-term compromise to appease parts of Saudi society who feel alienated, while already looking for the next, potentially more progressive, grand mufti.
Notes:
[1] Samuel Osborne, “Senior Saudi Cleric Bans People from Taking Selfies with Cats,” The Independent, May 27, 2016, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/senior-saudi-cleric-bans-people-from-taking-pictures-with-cats-a7050756.html.
[2] al-Fawzān also attracted attention for other controversial rulings, including his claim that Pokémon Go was a form of gambling and therefore impermissible. See “Cleric Flags Fatwa Against Pokemon,” BBC News, July 21, 2016, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36848175.
[3] See Dominik Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia (Brill, 2025), 48.
[4] al-ʿUbaykān hoped to resolve the problem of male, often foreign, drivers being alone in a car with women to whom they were not related. He suggested that if the driver drank the breast milk of the woman or one of her female relatives, milk kinship would be established, thereby making the driver related to the woman. For a newspaper report on the controversy, see “Saudi Arabia: Cleric in Hot Seat After Calling for Women to Give Men Breast Milk to Avoid Illicit Mixing,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2010, http://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/babylon-beyond/story/2010-06-10/saudi-arabia-cleric-in-hot-seat-after-calling-for-women-to-give-men-breast-milk-to-avoid-illicit-mixing.
[5] See Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 8.
[6] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 109.
[7] Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Qāsim, ed., Fatāwā wa-Rasāʾil Samāḥat al-Shaykh Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbd al Laṭīf Āl al-Shaykh (Maṭbaʿat al-Ḥukūma bi-Makka Mukarrama, 1399/1979).
[8] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 109.
[9] The appeal court was established by the 1975 Code of the Judiciary (Niẓām al-Qaḍāʾ). See Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 110.
[10] ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Bāz, Majmūʿ Fatāwā wa-Maqālāt Mutanawwiʿa (Dār al-Qāsim, 1420/1999), 1:10.
[11] The most important collection of Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm’s fatwās is al-Qāsim, ed., Fatāwā wa-Rasāʾil.
[12] His appointment was published in the Saudi gazette Umm al-Qurā. “Taʿyīn Faḍīlat al-Shaykh al-Duktūr Ṣāliḥ b. Fawzān al-Fawzān Muftiyan ʿĀmman lil-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-Saʿūdiyya,” Umm al-Qurā, https://uqn.gov.sa/details?p=28553.
[13] “Saudi Cabinet Decree Prevents ‘Religious Police’ from Pursuit, Arrest,” Al-Arabiya English, April 13, 2016, https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2016/04/13/Saudi-cabinet-decree-preventing-Religious-Police-from-pursual-and-arrest?
[14] Nora Derbal, “Electronic Dance Music Festivals in Riyadh: Pop Culture as a Space of Cooptation and Contestation,” Arabian Humanities 14 (2020): 77–96.
[15] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 175.
[16] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, ch. 3.
[17] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 175.
[18] “Walī al-ʿAhd: Niẓām al-Aḥwāl al-Shakhṣiyya Rāʿā al-Tawajjuhāt al-Qānūniyya wa’l-Mumārasāt al-Qaḍāʾiyya al-Duwaliyya,”ʿUkāẓ, March 8, 2022, https://www.okaz.com.sa/news/local/2099337.
[19] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, ch. 3.
[20] Ṣāliḥ b. Fawzān al-Fawzān, Majmūʿ Fatāwā li-Faḍīla al-Shaykh Ṣāliḥ Fawzān al-Fawzān (Dār Ibn Khazīma, 1434/2003), 2:703–04.
[21] Ṣāliḥ b. Fawzān al-Fawzān, al-Mulakhkhaṣ al-Fiqhī (Dār al-ʿĀṣima, 1423/2002), 1:5.
[22] al-Fawzān, Mulakhkhaṣ al-Fiqhī, 1:6.
[23] Muḥammad b. Ṣāliḥ b. ʿUthaymīn, al-Sharḥ al-Mumtiʿ ʿalā Zād al-Mustaqniʿ (Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 1428/2007).
[24] al-Fawzān, Mulakhkhaṣ al-Fiqhī, 2:416. For a discussion of the Saudi jurists’ views on the maximum length of pregnancy, see Dominik Krell, “Saudi Arabia,” in Filiation and the Protection of Parentless Children: Towards a Social Definition of the Family in Muslim Jurisdictions, ed. Nadjma Yassari, Lena-Maria Möller, and Marie-Claude Najm (T.M.C. Asser, 2019), 304–08.
[25] On the debate, see Dominik Krell, "Inheritance as a God-Given Right: The Debate on the Family Waqf in 20th and 21st Century Saudi Arabia,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 68, no. 5–6 (2025): 761–82.
[26] See this article in the Times of Israel discussing his relationship with Jewish organizations and scholars: “Saudi Cleric Known for Auschwitz Visit, Interfaith Dialogue Gives Main Hajj Sermon,” The Times of Israel, May 1, 2022, https://www.timesofisrael.com/saudi-cleric-known-for-auschwitz-visit-interfaith-dialogue-gives-main-hajj-sermon.
[27] See, for example, Muḥammad b. Salmān’s famous interview with TIME magazine in 2018: “Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Talks to TIME About the Middle East, Saudi Arabia’s Plans and President Trump,” TIME, 5 April 2018, https://time.com/5228006/mohammed-bin-salman-interview-transcript-full.
Suggested Bluebook citation: Dominik Krell, The New Grand Mufti and the Future of Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, Islamic L. Blog (Apr. 23, 2026), https://islamiclaw.blog/2026/04/23/the-new-grand-mufti-and-the-future-of-islamic-law-in-saudi-arabia/.
Suggested Chicago citation: Dominik Krell, “The New Grand Mufti and the Future of Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia,” Islamic Law Blog, April 23, 2026, https://islamiclaw.blog/2026/04/23/the-new-grand-mufti-and-the-future-of-islamic-law-in-saudi-arabia/.
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