What’s Behind Saudi Arabia’s Connection to Islamic State?

Many claim that the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Islamic State (IS) is one of patron and client. IS, they argue, is a pawn of the Saudi regime, used to check the “rising” Shi'a power of Iran in the Mideast.

A file photo of Saudi royal guards on duty in front of portraits of former King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz (R), new King Salman bin Abdulaziz (C), and former Crown Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz (L) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Fayez Nureldine/AP

Many claim that the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Group is one of patron and client. ISIS, they argue, is a pawn of the Saudi regime, used to check the “rising” Shiite power of Iran in the Middle East.

This allegation typically presents certain shared principles between the official Saudi interpretation of Islam and the doctrine motivating ISIS as damning evidence of complicity between the two.

Although there is a certain truth to this, it assumes a willful agency on Saudi Arabia’s part that simply isn’t there. Saudi citizens supporting ISIS’s activities in Iraq and Syria are not the result of a coherent plan directed by the kingdom’s rulers, but the overflow of a long-standing system used to maintain its domestic legitimacy.

Saudi citizens supporting ISIS's activities in Iraq and Syria are not the result of a coherent plan directed by the kingdom's rulers, but the overflow of a long-standing system used to maintain its domestic legitimacy.