Is the Saudi state considered an Islamic state or not?

The Shaykh :
The first question is whether the Saudi state is considered an Islamic state or not. This is one of the studies that took place there
in Jordan, and it branched off from the previous study. If it is not, is it permissible to accept material aid from it, and what are
the conditions? Considering the state and the ruler as Muslim or disbeliever is one of the studies that took place after the study on
creedal and practical disbelief, namely whether this society is a disbelieving or a Muslim society. I said that the ruling on a society
whose majority of population are Muslims, all of them or the majority of them, professing Islam in belief, and a large portion of them practicing it
to the extent they are able in action, but we hold them accountable for the crime of their rulers who do not implement the ruling of Allah and the Shari'ah of Allah among them,
this cannot be called a disbelieving society, contrary to some Islamic writers today. And that
writing is one of the causes of the deviation I mentioned previously, and I gave an example for the brothers I referred to earlier,
the Jordanians. Have you seen the Palestinian lands when the Crusaders invaded and occupied them? Before
their occupation of it, was that society an Islamic society or not? They answered necessarily by saying, yes, it was an Islamic
society. I said, then what happened to this society when it was occupied by the disbelieving ruler and colonized, as our
people were colonized by France in Syria, and you were colonized by England, and so on? Did that
society become a disbelieving society? Our companion was silent. I said, we have no doubt at all that the society remains an Islamic society, because
the reality is that those who rule this society are the individuals who constitute this society, and they attribute themselves to Islam, but a disbeliever
oppressed them and suspended a portion of Islam among them. And they, of course, do not want that, but they strove and strove until they were freed from
that disbelief and established the Islamic Shari'ah that they were establishing before the colonizer took control over them. We
today, unfortunately, are ruled by some of our allies, but they do not rule us by what Allah has revealed. So we do not bear the burden of these people.
And Allah the Mighty and Majestic says: Therefore, the society now is an Islamic society. But as for whether it is an
Islamic society that has deviated from Islam in much or little, that is another study, and we are the people who know that best. As for
labeling a society in which a large number of Muslims live as a non-
Islamic society because certain individuals rule them by other than what Allah has revealed, the least that can be said is that
we do not have in the Book or the Sunnah anything that makes us rule that this society is an Islamic or
non-Islamic society. This is the least that can be said. Otherwise, where do we go with the prayer of these praying people,
their fasting, and their Hajj to the House of Allah the Sacred, and he (peace and blessings be upon him) said, "Islam is built on five: the testimony that there is no god but Allah, and all these
things, and praise be to Allah, still remain standing in Islamic societies. So if we present them with the truth, we return to
answering the previous question: Is the Saudi state considered an Islamic state? The answer is yes. And we hope that
the answer will remain yes, yes, for many, many years, because, unfortunately, we find the Saudi state moving toward
the abyss, where the other Arab states have fallen, so that their ruling has become explicitly by other than what Allah has revealed. As for the Saudi
state, its ruling heads, let alone its judges and its shaykhs in its courts, still
declare first that they rule by Islam, and second, they actually apply the Hanbali school of jurisprudence. But the law
has begun to seep into them little by little, so what we fear most is that what befell those before them will befall them. But until now,
it is undoubtedly an Islamic state because it adopts Islam as a system, except for what has seeped into it. Yes.