After two direct military interventions, one in Bahrain in 2011 and one began in Yemen last month, the Saudi regime appears somehow immune to destabilization in a region torn by conflict and war. The current resilience of the Saudi monarchy variably appears to be a function of the redistributive power of an oil-rich regime, with satisfaction among Saudis with their leadership and external support guaranteed by its Western allies, especially the United States, but there are more relevant factors involved. The regime is currently sustained by the benefits of domestic divisions and regional turmoil.

Saudi society is fragmented, divided along ideological lines that inhibit any quest for national demands for political change and real mobilization. Islamists and liberals trumpet their causes by disagreeing on almost everything from human rights to women driving and their inclusion in state institutions, such as the consultative council.

The monarchy contributes to widening the gap between them by supporting loyalist, official Salafist-Wahhabi Islamism while also patronizing several other Islamist tendencies as well as liberals. In mainstream educational and judicial state institutions, it gives the Islamists a free hand, but in the economic, foreign policy and cultural arenas and the pan-Arab media, the regime enlists individuals with liberal leanings as clients and beneficiaries of its largesse. By placing Islamists and liberals in different niches, it ensures the continuation of its policy of divide and rule. Thus, liberals and Islamists spend most of their time attacking each other instead of working toward a common political reform agenda.

In pitting Islamists and liberals against each other, the regime creates separate platforms for each group, selectively sponsoring them and fueling a war for positions among their adherents. It ensures that Islamists remain dominant in schools and mosques, preoccupying them with teaching pupils Quranic recitations, and in the courts, where they pass severe punishments on transgressors. Meanwhile, liberals are confined to literary salons, where they debate modernity, and dominate television airwaves, defending the regime’s domestic and regional policies, from unemployment benefits to the war in Yemen. Because the two constituencies operate in separate domains, the one is kept from trespassing on the other’s field, but they can still attack each other in an endless competition under the gaze of the regime.