November 14, 2025
Washington DC — The Institute for Gulf Affairs is publishing an investigation of Saudi de fact ruler Mohamed bin Salman’s handpicked grand Mufti, a longtime hard extremist Sheikh Saleh AlFawzan.
MBS appointed AlFwazan a few weeks ago as the Saudi top religious authority with vast powers over education, laws, and the entire Saudi state religious institutions.
AlFawzan anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Shia, anti-women among other disturbing ideologies have been documented over the decades. AlFawzan’s sermons, fatwas and writings advocated against Christians, Jews and Muslims in general but especially Shia Muslims.
In these recordings, AlFawzan said Christians, Jews, and Shia Muslims are all enemies of Muslims. He also forbade taking Shia and Jewish friends and rejected any idea of building churches in Saudi Arabia to serve the millions of Christian workers living in the country. The small number of Saudis who converted to Christianity has been diapered in Saudi prisons.
Hailed a reformer by politicians, academia and media in general, MBS chose AlFawzan to lead his regime’s religious institutions. While chumming up to Christians and Jews politicians such as Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, MBS literally kissed the head of AlFawzan on numerous occasions.
It is highly unlikely that Trump and others will make a point of MBS’s mufti pick or his extreme oppression of the country’s population including Christians.