 Hello everyone if you could take your seat we're going to get started I'd like to welcome everyone to this joint Baker Institute Carnegie conference on religious authority in the Middle East implications for US policy My name is Sarah Yerkes. I'm a fellow here at the Carnegie Endowment And we at Carnegie are honored that Kedir and his team asked us to serve as the Washington host for the launch of this very interesting body of work We're looking forward to a day full of discussion at the intersection of academia and policy Looking at the role that religious actors play within their own societies and how US policy makers can better understand those dynamics And now I'd like to turn it over to Kedir who will provide a more formal introduction to the conference. Thank you Good morning everyone and thank you Sarah as the Baker Institute We want to thank the Carnegie Endowment for hosting us here and in particular I want to thank Sarah and Nathan Brown for making this happen and I also want to acknowledge Harry Henry Loos Foundation for their support for our study without which our study wouldn't be wouldn't be Successful and I also want to say that I feel incredibly privileged and humbled to be here to be speaking at this venue and in front of a distinguished audience that not only Includes my esteemed colleagues in this project, but also others like Sarah, Nathan, Sean and Peter If and when I say something wrong, I'm saving the knowledge that they will correct me Religion and religious authority are incredibly valuable political resources, especially at a time When religion religions prominence has risen in recent years and decades In the political arena something that we know in this particularly in particular, but also over in the Middle East and North Africa region various religious political actors such as Islamists and fundamentalists or Salafi groups and Governments use religion in one form or another for their for their political purposes throughout the region because authority in Islam Is decentralized and hierarchical with the exception of some Shiite? group circles Dynamics of a free market of religion and religious competition defined politics religion relationship across the region Yet despite its centrality to a well-grounded understanding conception of how religion and politics interact and to understanding the motivations behind religious actors actions We lack a comprehensive analysis of this key concept of Islamic authority religious authority in the Middle East Our study examines the nature of religious authority in contemporary Middle East and we ask Who speaks for Islam in the Middle East and who wields religious authority? Three key observations about the region's religious space Motivated our study first Islamist actors across the region have enjoyed widespread electoral popularity for decades does this electoral popularity Translate into religious favorability and authority for Islamist This is this is a very important and politically pertinent question second state affiliated religious leaders are generally assumed to lack the charisma intrigue and authority other Religious leaders are deemed to possess because of their proximity to political power So state affiliation is presumed to undermine their authority How much influence and authority do state religious officials actually have and lastly, there are some strong undercurrents of Extremism in the region sometimes violently as Evidence by the presence of Islamic State and Al Qaeda affiliates But is there a strong support societal support base for extremists among the broader population populations in the region There's part of this study we conducted an original 12 country online public opinion survey that asked about 16 hundred sixteen thousand five hundred respondents their views on More than 80 religious leaders from across the region these leaders hailed from Quite different backgrounds some were traditional religious scholars Other state affiliated Sufis Televangelists and others were more politically oriented like the Islamists Salafis and jihadis Just a quick note about the survey our survey is not representative at the national level So it's just proportionately male More educated and more urban however on some other variables, especially that relate to religion religious attitudes religious Behavior it is fairly comparable to the broader populations that they're drawn from So and we have more information detailed information about the survey In our appendix online Our survey included direct questions about the respondents approval of and trust in these religious leaders in every country But our study went beyond asking directly. We know this is a sensitive topic, especially given the In some context authoritarian nature of regime so not everyone is going to come out and reveal their true preferences in our in our survey So to this end we decided to measure this more Indirective so we use endorsement experiments This experimental design allowed us to make a series of religious statements the focus of Respondents evaluation instead of the religious leaders themselves So we would give them a statement a religious statement and we would attribute that statement to a particular religious Leader and we vary this for each respondent. So we had 14 This kind of question 14 endorsement experiments and we had 13 leaders plus a no endorsement option as the baseline to compare to So this combination of alternative methods to map religious authority in the region and enabled us To reach a more comprehensive set of conclusions and you would be able to using by a single method The results depict a complex complex religious space in the Middle East that reflects its citizens nuanced approach toward religion and religion politics relationship So we have three main findings The first one is that we find that the popularity and religious influence of Islamist actors notably vary across the region On one hand Islamist figures in our survey received fairly high levels of approval From respondents in most countries in our survey Likewise, they were found to be trustworthy in most countries in our survey again There are a couple countries in which Islamists were not as much favored such as Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates for example But in most other countries they were on the other hand survey respondents were not to be more lukewarm About Islamists when their views are put into specific context in terms of religion or political issues we asked them indirectly in the endorsement experiments Islamist names typically garnered a negative endorsement score in our endorsement experiments indicating that respondents were Less likely to agree with a statement when they saw the name of an Islamist figure a Second finding of our studies that We fundamentally channel challenge the conventional wisdom about the influence of state religious actors Our study shows that state affiliated religious leaders have largely outperformed our expectations and to begin with this was also our own expectation as the as a team in the study this finding holds true and this is true both in trust being trustworthy and Having the approval of respondents and this is true almost without exception in every single country in our study, which is Which I thought was impressive This finding also holds true with the endorsement experiments Importantly state-affiliated religious officials have the most influence in countries where the state employs Religion and religious discourse as a key element of its national identity in countries such as Saudi Arabia Morocco Iran and Jordan However considered in tandem with the relatively weak performance of Islamists in our study especially in endorsement experiments this finding suggests that The support that state religious actors received from respondents in our survey Is conditional upon ensuring a non-partisan approach to religion and we had another experiment in our survey Which actually reaffirmed our finding in this part of our survey, so we're pretty confident in our result Maintaining that non-partisan position is key to their stature as legitimate religious authorities From the perspective of respondents in our survey Lastly the most concerning finding in our study is that extremist religious discourse has a sizable audience Respondents in our survey did not express support for local or transnational extremist figures when asked directly in our survey in the approval questions and Trustworthiness and we asked about al-Baghdadi isis Islamic State leader Al-Baghdadi in every single country and He did not Yet any any traction in direct questions However endorsement question revealed Dramatically different picture in several countries al-Baghdadi was among the most favorably viewed Religious leaders when asked indirectly in the endorsement experiment, so When we asked their views on different religious statements People in several countries were more likely to agree with this statement when they saw the name of ice Islamic State leader al-Baghdadi and this was particularly Pronounced in Tunisia Saudi Arabia Jordan and Morocco and These are the very countries that sent the highest number of foreign fighters into Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State So we have external sort of validation of our finding In our study. So what do these findings suggest? It is important to caution against Securitizing use foreign policy engagement with religion in the Middle East Because it carries a serious risk of de-legitimizing the local religious actors who are who are involved in such engagements There are a lot of counter violent extremism programs that are going on So this is particularly a concern for state religious officials who are viewed and Instrumentalized as agents of moderation religion permeates various aspects of life in societies across the Middle East and If you follow a lot of these surveys and this was also evident in our survey we asked the same question how important religion is in your life and overwhelming majorities in every country throughout the region indicate that religion is Very important in their lives. So in that sense, this is very important. So Reducing religions Religion to extremism on Is is problematic? Reducing it to extremism and extremist violence alone Compromises the ability of your foreign policy to engage with a much larger population and on a broader set of issues Relatedly our research shows that state religious actors enjoy Significant influence and power that hinge on the local circumstances as such state religious officials potential to act as legitimate religious authorities offers an opportunity to promote reform in social issues such as education women's rights and pluralism and Democrization more broadly. They're not directly related to extremism in in the society Examples of such policies have been employed in countries like Tunisia and Jordan in recent years in regard to equal inheritance and family planning Simultaneously, however, this influence and power of state religious authorities is precarious because of its proximity to political power So the way to engage them or the way to empower them must be undertaken delicately Lastly the mixed performance of Islamist actors in our study reflects their complicated legacy throughout the region Even when Islamists and to some degree Selfies fail to resonate strongly with respondents as religious authorities in our survey There is extensive evidence for the support that they enjoy as leaders in most countries throughout the region So it is important to recognize that, you know, they have they represent a particular, you know societal block and Just ignoring them entirely not recognizing them as legitimate actors and in their societies is problematic because they're simply not going to go away So such nuanced support for Islamist Recognizing them as legitimate political actors in their sort of broad appeal to religious values But not so much as religious authorities directly That this this nuanced support for Islamist underscores the importance of engaging them in efforts to find long-lasting solutions to major public policy issues in in regional countries Their absence from these processes carries the risk of de-legitimizing reform efforts right from the beginning The recent public debates on on equal inheritance in Tunisia Show that Islamists can play the role of spoilers in social reform efforts just as they can Reinforced reform and democratization efforts Like enough to do in the aftermath of the jasmine revolution and we have an in-house expert Which are on here who can speak to this more So our study shows a strong strain of support that Islamic State leader Al-Bada The enjoys in several countries in the region while this support oftentimes does not translate into Support for local extremists and this is I think very important finding In any meaningful way it nonetheless reveals a concerning trend and helps explain why certain countries in the region Send high numbers of foreign fighters into Syria Two important points must be raised here in light of our study first while immediate military action against Extremist groups and violent groups may be warranted in certain Context in order to address human suffering and geopolitical geopolitical ramifications of the Islamic State presence in the region such action should Absolutely complemented by a long-term strategy To undertake broad efforts at social reform in order to curb undercurrent of support for extremism In the region critically the complex nature of religious fair should be harnessed in this process as our study shows In particular religious actors who enjoy broad legitimacy as religious authorities should constitute a key element of these efforts second Looking at extremism and extremist violence In the region our study shows that one of the important motivators for of support for extremism in the region is US Foreign policy and actions on the ground in the region So it is of utmost importance that US policy and actions in the region are Calibrated with the religious landscape in mind the region where religion is deemed to be quite important in the lives of The people this is very important to be able to gain a little more traction in terms of policies on the ground I will finish by saying that our reports Most of our reports are published. They're available outside in printed form Help yourselves. They're also available online through the Carnegie event website, but also through the Baker Institute Page and we will have more reports and policy briefs coming in the coming weeks So beyond the watch out for those Now I want to introduce our first keynote speaker for the day Sean Casey Dr. Sean Casey is the director of the Berkley Center for Religion Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University and a professor of the practice in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service Sean previously was US special representative for religion and global affairs and the founding director of the US Department of State's Office of Religion and Global Affairs He has also had positions at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC and The Center for American Progress and the Center for Strategic and International Studies Casey has written on the ethics of the war in Iraq as well as the role of religion in American presidential politics He's the author of the making of a Catholic president Kennedy versus Nixon 1960 He is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Political Theology He is currently working on a book on ethics and international politics tentatively titled Neabur's children Casey holds a BA from Abilene Christian University and then PA from Harvard Kennedy School and a Master of Divinity and Doctorate of Theology in Religion and Society from Harvard Divinity School. We are very fortunate to have him here today So, please welcome Sean Casey Good morning, everyone Let me begin by thanking Kadir and Anel and Sarah for this wonderful invitation to open up this great day of Conversation and analysis of the very fascinating research that your team has done It's an honor for me to be here this morning. I'm sorry I will not be here for the full day to hear what I'm sure will be quite interesting and engaging a Conversation, but you're to be commended for this fascinating set of papers and analysis I think you really do push the frontier of our understanding of this very important set of questions related to religious authority In the countries that you have examined I think that the publication and dissemination marks real progress in deepening not only our understanding religious authority among the Leaders in these countries, but it's also a very nice signal that the modes of analysis Available to diplomats is evolving in some very interesting and positive ways On the one hand, I think we are light years away from what I hope was an era where Earlier sets of alleged investigations began with inane questions like why do they hate us and can't anyone here write a Counter narrative that will be effective in shutting down ISIS on Twitter But more about that in a moment So the good news is analysis is much more sophisticated than it was six years ago when I came into the State Department The bad news is that the consumers inside the United States government who might actually be able to learn from this material That demand has decreased and we'll talk more about that in a moment or two The Baker Institute has a very special place in my heart for many reasons First of all as many of you know in April I'm exactly three years ago in 2016 Secretary Kerry traveled to Houston at the invitation of Secretary Baker to give a keynote speech on why he decided to launch an office of religion and global affairs in his own bureau and he outlined the case for that and Secretary Baker Was eager to provide a very large platform and context for Kerry to make that speech I commend it to you. It's available online. We lit lays out the systematic case for why The State Department needs to grow its capacity to assess religious dynamics and engage religious actors along the lines We see advocated in these papers in many ways that speech Mark to the high water mark for our office that I directed Had the pleasure then speaking the next day to a group of students and also later in November 2016 So the Baker Institute is a context where these issues are naturally part of the issue set So I'm honored and I'm grateful that you are maintaining this tradition and this deep interest In this intersection of religion and global affairs We received a warm welcome from ambassador to Jerry and on both visits and I remain grateful for this day for your hospitality Likewise a dear friend of mine of those of you who know the Baker Institute may know William C. Martin Who's something of a legend on rice's campus? He's now professor of sociology emeritus and he maintains his larger-than-life presence on the rice campus from his post at the Baker Institute As an aside, he is my nominee for the first Texan who should be cloned So far no one is picked up on that recommendation But if you know Bill, he is one of the country's most foremost scholars of religion in public life And he embodies rice's deep history of producing Trench and scholarship on the public consequences of religious belief and practice around the world Let me draw you a quick roadmap of where I want to go with my brief remarks I hope I finish in time. So we have a moment for Q&A if you are so motivated My remarks are focused around five questions First who should care about your research and how can and should you reach them? Second what exactly is religious authority and are the social sciences the best or only way to get at that topic? Third if we do have a sense of what religious authority means Are we arguably in an era that might be called the time of crisis for religious authority? Fourth what about US diplomacy in the area of religion and global affairs? What is going on on the inside and finally if religion and global affairs are on the verge of extinction in us diplomacy? See how deathly I just answered my last question Is the victorious trope of religious freedom a sufficient substitute on the part of our government So who exactly should care About this sort of research into religious authority in the Muslim majority countries chosen The simplest answer is an American diplomat to the extent the heart of the work of US embassies and posts is Interpreting host countries back to the State Department in DC. They should care deeply About any form of research that shedlights on the political terrain, especially in countries of the comprised of the current research set but sadly The view that view has never been fully socialized in the State Department to DNA We had a three and a half year Launch of trying to socialize the notion that every embassy and post should be a consumer of this kind of analysis We made a dent in the DNA, but we did not transform it So we made progress in the carry years, but it was really over before it got fully started The tougher question then to those of you in this project is how do you share your results given the less than Hospitable landscape for your work. Let me give you three pieces of very pragmatic Inside the Beltway advice First shop it to the intelligence community to the extent there is interest in these sort of questions It is primarily found there today You talk to members of the IC they're still doing their professional work But they have become educators and persuaders inside this administration where they have a group of political customers Who are deeply suspect of a utility of this kind of analysis So they still care even if the demand signal from the State Department of White House is virtually silent for their wares Analysts still do their work on religion in day in and day out even though they are often relegated to trying to educate their new Political masters in the executive branch, but they still care passionately about this issue set You're going to have to find them and I'm willing to elaborate that pilgrimage later second Try to connect directly with senior career folk in the diplomatic force In my time at state there was nothing better for our work than an ambassador or deputy chief of mission who understood the wisdom and value The smart analysis of religious dynamics in the regional country. They actually are on email They do respond to people on the outside of bringing analysis to them Third I recommend you invest time and energy in developing your own communication plan for your own product A website is great digitizing these papers. That is great But in the last 10 years, there's been an explosion of research and writing on religion in diplomacy. I Can now say to you much of that is a very poor quality I still have shells full of reports that are several years old in this space that I have not read much of That rightly rests on red You cannot assume that simply because you wrote it the right people are going to find it and be influenced by it While I was at state there was already beginning to be too much to read So you have to ask yourself Who should be reading your research and how do you make it available? My next question gets more to the substance of the research and that is what exactly is Quote-unquote religious authority and is social science the best or only way to get at it Kadeere, I appreciate your written remarks Introducing the work, but also your opening statement here about the nature of religious authority because I think that that's very very helpful I think there's a tacit acknowledgement in all the papers that religious authority is heavily dependent on the national political and religious climate There really isn't any pure form of religious authority that can be distilled out of a national scenario and they compared and contrasted in scientifically objective way across national boundaries There is a reductionism with respect to religion in the State Department What are the five pillars of Islam you memorize that you know everything you need to know about Islam in any country on the world So this is essentially an essentialist approach There's an essence of Islam that can be distilled and disseminated in as long as every office and posting bureau knows that they that's all they need to know We rejected that on the face of it in the office of religion in global affairs Religion is always embedded and expressed in Context and intersection with thousands of other dynamics. There is no essence of Christianity. There is no essence of Judaism There's no essence of Islam The State Department is going to need a lot of time and a lot of teaching before they move beyond the sort of essentialist approach My fear is that some consumers of your data will simply say well We have we have a poll now about religious authority and we understand who's up and who's down and then we need to think no further Obviously the papers build a sophisticated historical political and religious interpretation around the data, which is as it should be My fear is that among some of your potential consumers in the US government They will read these polls as if they're a presidential political poll in the United States Somebody's up by 10 points. Somebody's down by three points Let's run towards the person who's up 10 points and that's not the lessons to be drawn from these very sophisticated Analysis, but I'm simply saying you're vulnerable to being co-opted that way So I think that the papers themselves provide historical background and context that make interpreting the social science that much more effective But don't rely simply on the social science to answer the question. What is religious authority? So I'm not accusing any of the papers of doing that But my fear is that perhaps some of you less sophisticated consumers on the inside of the government will not see that They'll simply rely on what this is today's tracking poll from Politico So we need not do any more thinking beyond who's up and who's down So my point is that it wouldn't hurt to think more deeply about what you think religious authority means I happen to think it can be a useful shorthand, but it gets diabolically complicated pretty fast once you scratch the surface As I said, I I fear that some of the consumers of your research not being as sophisticated as you researchers are may reduce Religious authority the simple formulas of popular support reflected in opinion surveys and that's not what you're trying to do My point here is that I want to argue that opinion surveys can be good servants But they make lousy masters and to be a bit crass Standalone data tells us less than multiple-year surveys which yield insights of comparison over time It would be great if loose would fund you to go back into the field every two years every three years So you have comparative data so you can see if the dinette is it going down or is it increasing its stature? It's that comparative data that really begins to offer long-term insights about the status the relative status of these various trend lines So I'm I'm happy to help loose see the light in terms of more funding I hope you have an opportunity to continue to go into the field and do these kinds of surveys such that you have Comparative data say over a decade over two decades Then you have an extra layer of really interesting sets of questions to the rest of us in terms of where where are these dynamics going? Now I'm not aware of a single convincing study on the meaning of religious authority Any such one-size-fits-all abstract definition is doomed to failure Depending on the particular patch of a particular religious tradition Embedded in specific political environment systems histories cultures religious authority can be inherited it can be seized It can be manufactured. It can be bestowed. It can be squandered created spent faked or imparted Social science can shed light on this, but I would humbly suggest That a wider interdisciplinary conversation with historians religious studies professors anthropologists, etc Should be part of your ongoing conversations and analysis Now in asking my next question I may be exposing myself to charges of hypocrisy or just plain old inconsistency, which I know it's rarely found in academia But with a cursory glance around the globe, it's not illogical to ask Are we in an era of significant decline in religious authority? If we rely only on survey data, it's tempting to answer and be affirmative certainly a quick tour of global Christianity Through the Orthodox world through Roman Catholicism through evangelicalism through Pentecostalism One could make an argument that religious authority and all of its complexity in permutations is on the decline So there are even wider global sets of questions to be asked and if the answer is yes, then the next Question set is why is this the case? The results of the country studies before today might lend themselves the symbol of conclusions now Let me be clear. I'm not promoting this as a hard thesis, but it is worth pondering It's also worth postponing a grand conclusion, especially when we talk to diplomats I say this because diplomats are tempted to accept shorthand Answers to cut to the chase in the appeal of stereotypes is almost irresistible in the face of the complexity Especially when it comes to religion since religion is still a marginally acceptable subject for diplomats Reductive simplifying analysis can be a great relief and hence almost irresistible To me the real strength of these country studies is their emphasis on the unique political and religious configurations in each Country the upshot for you is to resist the temptation to draw grand theoretical conclusions But I'm also saying on the other hand it's worth stepping back and saying what are the dynamics and trend lines in terms of religious My fourth question is a tough one for me to ask but I think it needs to be raised Does the United States diplomatic apparatus they give a fig about research like this? I think the honest answer is it for the time being no it doesn't and it gives me no pleasure to say that We had a great run for three and a half years in the office of religion and global affairs But it was not enough to change the slow moving change resistant culture of what might be Indeed the slowest changing sector in the entire federal government bureaucracy. We made a lot of friends We made some real contributions to US diplomacy, but we were swept away very very quickly for ideological reasons in the current administration That's not to say there aren't pockets a real interesting questions like the nature of religious authority in the least But it's driven by individuals who care not by bureaus or senior leaders that are seeking such answers The subject captures the attention of smart people But not enough to preserve the technical institutional capacity to absorb the diplomatic implications of these papers that existed once upon the time But the subject of religion is not the only issue to be swept away by the current effort to restore American Diplomacies swagger Multiple observers have noted the current administration does not have a functioning foreign policy decision making apparatus Think about that for a moment But that's the end As we're now on our third national security advisor in the White House As you know this position emerged in the modern presidential era as the curator and gatekeeper of our vast foreign policy network of analysis and expertise The ideological bias of the current administration when it comes to religion further hampers the search for deeper understanding of religious dynamics That bias consists of it privileging one small religious community fundamentalist white Christianity At the expense of say understanding Islam where the interests are only in kinetic solutions But a diplomatic capacity is under a much broader assault As conceived from the radical purge of senior leaders and experts all across the State Department Religion is not the only issue set that has suffered the one that's most directly affected me But to be honest, it's fairly far down the list in terms of the lack of expert capacity When the president travels he operates with the least amount of diplomatic expertise supporting him than any other president in the modern presidential era Think about that When he goes to Riyadh he goes to Jerusalem and he goes to Rome On his first international trip he had very precious little expertise on the religious dynamics of those geographical locations with him He sits across the table from international leaders with only marginal expertise advising him if that much It's a terrifying situation, and I'm growing increasingly fearful That six more years of the state of affairs may permanently damage America standing in the world to say nothing of our ability to shape and influence global affairs for the better Now it's not my intention to spoil today's discussions But it needs to be said that the willingness of our diplomats to be consumers of expert analysis is being attacked on a daily Systematic basis, and we may never see the day When something approaching normalcy returns This leads to my final question that as and that is can the pursuit of religious freedom by the current administration be a Sufficient intellectual replacement of the type of work we did in the office of religion and global affairs and the type of analysis We find in today's papers the short answer is no it cannot Religious freedom is practiced now is ideologically driven and frankly is not particularly interested in nuanced assessments of religious dynamics in Muslim countries It is interested in promoting Christianity first and foremost and is seen by the anti In that scene by the anti Islamic bona fides of so many of its senior political leaders How can one proclaim religious freedom for all and simultaneously promote a Muslim ban with a straight face? That's appalling chilling and beyond belief that is in fact where we are with respect to the religious dynamics Now let me close on somewhat less somber note I'm in the process of reading Bill Burns terrific new book the back channel and Memoir of American diplomacy in the case where it's renewal. We are after all in his house And I want to tell you that it is a very powerful book even though I'm not finished with it. I'm still reading As we speak But it's powers multi-valent and so far I think the greatest trait for me is the portrait of what American diplomacy can once again be And I should note that his portrait of Secretary Baker. It's quite compelling and quite fascinating If that's worth the read on its own It's a powerful antidote to the current assault on the American diplomatic institutions He skillfully shows the limits as well as the potential for American American diplomacy and he's making an argument to try to return to that stance where Making the world a better place and not being captured to narrow populace and anti pearl's interest is in fact in America's interest by the book Read it digest it and be inspired about the heights of what our diplomacy can accomplish once again And don't give up the hard work of laboring to understand the infinitely complex study of religion and its implications For improving the state of the world Thank you again to today's paper writers and good luck with the rest of today's I think we do have time for a few questions. So I just raise your hands I'm Peter Humphrey Intelligence analyst in a former diplomat one of the things I found at state was our cultural secularity prevents us from making certain diplomatic approaches or implications for example I Tried to include a Quranic verse in a white paper and it was Immediately expunged I Once suggested we demolish a Major musty that was causing some problems Almost lost my head over that this unwillingness of state to play the game on their fields rather than ours To occasionally quote the Quran rather than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He's killing us What what can you do about that? Well, let me refer back to something You know you Google me and I am a Christian by training and I discovered actually Google outside the boundaries of the United States So many times when I would met met with religious leaders who were not Christian They knew more about me than I knew about them and part of my anxiety was well Do I look like the American Christian guy who's there to sort of have a new form of crusade and to my distinct pleasure Many many but the overwhelming majority of international religious leaders were happy to stay departmental sending somebody who had at least some sympathy and some Understand about religious dynamic around the world. I often You know you would go in and I eventually want to get to good conversations by asking good questions that is shutting up and listening But we have often had to go through phases at the beginning of a conversation where particularly in the Islamic world There was a lot of anger about bad American policy I felt no need to defend that American policy now that some of my State Department handlers were very upset when I said yeah That invasion thing 2003 really was not a very good decision of the government part And but people were stunned that affirming a huge part of America's problem in the Middle East Stems from bad American foreign policy in bad military So we tried to model So I think when I got to the State Department most people would recognize as Secretary Kerry did that deep intuition We had missed a lot of diplomatic opportunities because we refused to engage with religious actors We refused to assess religious dynamics in context our office tried to model both How do you model engagement and how do you bring a more sophisticated set of analytical lenses to these questions? So the resistance I met was not should we be doing this work Which was quite interesting to me I didn't encounter that kind of hardcore resistance the tougher question is how do you do this work? Because it can be done gloriously Incorrect, it can be highly counterproductive So we had to think long and hard more on the how do you do this question the work question then should we do it? So in that sense that I think the question is now evolved in the at least in the American Intellectual context it makes perfect sense to ask questions about religious authority in these countries 15 years ago. It probably wouldn't have made sense Intellectually publicly and within the bureaucracy the much tougher question then is how do you do this work? Of assessing religious dynamics and engaging religious actors. We modeled that we commended that to embassies and posts And that was one of our central missions But my argument was always that's going to be almost a generational thing that if we convinced The State Department to make it into what we've been to its DNA that every embassy has a religious landscape And they know the players and they understand the dynamics our office could disappear So we were there really on a training mission and if in 20 years We had accomplished our work then the office of religion and global players could disappear now three and a half years Was not long enough that the socialize those those missions Thank you My name is David Loud and I'm a policy analyst How do you go about? Examining and improving the our setting policy that is based on the conditions of particular countries or regions without Getting bogged down in the personalities that you have to deal with So that it so that it's not personality centric, but based on the actual conditions personalities in terms of in the American government or personalities in the country Okay, I was thinking about some personalities inside the building but Well, no, I mean you obviously you have to pay attention to both I mean if you assess, you know If you had done all of these these social scientific research questions and didn't ask about specific leaders and specific personnel You'd be no substance to your work. So you have to deal with personalities as well as institutions But if it's just about institutions or just about personalities You really don't get the full texture of the complexity of how religions live in any country. I'm aware of Now it is true. I Read a lot of analysis in my almost four years in the State Department that focused exclusively on leaders. I think that's a mistake We often do this distinction between engaging leaders and what we called lived religion What does it mean to be a member of a particular religious community at a particular local level? And there were often huge gaps in our understanding between what national religious leaders were saying and what rank and file Hopefully many times there were episodes where rank and file communities did stop that their leaders were surprised by so But it's much easier to simply say we're here the five most important religious leaders in this country Let's follow them and let's examine them and our work here is done The problem is that's an incomplete picture and they many times are selling a particular interpretation of religion in their country That doesn't always map on to the lived reality It's much harder To do the analysis of what's going at the grassroots level for a thousand different reasons, but oftentimes that analysis So this is where a scientific survey actually does provide you insights into what people are thinking at the grassroots level So you have to do both you can't ignore you ignore one It's a great pair. So I think you have you have to do both And then to make it more complicated you have to look at mediating institutions between the grassroots and National leaders, so it's diabolically complex and that's one of the reasons why I think diplomats are afraid to embrace this is a form of analysis. Is it bloody hard work? But thank you Any time for one more in your capacity as the director of office and office of religion and global affairs How are you received over in the region in your interactions with religious leaders? You or your your office in general or or citizens of those countries, you know, do you have any examples that might? might shed some light into What kind of a role such an office or religion in general might play I think we were we were met Almost universally with great promise that someone was showing up with at least a rudimentary understanding of what was happening in Specific religious communities. They were not used to seeing American diplomats show up with that kind of interest and capacity We weren't selling something to them in most occasions One of the first things I realized when I had two realizations when I first came in the State Department Number one is I knew a very tiny slice of global religion and the notion of having 30 people If there's seven billion people on the planet the probably 70 billion forms of religious expression to be found that the notion that 30 people We're gonna understand global religious dynamics was absurd on the face of it So number one I realized if we're gonna be successful We had to persuade the regional bureaus that our work in analysis would make them more successful in their strategic regional goals So we had a team of regional advisors each one assigned to one of the six regional bureaus Where we met with the assistant secretary and said Show us your strategic regional goals. We'll come back with a plan of how our analysis can help you be successful in pursuing your goals that then opened doors for us in those regions when People in the regional bureaus would call us in and say we got a problem here We've got an interesting thing going over there. Can you come in and help us understand what's going on? The other piece of it was in Peter Mandeville here can confirm or contradict what I'm going to say We had as deep an analytical grasp of dynamics in the Islamic world of any office in the executive branch outside the intelligence And that's I hire people who knew what I didn't know. I'm by no means an expert in that part of the world And I can't even fake it with any kind of competency So we developed a capacity That opened up doors for us around there were times we would travel or people in our staff We would travel and we get meetings with country leaders that the ambassador himself or herself could not get Because we were there with a level of sophisticated understanding of religious dynamics So I mean certainly there were doors that were slammed in our face But on the other hand, I think we got access to a lot of conversation partners around the world that no one else in the US Well, thank you very much I think time is of the essence and I don't want to Backstop the rest of the day's conversation. Thank you so much for being here again. Congratulations Good morning to My great surprise at least we're actually running slightly ahead of schedule My name is Nathan Brown. I'm at George Washington University, but also a non resident Senior fellow here at the Carnegie Endowment You can forget that those facts now because my primary job here is to introduce our three speakers We do have some rich material. I shouldn't say we they have some rich material to present I had a peek at the papers earlier and they're very much worthy of your attention We do have we do have a very tight schedule so that rather than Interrupting each the the panel periodically with full some introductions I'm going to give you very quick introductions of each speaker and then hand it over to them They'll each speak for about 15 minutes or so and that should leave some time for for question and answer and My main goal is to make sure that I keep us on schedule Since everybody else has been so good with schedule so far So the three speakers the first one is Courtney Freer She got her master's at George Washington University and before that she got degrees at Princeton and Oxford and places like that your PhD actually there and is currently a Research fellow at London School of Economics works primarily on the on the golf The second speaker is a now she line who is from also got her PhD at George Washington University But she also is currently Zwan fellow at the Baker Institute down here in Houston And she has remarkable broad expertise throughout the Middle East The third speaker has had no association with George Washington University that I know of but This is not his first time at the Carnegie endowment. He was actually a junior fellow here some years ago He retired out to California where he's doing a PhD at place called Stanford University But Scott Williams and has done some fascinating research in Jordan and he's here to present it to us So let me just first hand it over to Court me Thanks so much. It's great to be back in DC And I think it's I think it's great to start with the Gulf and specifically with the two Wahhabi states We have in the Middle East which are of course Qatar and Saudi Arabia So Wahhabism I think is a central element we've had on debates about different strands of Islam and religious extremism especially in terms of educational institutions both within and funded by Countries of the Arabian Peninsula the structures linked to Wahhabism which of course is one of the most Conservative strands of Islam are perhaps the opacist in the Middle East which has led to I think considerable Misconceptions about the religious ideology its practice as well as figures linked to it So the practice of Wahhabism furthermore in Saudi Arabia at least And appears to be changing under the leadership of conference Mohammed bin Salman So while traditionally the strictures of Wahhabism have insolenced everyday life in the kingdom and have been enforced by religious police This arrangement appears to be changing with restrictions on gender segregation and entertainment recently having been at least partially Lifted and with the institutionalized clergy and police force increasingly separate from the mechanisms of central political power The underlying and whereas in Qatar we have much less institutionalized links between the clergy and the state The underlying questions I wanted to address here was we're basically first of all Are these Wahhabi states qualitatively different in terms of which religious authorities are followed there and secondly Is there one type of Wahhabism that exists among these two states which seem relatively similar at least at first glance So by way of introduction, I suppose Wahhabism is of course linked to Salafism in terms of its emphasis on a return to what's considered the original sources of Islam and the Hanbali School of Jurisprudence and Unlike Salafism however, Wahhabism has its origins in the work of 18th century theologian Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab who preached in the central Arabian region of the Najd And at that time forged a relationship with the al-Saud family and it's from that period that this relationship between the al-Saud and specifically the ashayk family As religious scholars developed and that led to the institutionalization of religious authority as we see it in Saudi Arabia Although Qatar, of course, is also officially Wahhabi. The religious fear is not similarly bureaucratized There's no institutionalized state religious authority in the form of for instance a grand musty or even a bureaucratized state And in fact most religious authorities in Qatar are not culturally And so we don't see this indigenous state linked to Lamar in the same way as we have in Saudi Arabia So in terms of the region-wide survey Which was done in December 2017 We saw some key insights on the influence of Wahhabism And I think the main takeaway that I found among both countries is that religious figures linked to the state Are most likely to be trusted which is something Kadir alluded to so figures it from the bureaucratized Ulema in Saudi Arabia and figures linked to the Ministry of al-Qaaf and to the judiciary in Qatar We're seen as more influential or more trusted than independent religious figures So in terms of the the Saudi data we had about we had 2010 people in the in the data set about half of whom Were Saudis and the other half of whom were mostly Arab expatriates 60% were men 79% had university degrees over half of them lived in Riyadh and Jeddah And 87% of them with Sunni so we had a slightly skewed Skewed sample in terms of Sunni men based in cities and well educated as well Nonetheless the three most trusted scholars in Saudi Arabia among nearly an equal number of nationals and non-nationals We're all from the south the council of senior scholars Which is appointed by the king and is the only body permitted to grant religious rulings in the state So the number one most trusted figure was Sheikh Saad bin Nasir al-Shathri Who is a member of this council and also an advisor to Muhammad bin Salman? The second most trusted was the Grand Mufti and the third most trusted was also from al-Shaykh family and from the council of supreme scholars Meanwhile in the Cultury case we had a sample a much smaller sample size of 245 people seven of whom were culturies 90% of the sample was Sunni 68% was men 85% were Arab expats in 82% were university educated as well as 93% living in Doha so again We see the skew towards Sunni well educated men in in the city Nonetheless, we saw that the most trusted figures were again linked to the state the most trusted overall was Wahhabi Sheikh Anwar al-Badawi who's an Islamic Cultury Islamic judge and head of the Cultury Islamic judges and The second most trusted was also a Cultury Wahhabi scholar Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayda Mahmood who had a major role in putting together the judicial system of Qatar and is now a part of the Islamic Cultural Center in Qatar So not strictly linked to the state at this point But still has has had a role in the judiciary there Interestingly the third most trusted figure was Tark Ramadan and who is the European based scholar and grandson of Hassan al-Bana The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and I don't know whether if we read it this survey since it's recent legal troubles That would be different But it is interesting that there's more variety in the Cultury case in terms of which religious authorities are followed Reflecting the fact that the state is less The state institutionalized as religious authority less so than the Saudi state and I think this also may be explained by Demographics Qatar is 87% expatriate Whereas Saudi Arabia is 27% expatriate Nonetheless, I think it's interesting that in the Saudi case where we had a near equal number of citizens and non-citizens We saw relatively similar Viewpoints in terms of trusting religious Authorities linked to the state. We also I think as Khadir alluded to tested See saw how much people trusted seven main religious authorities Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi who's doha based and has been linked to the Brotherhood in the past Baghdadi from ISIS Hassan Asrallah from Hezbollah The granny mom of al-Azhar Ahmed e Tayyib Egyptian preacher Amir Khalid President Erdogan from Turkey and and Russia Ghanushi Yes, is that so anyway? And so what we found was overall is that the least trusted figures were actually Nasrallah and Baghdadi We saw different in terms of different results in terms of the endorsement effects where there was slightly more support for Baghdadi But overall in both Qatar and Saudi Arabia Baghdadi and Asrallah were seen as the least trusted There was also very low levels of trust in Saudi Arabia for any of these international figures Which is interesting in Qatar. There were only there was only really marginal marginal trust for Sheikh Khadadi of all of those figures So in terms of kind of what this tells us for policymakers I think there are four main takeaways first when it comes to influencing messaging on citizen and non citizen populations in the Gulf It's important to engage with state religious authorities since they hold considerable sway in the religious sector and in society more broadly It's also essential to understand their limitations However, since their authority is by no means absolute and I think this is most clearly evidenced in Saudi Arabia by the rise of the Sahwa movement In the 1990s and more recently in 2011 when we saw clerics linked to the Sahwa movement Signed a petition urging for some political reforms Further state linked authorities who were once considered more widely influential across borders no longer wheeled the influence They once did which I think is most clearly influenced by the overwhelmingly negative endorsement effect We saw regarding the Grand Imam of al-Azhar indeed What we saw is that when he Religious statement that had less support when it would had been endorsed by the Imam of al-Azhar Which I think is a surprising outcome as a result I'd say that engagement with local ministries of al-qaf is perhaps the most important means of ensuring that messaging about Religion is diffused in a manner that resonates with local populations of both expatriates Nationals so the roles of ministry remains very much crucial second lovers of social and political change in terms of the public practice of Islam and the state's role in regulating it are not likely to be Economic in the wealthy countries of the Arabian Peninsula Because governments of these states for benefit of course from hydrocarbon wealth they're able to provide handsomely for their citizenry in terms of free education health care and Handsomely paying public sector jobs as a result groups that provide Materials where their followers don't have an advantage over other groups as we have seen with the Muslim Brotherhood for instance in places like Egypt and Jordan in the past And in fact when we look at Where people get religious support in Qatar and Saudi Arabia it's overwhelmingly from the state So among Saudi nationals 12.9 percent reported they had received assistance from a state religious agency versus 4.5 percent who got support from the Muslim Brotherhood 2.9 percent from Salafis and 1.8 percent from Sufis The results were similar among non-nationals even though they may have marginally less access to state resources 8.2 percent had received assistance from a government religious authority or organization compared to 5.4 4% from the Brotherhood 4% from Salafis and 1.5 percent from Sufi groups in Qatar only 8% in total had sought aid from any government religious agency followed by 5.7% from the Brotherhood and 3% from Salafis again demonstrating that the government is a primary dispenser of religious aid Both to national and non-national populations as is expected then overall There's little need or at least little use made of religious groups for material support in these environments So for religious organizations to hold influence in these types of environment They really need to have an ideological appeal or a specific social function since they can't really benefit from providing materially Third which is what I something I've alluded to expatriates follow and are influenced by local religious authorities to a larger extent Then we may realize or then I quite frankly expected The fact that most of the trusted religious authorities in both countries were from were state affiliated reflects either their appeal or the ubiquity of state-sanctioned religious messaging in these Wahhabi environments What's also interesting is how the influence of state affiliated Wahhabi religious leaders may undermine this way of kind of what We would consider mainstream Islamist else leaders who holds way elsewhere in the region so for instance figures like Rasha Danushi and Erdogan had very negative endorsement effects among nationals and expatriate populations in Saudi Arabia Suggesting that political Islam especially of the type link to the brotherhood is unfavorable in culture We saw similarly strong negative endorsement effects for the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, which I mentioned as well as for President Erdogan, which I found surprising These results demonstrate the extent to which expats also seem to be swayed by local religious authorities and the degree to which Islamist leaders or leaders of Islamic authorities like al-Azhar don't really hold as much influence across borders as we may have expected On a related note the strong negative Endorsement effect we saw of religious leaders linked to the Muslim brotherhood or more broadly to these mainstream Islamist movements May reflect some Gulf governments, especially Saudi Efforts to depoliticize Islam in a way that enables them to strengthen their control over local populations for whom brotherhood Leaders may have once held appeal and I think this dynamic could lead to greater support of visibility Or Salafi and Wahhabi figures instead or general weakening in in broader terms of appeal to politically engaged of the political The appeal of politically engaged Islamic groups Fourth and finally the practice and regulation of Wahhabism varies based on Socio the socioeconomic socioeconomic and political environment, which is something Kadir also Highlighted and I think this is surprising because we see how flexible Wahhabism is despite the rigidity of its doctrine as a result a single Strategy to engage with Wahhabism across different countries will likely be unsuccessful even though places like Qatar and Saudi Arabia seem very Similar at first glance so political and social context matters Despite similarities in religious practice or doctrine Neither state also obviously allows much opportunity for meaningful political reform Yet Saudi Arabia as I referred to more stringently and officially enforces the strictures of Wahhabism and it Institutionalizes the religious fear by contrast in Qatar We see a largely foreign class of lima, which is important because this also means that if these people do not kind of Hew closely to the state line that can be deported very easily Nonetheless, we don't see as institutionalized relationship between the state and religious authorities or really public enforcement of the social tenets of Wahhabism So just by way of concluding I think the divergent religious structures and authorities in the two Wahhabi states of Qatar and Saudi Arabia reveal a number of common threads in both countries Such as as I mentioned the enduring strength of state-length religious authorities the limit of support for Islamist political and social movements And the extent to which expats appear to reflect their local religious environments Saudi Arabia as I've mentioned is of course unique in the extent to which the religious sector is bureaucratized Which leaves little space for independent religious activity or the support of non-state-linked figures the clear co-optation of the religious Fear which is illustrated most clearly by the state's employee of clergy has neutralized the ability of the sphere to challenge the state or state Views on religious practice in so doing tying the specific religious ideologies to both the state and its legitimacy Nonetheless the fact that preachers have traditionally been employees of the state with the exclusive power to release religious rulings Independent clerics like Salman al-Oda and independent movements like Sahwa movement have emerged and since the rise of Muhammad bin Salman to power we see both state and independent clerics losing power inside of Saudi Arabia So the religious police for instance no longer has the power to arrest social functions like Concerts and the opening of cinemas are going forward despite some contestation for members of the Wahhabi Ulema and several independent clerics and activists were imprisoned as of September 2017 Muhammad bin Salman himself in a famous interview last year with the Atlantic went so far as to question the existence of Wahhabism itself in his words. No one can define Wahhabism. There is no Wahhabism. We don't believe we have Wahhabism Clearly a reconfiguration then is underway in Saudi Arabia in terms of the relationship between the state and religious authorities With central political leadership eager to demonstrate its dominance over the religious fear Meanwhile in Qatar notwithstanding efforts to educate an indigenous clergy the relationship between state and religion remains largely unchanged Interestingly Qatar did kind of reassert itself its place as a Wahhabi state in 2017 by naming its state mosque Sheikh Muhammad ibn al-Wahab something which provoked a lot of outrage inside of Saudi Arabia and actually led to a Letter circulated by 200 members of the Ulema for claiming that Qatar was not properly Wahhabi and that the al-Thani family had no relationship to the To al-Wahab so this demonstrates the extent to which links to the cleric and links to kind of Wahhabism as a proper ideology is important for religious legitimacy of these states despite the fact that things seem to be changing So I think just by way of closing the worlds to Wahhabi the Arab worlds to Wahhabi states really are not too exceptional Because of the strict form of Islam embraced in these states rather It's the context that matters and so we see this in terms of the specific social political and economic Formations of of Qatar and Saudi Arabia and so given the results of the survey I stress the importance of engagement with official religious authorities and the inclusion of expatriate populations in discussions about religious trends in the Wahhabi states of Qatar and Saudi Arabia Great well, thank you all so much for being here, especially after as Sean said This is not particularly important to the current DC establishment so appreciate that you're here anyway to hear what we have to say Because I think as probably many of you are aware and as the results of the survey show These these religious leaders do matter in this context. So even if inside the Beltway, we've decided this is maybe less of a priority Clearly this this does really matter in in the regions that we're discussing. So I Did the report on Morocco So I'll be talking about three main findings and then in the Q&A if you have questions about other aspects I'm happy to discuss that as well First of all as Khadir had pointed out State religious figures do have more authority than What has commonly been assumed the assumption has tech has tended to be that? If an official is affiliated with the state it will reduce their credibility Because it's typically affiliated with an authoritarian regime And so we found in Morocco and largely across the board is that actually official religious figures do have more Credibility than we might have otherwise assumed In Morocco, this is especially striking because the king of Morocco Mohammed of status or Mohammed the sixth is the figure in Morocco with the highest religious authority Which might be somewhat surprising as I will get into shortly. So that'll be the first takeaway, which is King Mohammed the sixth has has Above and beyond the highest religious authority of Moroccan religious figures the second interesting finding is That Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the head of the Islamic State is the figure that has perhaps the second highest Religious authority in Morocco This finding as I will get into greater detail But just to explain this finding was not revealed through direct questions if someone was directly asked about al-Baghdadi People would not say they considered him a figure that should be looked to to answer questions on religion But in using the the survey experiment using an endorsement effect when people were asked When a statement was attributed to al-Baghdadi people were far more likely to agree with it Then if the statement was unattributed or if it was attributed to another person So we'll get into a little bit more of the implications of that The third finding is that although historically Morocco has a lot of different competing figures for religious authority Morocco historically Was it sort of a center of religious learning during the Islamic Golden Age in the contemporary period? We have active Islamist groups some of which are legally Engaged in the democratic process some of which are banned So the the King competes with other sort of existing points of religious authority, however at present The King is not facing much competition This is partly the result of efforts by the King to sort of reduce competition as well as just some generational shift in leadership of some of these groups so I'll get into all three of those points in greater detail and then we'll talk about some implications for for us foreign policy if anybody's listening or you know Given maybe for the for the future So I think the most important thing to keep in mind when thinking about the King Mohammed VI religious authority is It is grounded in a very concerted effort by the Moroccan state to construct this religious authority I think Sean's point about how religious authority can be made it can be broken it can be manufactured it can be stolen is very Important to keep in mind and so the Moroccan state has heavily invested in a nation-building project That holds up the figure of the King as the commander of the faithful as Amir al-Mumi mean And this is significant. This does have historical precedent However, it is best understood as the result of a contemporary and a modern state building and nation-building process and is not because every Moroccan Sort of has this sense of oh the Amir al-Mumi mean has this religious authority No, this is very much the result of of nation-building and concerted efforts through through education Through the discourse that is disseminated through mosques So a little bit of history about this the figure of of the commander of the faithful as Again Sean's point about you know, it's important to consult the historians to bring more context into this I think in the Moroccan case is especially important. So At the time that the French colonized Morocco during the Moroccan protectorate of the early 20th century The figure of the commander of the faithful had lost a lot of political clout although it was the same ruling family that is currently Ruling Morocco has ruled since the 1600s at the time. They were seen as essentially puppets of the French They'd lost a lot of credibility and the assumption a lot among a lot of Moroccan nationalists was as the result or once the Moroccan national movement was successful in Morocco was established the figure of Amir al-Mumi mean would not be part of the new Moroccan independent Republic That that wasn't that had no place in sort of a modern Arab Republic as we ended up observing with You know the abolishment of the monarchy in Egypt for example in Iraq However, Muhammad the fifth who's the grandfather of the current king managed to survive Partly based on divisions within the national movement He became something of a national figure and so survived the transition was able to retain his position as head of state his son then codified the position of the commander of the faithful in the 1962 constitution and Then his son the current king inherited that sort of religious authority however Morocco as I said has a history of many different sort of poles of religious authority many of which are based in Fez a historic center of Islamic learning and So the current Moroccan state worked very hard to dismantle those existing sources of religious authority the existing religious institutions Such that now that the figure of the Amir al-Mumi mean actually is probably more powerful He has the weight of the modern state behind him And the the current Moroccan population has been Subjected to decades of nation-building that sort of center religious authority in him So all that to say that when people attribute religious authority to the king of Morocco I Think that the findings of the survey that that that demonstrate this are valid However, it again it is best understood as a result of a construction of religious authority The second finding having to do with Abu Bakr's Baghdadi as Kadir pointed out the the findings having to do with high High support for or a high agreement with statements affiliated with al-Baghdadi We tended to see that result in Tunisia in Morocco in Jordan and Saudi Arabia the four context that were the highest senders of born fighters to fight for that ish or the Islamic State and It's sort of a question so we don't have exact numbers on Was there an overlap between kind of who supported who saw the king as a religious figure or the source of religious authority? And who saw Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? We we don't have those exact numbers because again it was a survey experiment however, I would my based on the relatively high numbers it seems there is some overlap or would be Possible to assume that and so the way to sort of understand how someone could see both King Muhammad the sixth as a figure of religious authority and the leader of the Islamic State I Would attribute at least partially to a lot of anti Shia rhetoric that the Moroccan state has been engaged in there's There are almost no Shia in Morocco but there's a lot of paranoia about Iranian influence and so a lot of official religious discourse a lot of Religious messaging in Moroccan media have heightened a lot of concern about Shia and so when the Islamic State also engaged in a lot of this rhetoric arguing that you know the The Bashar al-Assad regime that they would call Shia Were attacking, you know poor Sunni families in in Syria and that you know the the ruling Shia in Iraq were also attacking Iraq, I think that probably contributed to some sense of needing to go and protect Sunni brethren in that part of the world and That this was a population that was already primed to have a lot of concern about the threat of Shia aggression The third major point having to do with the lack of other religious figures in Morocco So we asked about for example the current Prime Minister said the Dean Othmani who had very little Trust or approval. We also asked about the current head of the group which is a banned Islamist group that was previously seen as as of A Massive Islamist movement in Morocco. It rejects the authority of the king. It was very much seen as a threat to the previous king However, the the very charismatic founder died and the current leader has not yet managed to necessarily Articulate where the group is going. He's not particularly well known based on what we found in the results Relatedly for the the PJD the ruling Islamist party They were seen as sort of a success story to some extent to come out of 2011 that as a result of reforms That were implemented following massive protests in Morocco The PJD was able to to lead a coalition government starting in 2012 and they were re-elected where they they Got a plurality of votes in the 2016 parliamentary election However, it's possible that the previous Prime Minister Abdullah Ben-Kiran was seen as potentially a threat to the king. He was popular. He won a second election It's possible that King the king and the Mahzan the elites the political elites in Morocco worked to make sure that Ben-Kiran was unable to reform a new coalition government and so after months of Stasis and you know no movement to actually build a new government the king appointed the secretary general of the PJD That did in Othmani to take over Sort of sidelining Ben-Kiran, however, Othmani lacks the the leadership the charisma that Ben-Kiran had and so There's also questions of kind of what's the future of the PJD Given that the the king and the ruling elites have have essentially sort of defanged them for now Two other interesting figures are Salafis one previously a filly or associated with the 2003 Casablanca bombing So a Salafi jihadist someone who had previously been engaged in sort of violent rhetoric Who subsequently has moderated his tone was let out of jail The other figure is a Salafi cleric who is not religious has or it's not violent has not embraced any sort of violent rhetoric But has said things like Wahhabi Islam is is preferable to Moroccan Islam for example See Saudi Arabia is more of a figure of religious authority than Morocco However, neither of these figures although they previously were relatively Seen as relatively high profile Not seen as a sort of significant religious figures in Morocco So I'm happy to talk more about any kind of specifics if there's any Morocco files who want to dig into the details But I'll spare the rest of you any more details on Morocco, but I think the final takeaway should be Caution on the part of the US foreign policy establishment and trying to partner with Morocco because Morocco's Whole narrative is based on this notion of heritage that the figure of the Emir al-Muminin is deeply grounded in Moroccan culture that you know the narrative is that this is a very long-standing figure of religious authority such that Partnering with the United States to avert Lee could actually undermine their religious authority of the king When I was in Morocco in 2016 and spoke with US embassy officials. They were abundantly aware of this However, it's unclear if current officials have that same level of awareness of the extent to which affiliation with the US introduced sort of an allergic reaction among Locals who are very sensitive to this perceived foreign pressure to encourage so-called moderate Islam So stop there. Thanks so much. Okay. Thank you very much. You know, thank you Thanks so much for being here. Thank you to Carnegie and the Baker Institute for Hosting us as Nathan mentioned. I was a former junior fellow here. So I'm very honored to be back It's it's great to be here. So just for some context. I spent last year most of last year in Jordan Doing research for my dissertation In addition to this survey worked on some other survey work archival work and did over 100 interviews about which 25 addressed the contents in this report So I'll start where the report starts with King Abdullah's very well polished Discussion paper on his vision for Jordan as a civil state Which I believe was his sixth discussion paper since the Arab Spring and in it he makes the point Because he's very cognizant of the fact that the term civil state has some controversy in the Muslim world That religion will always be an important part of Jordan's value system that it's in the Constitution But he's also careful to give a sort of warning that religion should not be used for political purposes by partisan actors And this is a very common framing in the region where state actors and regimes try to frame the appropriate use of religion In this way and it reflects an attempt to leverage Religion to reinforce support for the status quo by folding religious institutions into the state and a chance to define the Islamist parties that reflect their primary opposition as Outside the bounds of acceptable religious discourse And as and I'll mention that as Nathan and now and others have talked about in other work It's sort of unclear how well this strategy should be expected to work in many countries Public trust tends to be low and institutions across the region and frankly for good reason And it's not hard to see how when it comes to matters of religion specifically People might have trouble trusting religious leaders who seem to be dependent on corrupt and Untrustworthy authoritarian regimes since we typically associate credibility with independence It would be somewhat surprising to see that these institutions seem to have Credible authority in the eyes of the people and in part for that reason a lot of scholarly work think think tank work policy work Has focused on issues surrounding Islamist parties and movements that are also very important But there's probably been a little less of this focus on state religious leaders So what we have seen in the findings mentioned so far by the others and was also in the case in Jordan is actually that this isn't necessarily the case in that state religious leaders Do seem to have a decent amount of trust in their authority amongst the public if you look through the Jordan results You will see that Islamist and Salafi leaders we selected We're trusted by almost no one who said that they already knew about them and interestingly They were unknown to a majority of respondents in all three cases whether it was The secretary general the Islamic action front or prominent Salafi and jihadi Salafi clerics So that's not a particularly encouraging picture if you are affiliated with those movements on the other hand The state religious leader we asked about the ground with the of Jordan was known by about 75 percent of respondents and most of those expressed some level of trust in his authority as a religious figure In a separate survey that I implemented on my own also with you go I asked respondents about the Amman message which was propagated by the king and senior state religious leaders in 2004 and this was an attempt to define a tolerant moderate form of Jordanian Islam Both in the country, but also globally involving several hundred international religious But they had heard the message When I gave a description of what it entailed But also surprised that he said that the message represents Islam and speaks for them as among them in a part of the 80% taken together Together, I think he's finding a picture in which is the message of Jordanian society While state religious Then try and situate these findings in the context of more general Using the polling data in our survey and also some the air parameter which runs regular national representation Or in another country What those results show is probably And they also strongly Constitution but at the same time There does appear to be a fairly strong public consensus against any mixing of religion with partisan politics For instance, Jordanians really don't want religious officials or mosques influencing voters choices in elections And this seems to align with our findings about religious authority that I just went over Because state religious officials do portray themselves as apolitical religious bureaucrats and scholars and judges as opposed to islamists that tend to be more openly political And so just briefly I want to transition back to our region wide data In case some of you are not convinced by these questions where we ask about specific religious leaders Or you're worried about people falsifying their preferences. We also implemented something called a conjoint experiment In the survey We have a rough draft of a more academic paper that we're hoping to publish soon at least in academic terms Which tries to evaluate the different factors that contribute to perceptions of more or less religious authority And so the basic idea here is that we create randomly generated profiles of hypothetical religious leaders Defined by different characteristics that we've pre-selected And we then ask survey respondents to compare different profiles and choose between the one that they think they would trust more on matters of religion And because these characteristics are randomly assigned it gives us some leverage in terms of Figuring out which of these characteristics are driving respondents choices and by how much So we did this several times for all 12,000 respondents who are Sunni and Muslim in their different countries And it reinforces the findings that come out in many of these reports Which is that respondents in almost every country seem to prefer characteristics associated with state religious leaders They tended to exhibit less trust in Islamists and Salafis And they did penalize religious leaders and viewed them as less authoritative when they were described as being openly involved in politics Whether that was supporting or criticizing the government Meeting with the US Embassy or advocating for armed resistance against the US and and other such things So going back to Jordan. What are the implications for these findings? In terms of state religious leaders the pattern suggests that in fact The government can lean on their authority to bolster support For some of its policies and in some cases and there are clear examples here some of which I reference in the report So for instance according to former government officials and women's rights activists. I met with in Jordan Who are not affiliated with these institutions? They do see state religious leaders as playing an important role in promoting policies designed to increase contraceptive use for instance And also contributing to the repeal of article 308 a few years ago, which Had allowed rapists to escape punishment if they married their victims Nathan and his co-authors have also written about how the Sharia courts played an important role in pushing reforms to Jordan's personal status law And they did that by bringing together different groups within the society and convincing them that this was the right way forward However, our findings also highlight the extent to which there are risks for the government and overtly politicizing their state religious institutions When Jordanian show this dislike for politicized religious figures that doesn't just apply to Islamists But it should also extend to religious figures affiliated with the government If they come to be viewed as functionaries for whatever the government wants them to say so traditionally Jordan has exercised less control over its religious fear than some of the other governments in the region which may partially explain our findings about credibility but in recent years that has Changed somewhat and they've increased their control over religious leaders doing more to dictate what the nuns say in Friday sermons and Banning increasingly banning banning those who stray from the scripts These moves follow the rise of ISIS and the government claims both privately and publicly that they're justified by trying to fight extremism and cracking down on rhetoric that supports these groups The problem though at least as I see it is that taking these steps may undermine the credibility of state officials at the precise moment In which their authority is most valuable If Jordanians increasingly come to see these religious leaders as politicized government functionaries rather than apolitical bureaucrats and scholars Their ability to counter extremist ideas will likely be undermined further And to just illustrate how this increased control might affect credibility I want to highlight one quote from the report in which I was talking to a Jordanian activist and scholar and he sort of scoffed and said Preachers now talk about respecting parents Because they can't talk about anything sensitive and the implication there is that what they're saying seems to be filtered and stale and sort of irrelevant to Jordanian's lives because they cannot Stray from what they've been told to talk about and so people just don't care as much So that's obviously not to say that Jordanian officials to stop trying to crack down on extremism But trying to control the words that come out of religious leaders mouths is probably not the right way to do it a Reactive strategy is probably more useful where you're monitoring speech and identifying those who call for violence or cross other legal red lines While investing in better training and salaries for the religious fear But in general, I would say trying to encourage the credibility of these officials by giving them independence Is is the best way forward and this suggestion? I think also has implications for US counter extremism policy in Jordan. So let's not forget that Endorsing free speech and religious matters is about as American a value as you can have But if we set that aside and assume that policymakers don't really care about that They should still be encouraging the Jordanian government to relax relax restrictions on those Religious officials who get Friday sermons and and have other interactions with the public Even if that means more rhetoric on average that Jordanian and US officials don't like Hopefully that increased credibility would in at least in the long one provide one of the most effective antidotes to the spread of extremist ideas in the country And then also just going back to the idea that state religious officials can be effective at influencing social policies And public opinion on social policies for any US officials in the country who work on issues like women's rights for public health It does suggest that building partnerships With these officials and engaging with them regularly in dialogue would be quite fruitful So just briefly to wrap up. I'll discuss implications for Islamist movements in Jordan Which will be the focus of more of the next panel and the results suggest that Islamist may be caught in somewhat of a bind here Their religious activism is the core message that attracts their political supporters But the fact that most Jordanian seem to dislike politicized religion suggests a relatively low ceiling on their potential support If they leave religion behind perhaps they will alienate their core supporters on the other hand If they stick to to this approach, they may never be able to move past a certain level of support The Muslim Brotherhood and its political affiliate the Islamic Action Front has struggled since the Arab Spring a lot of that has to do with government Refression which has contributed to internal divisions But and it did perform relatively well in the 2016 parliamentary elections But it still has very limited political influence But what's interesting about those elections is that the movement actually position did try to position itself in a less religious way It dropped several religious references. It emphasized national identity It aligned with Christian candidates and took other steps as well And so it does appear that the movement is trying to follow the path of similar Movements in Morocco and Tunisia by downplaying its religious roots significantly and it will be interesting to see how that affects their support going forward So I'll stop there. Thanks again looking forward to your questions All right. Thank you. Thank you very much Scott actually. Thank you very much all three for some for a really Interesting set of presentations. Let me just give up very few reframing remarks and then throw it open for questions. I mean we've heard three very Data-rich papers about four different cases Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Jordan And so we've in a sense been very much down on the weeds But but I hear some very very strong themes commonalities coming out of these That are sometimes sort of modestly pushed but it still come through I think very very strongly number one is just the importance of national context That comes through very clearly in all in all presentations Second is a tremendous presence of the state in the religious realm again that that's almost a given for the research that was done The third thing that to me was very interesting is the This is going to be complicated Sean Casey made some reference to how Authorities are almost impossible to find in the religious realm But let me just draw two quick different definitions because the papers are grappling with both Authority in the sense of political authority be able to say that's the official answer. You get a job. You don't get a job We will teach that we won't teach that but there's also authority in the sense of moral authority That is credibility You know whether people believe you're giving the right answer to the question and one interesting thing that I hear is the Complex relationship between the two that moral authority and political authority not an inverse relationship in any of these Countries, we're not absolutely inverse relationship But a complex relationship between the ability to sort of speak with the state authority and the ability to be heard to be given the right answer There's a complex dynamic in all in all four cases And finally to me what is very interesting is that the the title of the conference is Implications for US policy, but in a sense that was not at the center of any of the presentations They might sort of a dip a foot into that and to me there's actually a very strong argument Implicit argument, which I'm going to try and make explicit But but I think that is that is uniting these presentations and again it goes back to some things that Sean Casey Mentioned in his Morning keynote and I do remember actually being in discussions in this building about 15 years ago when when There was the beginnings of a very very strong effort to kind of grapple with the realities of Islam in the Middle East and Brought her in the Muslim world and a lot of the implicit questions was who are the right Muslims? Okay, are they Sufis because they're peaceful. Maybe we need to like align with Sufis and support Sufis Maybe we need to support the lesson. Maybe we need to support this group that group What do we do with Islamists and so forth and so on? So it was a who question that was dominating the debate and kind of who is it that we talked to who is it that we support? and I am going to Suggest that we're hearing an implicit argument about US policy that it makes sense The who question may or may not be a good one But it's not the first question to ask the first question is kind of what's going on on the ground And what are the relevant actors and what is their relationship? What is their credibility? So we're starting with social and political analysis that is very very deeply locally grounded Before we rush into asking about exactly who are the good guys and who are the bad guys And maybe that's not even the best question to be asking so I hear that as an implicit argument And that so there would be very clear implications for US policy That if this kind of analysis is is is a relevant that's how to make use of it So that's at least what I heard and what I read into Some of their comments. Let me now open it up for questions See in the in the very back a certain very bit. Hi. Thank you. I'm Dave Pollack from the Washington Institute for Neury's policy Can you say something in the Saudi case about what? MBS claims is a newly tolerant discourse of Islam as the official Establishment version of that in Saudi Arabia of the Muslim World League Sheikh Elisa taking a new position on various issues of tolerance national identity and so on is this Is this credible? Is it having some effects? Is it too soon to tell what what should we make of all of that? Thank you According when he and it knows just bathroom soda Maybe if you have any thoughts you welcome to share them But if you're if they're not sorted out yet, then you're welcome to reserve them for later Well, I think really what what MBS and I think MBS in in the UAE also are trying to market is this idea of moderate Islam And I think that essentially I mean it implies that Islam on its own is in moderate Which is problematic from the start, but it also is this idea I think that politics and religion should be separated and so I think we're seeing that in terms of Kind of getting the giving the religious clergy less power Politically, I don't know whether or to what extent this can can kind of change long term given the institutionalization of the religious authorities inside of Saudi Arabia What's interesting is that the Supreme Council or the the Supreme Council of Olemah so far have kind of Backed MBS for the most part and so I don't know whether that will change in the future if he pushes kind of too far But I think we also see kind of him him turning to two audiences So on the one hand allowing women to drive and then on the other hand arresting female activists, which was Popular among kind of some of the more religious more conservative elements inside of Saudi Arabia So he's kind of trying to balance these two audiences So overall I think it's this idea of depoliticizing Islam, which is important. I think for him in terms of socially Economically also kind of trying to start tourism in Saudi Arabia But also of course politically this idea that the Sahwa movement is is no longer able really to operate whatsoever And that was a potential political competitor, but in terms of the long-term implications I think it's really hard to know to what extent this will will stick and whether there will be a turning point at Which that will I'm on no longer support him Maybe just to add not Courtney is more than an expert on this But I was just got back from Saudi Arabia and actually did meet with the the new head of the Muslim World League Muhammad Al-Isra And I think in general the takeaway I got from Saudi Arabia is the Saudi State is trying to walk a very careful line right now in which they are Putting forward a lot of policies a lot of PR around the idea that Saudi is Saudi is transforming However, they really want to frame it as a social transformation because to frame it as a fundamentally religious transformation risks damaging the source of Saudi both religious credibility abroad and sort of the ruling bargain struck between the Obama and the al-Saud so It's it's very interesting to talk to some of you know people like the Minister of Religious Affairs and Saudi Arabia who are again very interested in putting forward this idea that you know Saudis open for business and Saudi Islam we may have had some bad ideas about in the past But you know now we let women drive and don't have to wear hijab and these changes are fundamental on the social level however Traditionally those sorts of restrictions were justified on on a religious basis and you know things like statements from the High Council of Obama saying Things about you know why women couldn't drive and having a religious justification for this and so I Think the changes to get to your question about should we believe MBS when he says these kinds of things I Think that the changes are Fundamental Saudi Arabia looks very different than it did a few years ago based on Everything I observed and heard from people This is not just the result of MBS I think it's really important to keep in mind the effects of the massive Saudi scholarship program and What I heard was there there was not a single Saudi extended family Which did not have a member that went and studied either in the US or the UK or elsewhere outside of Saudi Arabia And that program started in 2005 So it's now been 15 years that people have been studying abroad and they're now coming back So I think it's important to remember that while a lot of what MBS has done are Seen as you're very quick. It's this young guy. He's making all these rash decisions but it is grounded in this new generation of Saudis who do very much support this and I think as Courtney pointed out it is coupled with deep authoritarianism to prevent anyone from criticizing it because this Is the Saudi government's future they have to reduce the size of the public sector and they have to get off of oil or You know or that's the end of sort of the house of Saud and it is also It is but it has put the Saudi state in the somewhat awkward position of Walking back what it used to justify on religious grounds and now arguing that they are social But the changes are fundamental however you want to frame them So not not to Jump on Courtney's expertise, but to just reinforce what she was saying with some specific observations In the very very back of the room Like maybe I direct this Steve Winters an independent consultant. Maybe I direct this to Courtney in the first instance I don't I may have missed it But you don't seem to be placing too much of an emphasis on authority in terms of whose authorized issue of fatwa It came up slightly Because you mentioned in certain countries That's controlled by the state. I myself. I'd I think in Malaysia, which was way off another part of the world There's a national fatwa council and according to the law the government there. They're the only ones who are authorized issue in Islamic fatwa and Another example would be when Osama bin Laden issued his famous so-called fatwa there was a lot of discussion about whether he had the religious a Training or background to be in a position in the first place to issue a fatwa and so forth and so on so The I just wonder if it came out from your survey the sense of how how the populations felt towards You know exactly that who they would accept a ruling from and in particular in terms of the leader of ISIS Who of course claims that authority? So I guess in terms of the Saudi case the three most trusted religious authorities all came from the senior council of lima So the state linked Clergy essentially and so and that is the only body that also can technically release with the religious ruling So I guess that does Illustrate at least to a certain extent some buy-in into the institutionalized clerical establishment in Saudi Arabia And what's interesting is that we see this body being used as a political tool as well in 2011 with a fatwa saying that you know protests were not legit Or we're not we're not allowed under Islamic law and and also we've seen kind of more recently these rulings in 2017 about Against Qatar to kind of justify the blockade So it's definitely also used as a political tool and it seems that at least to a certain extent there is buy-in in that in the Cultury case there's not a similar Body so it's a little bit more open But but in that case there was again more the most trusted religious figures were from that religious establishment as far as Baghdadi He had very little support in Qatar in terms of the endorsement effect and in terms of kind of being a trusted religious authority Whereas in Saudi Baghdadi ranked very low in terms of trust But in terms of the endorsement effect we saw that there was there was some support for Statements made by him. So it's a little bit more subtle, but but it's definitely there Yeah Yeah, so there is a National Fatwa Council in Jordan and Michael Robinson Lawrence Rubin have some interesting work showing that its activity Actually has increased at moments when the threat from Islamist mobilization seems to be highest But we didn't ask about this explicitly in the survey But I do think one thing that's interesting is that very few people said they actually approach religious leaders and ask them for advice or any sort of thing Any sort of assistance, so I'm not sure quite how to interpret that in terms of authority, but it does suggest that in general people are Not going to these leaders For that purpose I'll set things when we've seen no resources spent a lot of time in the State Department working on a lot of these issues Mr. Williamson question in Jordan one of the things that was alluded to earlier is the sort of poisonous embrace of the United States To publicly reaching out to certain religious leaders are trying to work with them And that was one of your recommendations from Jordan that is certainly something that's long-term been on the minds of Americans working there in official capacity given that despite our closeness with the government the US government's popularity In our own polling has frequently been in the low teens so we need to Be thoughtful that I thought it's more comment on if you saw doing this in some way that would would not Soil their credibility so to speak by to being too political and being too much in bed with us So that's a great question, and I could very well just be wrong here and making that recommendation So that's a real possibility, and I will mention that in the conjoint experiment. I mentioned One of the Attributes we asked about was if these this hypothetical preacher is engaged in meetings with the US Embassy And you do see some negative effect on their authority there So perhaps it's not the best approach But I do know that USA ID for instance works with lots of partner organizations Local organizations that are Jordanian That run some of these initiatives on women's rights for instance And so if those organizations and part of their dialogue are the ones involved in this discussion and engagement I think that would be appropriate and probably not perceived as the US somehow tainting their authority Yeah, here I Peter Mandeville from George Mason University analysis a question for you about Morocco and I guess I wanted to ask putting aside specific personalities and named figures one Issue that has come up in the policy discussion from time to time is this idea that Morocco by virtue of the sort of tendrils of Sufi networks, and it's just it's strong sort of gravitational impact on religious dynamics Throughout North Africa the Sahel and the West Africa over the centuries that that that the Moroccan religious scene May have considerable influence, you know in other sub-regions of Africa and I I wanted to kind of get your sense of that But then I also wanted to and I guess this is maybe a mixed and now in Courtney question I wonder if you Could comment and actually Jordan possibly relevant as well the question of the extent to which Some of the efforts that we've seen coming out of certainly Morocco and Jordan in recent years as those governments have sought to kind of position themselves as purveyors of moderate Islam sort of service providers or for Western security interests in relation to moderate Islam I've sensed that there is kind of a subtext to some of that that is also about Blunting the influence of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi religious establishment in the region although, you know for for You know regional diplomatic reasons that would never be explicitly discussed as such and so I just wondered if you had any thoughts or Insight that dimension. Thank you Thanks so much. Well Question Definitely, I think you know, especially if people are interested in this question of Morocco's sort of broader religious Influence throughout North Africa. I think Anne Wayne Scott has really looked at this her work is excellent And it's and again this sort of gets to to what our survey findings indicated which was that The King the Amir al-Muminin does have what is seen as as valid religious authority And that does extend throughout the broader region and some of this may be due to sort of Morocco's historical role as a center of religious learning but it is again something that the Moroccan state has actively cultivated with outreach to Particularly secular African countries so places like Senegal for example Which does not have an official religious establishment and so when they have concerns about Islamists they don't necessarily have State employees or state imams that they can turn to to say, you know, don't say such and such in your in your Friday sermon because it is a secular state and they have religious autonomy and so in cases such as that in Senegal and other secular African countries where they have struggled with this question of extremism many Of them have turned to Morocco or Morocco has presented itself as an actor that can be turned to for services as Peter described it aptly Things such as the Imam training center where people will come from Africa. They've been moms of come from France Russia was planning to send may have already sent imams to be trained in this moderate Moroccan Islam and then to go back home again Ostensibly to then be able to counteract extremism, but again sort of increasing Morocco's role and It's its reputation as sort of the center of moderate Islam in North Africa I'll quickly get to the second question and then will Allow for for other insights from my co-panelist, but I think it was very interesting both in Morocco Because Saudi is the elephant in the room in so many of these contexts that anything that that National state religious officials are doing is always kind of at the margins of the Saudi hegemony as Kind of the leader of the Muslim world as also this hugely powerful financial actor that has spread their Version through training imams through bringing people to study in Saudi Arabia through distributing free quran's everywhere with kind of their translation and I Would argue the Saudi government has checked a lot of that recently especially post 9-11. There were a lot of Concerns, I think Saudi took a hard look in the mirror and Acknowledged that maybe some of their religious outreach with Peter has a big program on it Brookings as far as Sort of religion as a foreign policy tool Saudi Arabia has pulled a lot of that back and Has offered or that says I'll opened up some space for other actors like Jordan like Morocco to sort of Present themselves especially to the West as these providers of moderate Islam But I think getting back to that question about Muhammad al-Isra I think Saudi Arabia is perhaps now moving to maybe retake some of that space I'm really working hard on this this branding effort this PR effort to say you know what you heard about Saudi Islam before That's not who we are anymore. Now. We're all about the moderate Islam And so, you know, I think Morocco has has managed to build certain relationships in North Africa Also with the EU and is seen as a very important partner But they're they they don't rival kind of Saudi Arabia in terms of both religious authority and resources I About kind of Saudi having pulled back I think one thing the MBS also understands is that there has been reputational damage and that he does kind of acknowledge this And I guess the narrative now is that well Wahhabism initially or originally was this very moderate Religion and it's been, you know changed over the years and and now it's been it was changed and became extreme and that Doesn't have to do with the origins of Wahhabism and that's kind of the narrative I think Muhammad Yahya had a P of an op-ed kind of basically stating that that the original Saudi Islam is quite moderate And so I think MBS is now trying to repackage Wahhabism as this kind of moderate force and force for potentially for good I guess in the Arab world I Don't have much to add to what Saudi didn't said this didn't come up explicitly in my interviews I don't want to get over my speeds, but it definitely sounds possible Okay, let me think the three panelists those of you who have not heard enough the papers are still available Outside and they're also available online. So join me. Please join me in thinking