Saudi King Abdullah has said that Riyadh will proceed with economic reforms, Arab News reported Jan. 21. In a speech, read aloud on the king's behalf by Riyadh Gov. Prince Salman at the opening of the Second Global Competitiveness Forum on Jan. 20, King Abdullah said that $1.87 billion had been allocated to judicial reforms and $2.93 billion to reform the education system. The king emphasized that his government is working to create the infrastructure to enhance the Saudi private sector and attract greater foreign investment, and that providing job opportunities to Saudi men and women after training them is a major priority for the government. Meanwhile, Arabic language daily Al Watan reported Jan. 21 that the government issued an order allowing women to stay in hotels alone. Under King Abdullah — not only during his reign since 2005 but during the previous decade when he was crown prince and de facto ruler — Saudi Arabia has seen considerable political and social reforms, particularly in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the jihadist insurgency that peaked during 2003-04. The process of politico-economic reform, however, has now reached a stage where any further progress cannot take place without changes to the Saudi social fabric. Social change in the kingdom is, to put it very mildly, an extremely messy affair, because the Saudi state has adhered to the ultra-conservative Salafi-Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam for more than two and half centuries. It is this reality that has informed successive Saudi rulers' approaches to change. Knowing that it would be suicidal to try and strip the religious establishment — one of the major pillars of the Saudi state's legitimacy — from the country, the Saudis have always opted for the approach of consensus building in an effort to sideline the elements that oppose their policies. Historically, this method of trying to curb the powers of the ulema has proven highly successful. The first time the Saudis faced a problem from the religious establishment was in the kingdom's early years. King Abdel-Aziz bin Abdel-Rehman, the founder of the modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia (before it was called such) in 1929 had to obliterate the Ikhwan (not to be confused with Egypt's Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, the Muslim Brotherhood), the ultra-conservative group of religious/tribal warriors that helped conquer parts of present-day Saudi Arabia, because of the group's objective to take its "jihad" beyond the Arabian Peninsula. This would have created trouble for the king's British allies in Iraq. King Abdel-Aziz could not have moved against the Ikhwan without rallying support from within the ulema. Abdel-Aziz's son King Faisal in 1963 faced a similar situation when religious extremists opposed the introduction of television in the kingdom. At one point, the monarch had to sternly deal with those against the move. Like his father, King Faisal knew that the only way forward was to make sure that the bulk of the religious scholars were with him; in exchange for their cooperation, he had to compromise on the content of the programming. In 1979, during the Juhayman al-Utaibi-led rising and the seizure of the Kaaba, the Saudis were forced to use French commandos to regain control of the Holy Mosque in Mecca, which entailed a bloody battle against those extremist elements that considered the Saudi regime un-Islamic. In this incident, then-King Khalid not only had to make sure that the radicals did not make inroads into the religious establishment but also had to secure the ulema's support for the operation to take back the Kaaba. In the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Khalid's successor King Fahd had to deal with religious opponents when key religious figures rose up — albeit peacefully and through sermons — calling for reforms and better adherence to Islamic principles while voicing opposition to the stationing of U.S. forces in the kingdom. The Saudi approach of aligning with the majority of the religious scholars against the radicals worked, and the movement was put down by 1994. In fact, those arrested in that period are now helping the state in the ongoing process of religious reconstruction. The latest and perhaps most pertinent example is the Saudi ability to defeat the kingdom's branch of al Qaeda, which took place in mid-2004. The Saudis got the religious establishment to isolate the jihadists and their sympathizers as "deviants." Though the process of combating extremism will continue for at least a generation, Riyadh has been able to degrade the jihadists' operational capabilities. Despite its historic ability to work with the religious establishment against radicals, the current massive overhaul the kingdom is undergoing could pose unprecedented problems for Riyadh, because the government is not dealing with a small group of religious elements challenging the state. Instead, it is reshaping the majority by reinterpreting religious texts to pave the way for changes, and this will spark far greater resistance than ever before. As far as Saudi Arabia is concerned, social restructuring and openness are prerequisites to economic reform. Whether the Saudis' time-tested approach will succeed with this project remains to be seen.