YouSaid · the spoken record

David Commins

lines on the record: 65
first: 2025-09-17
most recent: 2025-09-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Right. Well, if you take Jeddah Mecca Medina, that region of Arabia, known as Hejaz, had always been under the rule of other Muslim empires. And they were under the rule of other Muslim powers because of the religious value of possessing, if you will, the holy cities, Mecca and Medina, from the time of the first Muslim dynasty that was based in Damascus in the 7th and early 8th centuries, all the way until the Ottoman Empire, unlushing dynasties outside Arabia coveted control of that region. And they were just more powerful than local resources could generate. So Hijaz was always, if you were to dependency on outside Muslim powers. If you look at the east coast of Arabia, what's now the eastern province of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, it was richer than Central Arabia. It's the largest oasis in Arabia.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, much more, somewhat more advanced. It is more advanced. It is more cosmopolitan than nedged. And there is the kind of regional identity in Hejaz. That is the Red Sea coast where the holy city's Magenta are located. And the townspeople there tended to look upon nedged as a less advanced part of Arabia. But again, that's a very recent historical development”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that is correct. That is correct. In terms of if you think of the 17 and 1800s, the Red Sea and Persian Gulf coast of Arabia were the most cosmopolitan parts of Arabia.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So Nez is the region of Central Arabia. Riyadh is currently the capital, the first Saudi Empire had a capital nearby called Deria. And Nezd is really the territory that gave birth to the Wahhabi movement. It's the homeland of the Saud dynasty. And it is the region of Arabia that was most thoroughly purged of the older Sunni tradition that had persisted and naj for centuries. And consequently by the time that the Saudi government developed bureaucratic agencies in the 1950s and 60s, the religious institution was going to recruit from that region of Arabia primarily. Now, it certainly attracted loyalists from other parts of Arabia, but the Wahhabi mission, as I call it, they're calling to what they consider true belief, began in Nezj and That's very strongly identified with the towns of Nejd ever since the late 1700s.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I guess my hunch is that any Critical attitude towards Palestinians on the part of the Saudi government would be that they're inconvenient because I think what the Saudi government wants is a very neat, seamless integration with Western economic, political, and technological and military spheres and the Palestinians get in the way of that. They might say that. I'm not sure that's true, but that might be how they see it.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They would say it's misreading the Quran to get into the details. And just as you have very strong disagreements in Christianity between different denominations, there have always been strong disagreements between Muslims over theology. The Wahhabi movement made them matter more than they did before because of this activist impulse in its position on theology that belief requires action, not just verbal affirmation in individual conduct.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That it is an eccentric, erroneous interpretation of Muslim religious sources and that it was that the product of poorly educated, ambitious preacher from the 1700s. That's what they would say.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could. You could. I haven't seen that. I haven't seen that. So it's possible that there is a completely new climate. They claim there is a completely new climate. And I've been told by colleagues there is a completely new climate for Shiite Muslims. But I just don't know that. I don't know that as a fact.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Day, well, today, Tyler, that is for me very difficult to know because what we hear from the Saudi government is that there is no more discrimination against Shiite Muslims. Personally, I don't know if that is true or not. It might be true, but I do not know that it is true because we really don't hear what I regard as reliable information about conditions in Saudi Arabia regarding recent currents of dissent. They've all been silenced.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, their legal status today inside Arabia is as Saudi citizens, none of whom have very many legal rights, be they Sunni or Shiite. Over time, they have endured periods of persecution. A number of Shiites moved out of their home provinces. In the 1790s, the very first time Saudi forces annexed it. The Saudis lost control of that region. They regained control again. Most recently in 1913, there was another exodus of 100 or so Shiites to other parts of the Gulf region. So there is a history of persecution and discrimination.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he did put Wahhabi clerics in charge of religious institutions in Mecca, but he chose clerics who were willing to work with Muslims in other Sunni traditions. So he actually had a compromise, you would say, on strict Wahhabi doctrine.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it is a contradiction. And one of the political achievements of the early 20th century Saudi leader Abdel Aziz was to annex Mecca to his kingdom, which was based in Riyadh, and do so in a way that imposed what you might call a qualified Wahhabi regime. Because in its original homeland in Central Arabia, the Wahhabi clerics purged the entire region as thoroughly as they could of any religious dissent, that is, of other Sunni Muslims. And that was, you know, in this 1700s, 1800s, when Abdullah's annexed Mecca at the end of 1924, he realized that it was a globally significant annexation and that if he tried to impose a strict Wahhabi regime that purged other Muslim traditions from the holy city, he would alienate Muslims in the rest of the world.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So it is a theological position on how do you define belief. And the teachings of the founder of this school of thought, Muhammad bin Abdul Wahab, so it's named after him, argued that it is not enough to affirm that you believe in one God. You must also actively negate any deviation from correct belief in God. And therefore, it has an activist impulse towards what it regards as heresy or unbelief. Whereas in the Sunni tradition, theology had evolved different schools of thought that were, I would say, mutually tolerant. They didn't persecute each other for what they regarded as incorrect religious practice based on incorrect theology. So it really is a theological conviction that was new in the history of Muslim societies.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would argue no, and I would also qualify that by saying that our sources for the early history of Saudi political expansion are so few in partisan we can't reach a firm historical conclusion about that. But it seems to me that this religious purification movement is Wahhabism purported to be essential for state building in that part of Arabia in the 1700s.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Case looks like it is a very strong conviction for a specific theology and a specific definition of true belief in the Islamic tradition. And that's the best case I can make.”
2025-09-17 · Conversations with Tyler · David Commins on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, and the Future of the Gulf States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source