Founded in the eighteenth century by a Hanbali cleric, Wahhabism is a reformist movement within Sunni Islam that seeks to restore an über-traditional way of life to the Muslim world. Its major targets are what it deems idolatry and blasphemy: everything from religious shrines to selfies with cats (too Western) have been forbidden by fatwa. In 1744, that cleric, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, vowed loyalty to the House of Saud in exchange for its formal adoption of the Wahhabist mission, including allowing Wahhabists to proselytize freely in Saudi territories, a practice known as dawah.

Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia just shy of two centuries later, in 1938, and by the latter half of the twentieth century, the House of Saud had the requisite funds to send Wahhabism’s close cousin Salafism across the Muslim world. The royal family would subsequently spend billions to solidify Saudi power and prevent the spread of rival Shia practice as well as pan-Arab socialism.

Saudi dawah reached its apex between 1973 and 1990, bookended by the oil boom and the Gulf War and marked by the creation of political-religious entities that still operate today: the Dawah Ministry, the Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the Islamic University of Madinah, and a number of charities. Even Saudi embassies come with religious attachés. In January, the Dawah Ministry announced that its 423 missionary preachers and 457 societies had converted a total of 347,646 people to Islam since 2019.