Sectarianism As A Factor Shaping Saudi Politics And Diplomacy

In recent years,with the increasingly prominent role of sectarian factors in Middle East politics,sectarianism has gradually become an important lens for people to observe the current political development in the Middle East.However,under the clamor of Western media and politicians,sectarianism in the Middle East has been arbitrarily used,over explained and deliberately exaggerated,and formed a tendency of sectarianism root theory,that is,sectarianism has become the only law to explain the root causes of conflicts in the Middle East.This kind of biased cognition is meaningless to understand the essence of the Middle East issue,and may even mislead the propaganda of China's Middle East policy.Therefore,this paper makes an objective and fair analysis of the sectarianism.As an ideology based on religious emotion,it aims to use sectarian identity for political mobilization in pursuit of political purposes.In Middle East,In order to enhance their legitimacy and alleviate insecurity,the state actors and sub state actors with religious attributes in the Middle East make their own ruling mode and foreign policies legalized and normalized political behaviors through politicization of sectarian identity and security of threat to sects.Based on this concept,this paper combs the historical origin and evolution of Saudi sectarianism,and puts forward a hypothesis,that is,sectarianism in Saudi Arabia's political arena presents a cyclical cycle,which is in essence the stress response and self salvation of the shat Wahhabi regime in the face of major challenges such as internal and external troubles.In other words,facing the regional sectarian struggle and the politicization of the national sectarian contradiction,Saudi regime regards sectarianism as an important means to deal with its internal turmoil and external threat.To test this hypotheses,this paper analyzes the sectarian factors in Saudi Arabia's politics and diplomacy after the Middle East upheavals.