Lewis Atiyat Allah is but one activist who aspires towards reformulating modernity according to his own principles. Other Saudis are eqully concerned with the same questions that torment Lewis, but their preoccupation may differ in its focus and strategy. Yet they all have one common denominator: the search for the unmediated word of God. This search is at the heart of the Saudi debate in the twenty-first century.

Previous chapters demonstrated thatofficial ʿulama, Sahwis and Jihadis are engaged in fierce intellectual battles over religious interpretation. None of these battles is likelyto go as far as openly challenging the religious discourse of the ancestor, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, or the heritage of aimat al-da ʿwa al-najdiyya. However, contesting this heritage – or at least the way it is practised, applied and interpreted by official scholars – is an ongoing intellectual preoccupation.

Traditional Saudi ʿulama regard themselves as theintellectual heirs of the reformer's heritage and as the only true Muslims. Both dissident Sahwis and Jihadis consider many contemporary official ʿulama to be latecomers who corrupted the initial original message of the reformer under the patronage of the Saudi regime. They both aspire to free religious interpretation from their monopoly. This position was particularly clear among those described previously as Salafi–Ikhwani and Jihadis. Yet not many activists openly scrutinise the interpretations of the ancestor. If they have minor reservations about the eighteenth-century message, they remain silent in the public sphere.