The Saudi royal house prides itself as the guardian of the Muslim faith, and seeks to ensure that daily life on the Arabian Peninsula is dominated by Islamic practices. he two holiest sites of Islam—Mecca and Medina—are under its care, and it welcomes, in non-Covid times, millions of Hajis—Muslim pilgrims from all over the world—to these cities each year. In other words, the keepers of the keys to the Kaaba—Islam’s most sacred shrine—aspire to play the same role in the Islamic faith as the Vatican does in the Catholic one. One would think that the visit of Chinese President Xi...