[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]

Pakistan’s Military-Jihadi Complex is multi-dimensional, comprised of military, militant, violent jihadist and “political-economic structures that pursues a set of domestic and foreign policies to ensure its own survival and relative dominance.” This description can be observed in Pakistan’s identity and structure — from its jihad war front at Jammu and Kashmir and its reputation as a state sponsor of jihad terror to its culture of jihad, which includes its infamous Islamic blasphemy laws. None of this is any secret to Saudi Arabia. “For years, Riyadh has financially backed clerical groups and madrassas promoting the Salafi and Wahhabi schools of thought in Pakistan.” And now this: “A New Deal With Saudi Arabia Can End Up Strengthening Pak’s Jihad Outfits”, by Aishwaria Sonavane, NDTV, September 24, 2025:

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA) at the Royal Court in Al-Yamamah Palace, Riyadh, on September 17. Under this pact, any aggression against either country will be treated as aggression against both, thereby spectacularly normalising and consolidating a military partnership that has spanned decades.

The details remain opaque; however, the agreement essentially consolidates what has long been an informal practice between the two nations. Pakistan has historically maintained close ties with Saudi Arabia, mainly rooted in the Islamist orientation enshrined in Article 40 of the Pakistani Constitution and sustained by decades of financial support by the Kingdom.

The Really Awkward Timing

The timing of the deal gains high notability given its arrival just days after an Israeli strike on Doha, Qatar, a Gulf neighbour of Saudi Arabia. It further follows the brief military confrontation between India and Pakistan in May, following the terror attack in Kashmir. On the face of it, the deal signals the emergence of a new security architecture linking the Indian subcontinent with West Asia. From Riyadh’s perspective, the pact reflects diminishing confidence in the US as the security guarantor of the Gulf region. In that light, aligning with nuclear-armed Pakistan offers the Kingdom an added layer of deterrence and an ally with military capabilities. This is particularly considering the limited military capability in Saudi Arabia despite its strong financial resources.

With Pakistan emerging as an active security player in West Asia, New Delhi will now have to recalibrate its strategic calculations…

The Pakistani military establishment is intertwined with anti-India jihad groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). “The MJC encompasses military support structures, militant proxies, socio-political fronts, religious ideologues, criminal syndicates, and political influence to maintain domestic dominance while pursuing a hostile anti-India policy.” So, the impact of this critical “deal on the MJC ecosystem could be seen beyond the lens of financial support from Riyadh.” It puts Pakistan on a whole new level of regional dominance.

Contrary to the image Saudi Arabia projects in its public relations show for the West, it is historically rooted in in Wahhabism, and largely remains so, as is apparent to anyone who had been paying attention. For instance, Saudi Arabia’s oppression of dissidents is ongoing, and its recent execution of prominent Saudi journalist Turki al-Jasser, who highlighted Saudi corruption, is telling. The country has seen “an unprecedented surge in executions in 2025 without apparent due process”; NPR highlighted “how some Saudis abroad have been targeted by their own government for what they post online and even say in private conversation. They’ve been arrested when they return home and are given harsh prison sentences, sometimes as long as 30 years.” Also, on October 7, Saudi Arabia joined Iran and Muslim Brotherhood supporting Qatar to blame Israel for its own attack.

Many fell for Saudi Arabia’s public image of reform, as its propaganda was carefully crafted for Westerners. Western dreamers hoped against hope for Saudi reform, and even for its normalization with Israel, yet Saudi Arabia never wavered on its conditions for normalization: Israel’s return to the pre-1967 (“Auschwitz”) borders, with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.

Appeasement of Islamic countries invariably backfires, since they plot and carefully execute strategy in the same stealthy manner in which the Muslim Brotherhood managed to infiltrate the West. They wait out their infidel enemies with patience — a virtue the West lacks.

With Saudi Arabia signing its new deal with Pakistan, an observable pattern emerges even more clearly than it has up to now: The jihad consists of layers, with the most brutish wielding the sword on the frontlines, while the more sophisticated wing remains stealthy, but they all work in tandem. So as Turkey and Qatar fund the Muslim Brotherhood and support Hamas, Saudi Arabia is boosting Pakistan’s Military-Jihadi Complex. It is noteworthy that the Saudi alliance with Pakistan isn’t as coarse in appearance as the Qatari alliance with Hamas (that recently saw an Israeli strike on Doha). As for Iran, the world’s chief Shia state, it is the best-known backer of the frontline jihad, and the regime doesn’t pretend. Something else to keep in mind: Turkey, according to a top Israeli strategic analyst, is “the new Iran.”

Globalization has been unstoppable, given economics and trade, but it is the red-green axis (China, primarily, and Islam) that managed to cleverly outplay and outmaneuver the West tactically. While the West has wavered and appears unable or unwilling to recognize the jihad threat, Islamic countries have never lost sight of Sharia expansionism and the distinction of the infidel from the believer. In the Sharia view, the world is divided into the dar al harb (the House of War) and dar al Islam (the House of Islam); the House of War must be conquered and subjugated, and become part of the House of Islam. The West, on the other hand, ignored this important distinction (as it also ignored Islamic history), and embraced the falsehood that Islam is a religion of peace.

Israel’s fight for its existence represents the ugly, inconvenient truth in the face of all those who think that Islam can be appeased. It is easier for the willfully blind in the West to throw Israel under the bus than to accept the truth that “You’re next.” The West’s foolish open-door immigration policies (and leftist self-hatred) also saw a Muslim invasion of the West. Note, however, that Muslim countries, known for their sectarianism, carefully managed their own borders.

So now that Saudi Arabia is brazenly strengthening nuclear Pakistan, one hopes that the West will soon wake up and realize that this move is yet another example of how the kingdom remains innumerable steps ahead of the West. The new Saudi-Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement also opens “Pakistan to sophisticated Western weapons, considering Riyadh’s extensive procurement from the US and European countries.”

Saudi Arabia stands arm-in-arm with Pakistan and other members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in which it plays a critical unifying role for the Muslim ummah, and remains a driving force for Islam and the OIC.