Rigid religious prohibitions bend wherever state revenue depends on the exception.

Evidence

Despite this strictness, throughout these years senior Saudi scholars in the kingdom made exceptions in ruling on what is haram (forbidden). Foreign non-Muslim troops are forbidden in Arabia, except when the king needed them to confront Saddam Hussein in 1990; gender mixing of men and women is forbidden, and fraternization with non-Muslims is discouraged, but not at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Until 2018, movie theaters and driving by women were forbidden, except at the ARAMCO compound in eastern Saudi, populated by workers for the company that provides almost all the government’s revenue. — Wikipedia contributors, Wahhabism, 78

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The exceptions cluster exactly where oil revenue and geopolitics demand them, suggesting religious law functions as a negotiable instrument of state interest rather than an absolute.