Hanbali

"My wife is using boiled rice to feed our 11-month old baby. We can barely get one bottle of powdered milk a month," said Abdullah Hanbali, who worked as an engineer before the war.

Of Islam’s four major schools of thought, the underpinning of Saudi Arabia’s legal system is based on the most conservative Hanbali branch and an ideology widely known as Wahhabism.

“The interpretation of Shari‘a that is increasingly being adopted is Hanbali, the most conservative one that is dominating in the Middle East.”

Four schools make up Sunni jurisprudence: Hanafi, Shafii, Maliki and Hanbali, the latter spawning the Wahhabi and Salafi movements in Saudi Arabia.

Both follow Hanbali jurisprudence, the strictest of four schools of traditional Sunni Islamic law: when Egyptians chide someone for nitpicking, the expression is “Don’t be Hanbali”.