Yesterday, the European Council on Foreign Relations – a think tank with four former presidents and twelve former prime ministers among its members – published a collection of essays and articles exploring the conflict with ISIS from a regional perspective. One of them looks at Saudi Arabia and boldly claims that the kingdom is ideally placed not only to take part in the battle against ISIS but to lead it.

The article's authors are Nawaf Obaid and Saud al-Sarhan, who have also been promoting Saudi Arabia as a bulwark against terrorism in the New York Times. Obaid is "special counsellor" to the Saudi ambassador in London and a fellow of the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh (among other things), while Sarhan is research director at the King Faisal Centre. Their article, therefore, can probably be considered as a semi-official view.

"As the threat posed by the Islamic State grows greater and ever more sinister," they write, "Saudi Arabia stands at the front line of the battle against these extremists. Saudi Arabia is adamant that it has unique knowledge, expertise, and legitimacy to effectively lead the effort to defeat IS." They continue:

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has consistently asserted that the fight against extremism ought to be locally owned by the regional stakeholders. This has led to some contention between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

"Saudi Arabia believes policy should be guided by the idea that Sunni empowerment is the key ingredient needed to defeat Sunni extremism."

We have already seen this "empowerment" in action with Saudi Arabia's bankrolling of President Sisi in Egypt as he represses his fellow Sunnis in the Muslim Brotherhood.

While the idea of regional stakeholders taking ownership of regional problems sounds attractive in theory, where ISIS, Syria and Iraq are concerned there is a distinct lack of regional honest brokers. Other recent attempts at regional solutions have also tended to exacerbate or entrench problems rather than alleviate them. When pro-democracy protests erupted in Bahrain, the response of the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by Saudi Arabia, was to send in troops to prop up the king and there has been no real progress towards a solution. In Yemen, meanwhile, the GCC's "transition plan" for the post-Saleh era – once hailed as a possible model for Syria – is now falling apart.

As far as regional efforts against ISIS are concerned, Obaid and Sarhan write:

"A military campaign conducted from the air will not be enough. In Saudi eyes, airstrikes must quickly be followed by a meaningful policy on the ground if the effort is to be truly effective. Saudi Arabia is best placed to lead this effort. The priority must be moving forward local ownership, in the form of arming and training the Syrian rebels and Iraqi tribal forces who are prepared to take the fight to IS."

It's easy to see how this could be developed, not entirely against ISIS but also in pursuit of a Saudi agenda – extending the kingdom's influence in Iraq while trying to roll back Iranian influence there. A Reuters report on Tuesday suggested that this is indeed what Saudi Arabia and the UAE have in mind – that they might "act unilaterally in areas that they calculate aren't so important to their western allies".

A more immediate concern, though, is that Saudi Arabia's involvement against ISIS devalues international efforts by turning the conflict from a principled battle against sectarian repression into sectarian wrangling – pitching one form of religious extremism against another.

ISIS, supposedly acting upon instructions from God, seeks to impose its religious rules on everyone who falls under its power, subordinates women, cuts off people's heads for trivial reasons and aspires to the leadership of Muslims worldwide. That's why it should be opposed.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, supposedly acting upon instructions from God, seeks to impose its religious rules on everyone who falls under its power, subordinates women, cuts off people's heads for trivial reasons, aspires to the leadership of Muslims worldwide – and is accepted as an ally in confronting ISIS.

So what we really have here is the Islamic Kingdom opposing the Islamic State. Setting aside questions of king versus caliph and the fact that one is an established state and the other is a would-be state (and consequently behaving in a more unruly fashion), there isn't much difference between them. Basically, the Islamic Kingdom opposes the Islamic State not because of major ideological differences but because it sees the Islamic State as a threat to its own power. Obaid and Sarhan continue:

"Saudi Arabia’s willingness to play a leading role against IS should not surprise anyone. IS poses a more direct threat to Saudi Arabia than to the west. Saudi Arabia is convinced that its leadership of the Sunni Islamic world and its guardianship of the two holy mosques makes it a key target for IS. 

"To restore the 'caliphate', IS would ultimately need to implant itself at the epicentre of Islamic life, the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina. Therefore, IS’s road to the caliphate runs through the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."

Naturally, Obaid and Sarhan try to distance Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi ideology from ISIS's ideology and in their New York Times article do so by claiming that ISIS supporters are Kharijites:

"ISIS follows an ideology that is a continuation of a crude sect known as the Kharijites, or the ones that 'deviated' from the Muslim community during the reign of the fourth Caliph Ali (whom they assassinated). The Kharijites believed that whoever disagreed with them should be murdered as infidels (takfir), rationalised mass killings against civilians, including women and children (isti’rad), and practised an extreme form of inquisition to test their opponent’s faith (imtihan).

"These concepts make ISIS’ ideology the absolute opposite of Saudi Salafism ..."

Saudi writer Bader al-Rashed dismisses this argument in an article for Al-Monitor:

"The main problem in suggesting an IS link to Kharijites is that the group [IS] has been distributing Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s books across the territory under its control in Iraq and Syria, suggesting that the group is explicitly declaring its affiliation with Wahhabism. 

"Another issue is that the religious basis of Sunni jihadist movements is completely different from Kharijism, which eventually developed different schools of jurisprudence. One of the most prominent schools is Ibadism, the official confession in Oman, which is not linked to IS in any way."

Beyond theology, though, there's a more important point about the similarities in what Saudi Arabia and ISIS regard as acceptable Islamic practices. The fact that Saudi Arabia indulges in brutal and oppressive practices which it justifies on religious grounds means the Saudis can't seriously object when ISIS does the same. Saudi Arabia's approach to religion thus helps to justify ISIS's approach.

Sidestepping that problem, Obaid and Sarhan highlight Saudi Arabia's efforts to combat "extremism" and "terrorism". The kingdom, they say, "has an impressive array of counter-terrorism resources, both in materiel and intelligence, and its counter-terrorism strategies are considered some of the most sophisticated and effective in the world ... Saudi Arabia has put in place some of the tightest anti-terror funding controls in the region and it has deployed these measures against IS."

It's also worth noting that Saudi Arabia waged an effective campaign against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) which succeeded mainly by forcing the militants to retreat into neighbouring Yemen where they have continued to cause havoc.

While these efforts have been genuine up to a point they have also been undermined by the kingdom's own very peculiar concept of terrorism. Sweeping new regulations introduced earlier this year created a whole range of "terrorist" offences for nonviolent political and religious dissent. All these factors point to the conclusion that Saudi involvement in the campaign against ISIS is more likely to be destructive than constructive. Saudi Arabia should not be taking part, let alone leading it.