BEIRUT, Lebanon — He has publicly declared that “the Jews” control America, that apostates can be killed, that the United States is the world’s “biggest terrorist” and that the Sept. 11 attacks were an “inside job” by President George W. Bush.

But last weekend, Dr. Zakir Naik, a prominent Muslim televangelist from India, appeared at an elaborate ceremony at a luxury hotel in Saudi Arabia, where the new monarch, King Salman, gave him one of the country’s highest honors.

The award for “service to Islam” highlighted the conflicted position of Saudi Arabia as an American ally that continues to back Islamists who espouse hatred of the West.

Scrutiny of Saudi Arabia’s role in shaping thought in the Muslim world has grown with the rise of the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq and Syria, which shares some aspects of the fundamentalist Islam propagated by the Saudi state.