Saladin is a good leader that gets an unfairly bad rap, I think. He has the best trait in the game, and Protective is also pretty decent now. His UB is great, and his UU, though fairly uninspiring, can be handy in a pinch.
Saladin is a leader well-suited to taking advantage of the actual religious side of the spiritual trait. However, I wouldn't go for an early religion, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, your chance of getting one is pretty low on high levels, and there's better things to be researching for the development of an empire. Second, you don't need an early religion to get a Great Prophet, because your madrassas take care of that. Third, you're pretty much guaranteed Theology and Christianity if you want it, and you have a good chance at Taoism, Confucianism and even Islam. Fourth, the AI has become very aggressive with its missionary spam, and if an AI on your continent founds one of the other religions, you're going to have to spend a hell of a lot of resources trying to win the missionary war. Fifth, because of that missionary spam, it's very easy to get one of the early religions spread to you anyway.
Early, I would use Protective archers to aggressively land-grab and defend from barbs. I would then beeline Code of Laws via Writing then Priesthood, running one city with scientist specialists, and one with priests. The priests should ideally pop a prophet first, and depending on the religious situation of the continent and whether Confucianism has been founded, either plow on to CoL or divert to Monotheism (and the other of mysticism/polytheism) and bulb Theology before finishing CoL.
Run OR to spread missionaries of the most diplomatic religion around the country, then work towards monarchy if necessary and the techs to allow the second GP to bulb Pacifism (or run both scientists and priests - if you get a second prophet before Monarchy, you can bulb Civil Service).
I wouldn't spend a prophet on a shrine until after there's nothing decent to bulb.
As for high road vs low road, it really depends on the situation. Liberalism->Nationalism can give lots of drafted Protective muskets early or shoot to Constitution, and is easy to bulb to with bursts of CS/Pacifism and scientists (if you've got theology, you can even avoid civil service if the circumstances are right, and trade for it later as you're researching liberalism).
On the other hand, low road gives drill crossbows and camel archers and the chance to proselytise religion-free civs before anyone else can.
With Camel Archers, I'm not sure when to favour them and when to ignore them. Obviously they're great when you've got nothing, but they're also good when you've got horses but not metal. HBR can be researched early, and Horse Archers used for early warfare, and upgraded to camel archers as necessary.
The other thing about them is that they get an extra 15% withdrawal chance over normal knights, so the flanking promos become much more worthwhile, they're very impressive against enemy siege, and they can often hit weakly-defended targets of opportunity without waiting for your own siege as backup (particularly if you incite a revolt).
Past that, I would probably abuse Rep+pacifism+scientists/spies to bulb a path to physics/biology (and maybe medicine for sushi), whip in a bunch of buildings (especially espionage ones) with slavery/OR and go from there with war/espionage-heavy late game.
Use OR periodically to spread every religion possible to every city and build cheap temples, and use the extra happiness (especially when switching to FR) for war weariness, big populations, and/or drafting drill gunpowder units.
He's one category better techer than even people like Wang Kon. Only Elizabeth can keep up with that guy; come on, she's Financial, Philosophical and has an awesome UB and UU. Mansa flies through the tech tree. In my opinion also a very versatile leader (I won a domination victory with him). Financial and his UB mint give you tons of cash while spiritual allows to quickly change civics and organize for war. Given his tech superiority and a quick shift in wartime to Police State, Vassalage/Nationhood, Theocracy means Mansa can usually stay on par with the guys like Shaka and Monty who have larger but obsolete armies. 
