Saudi's Powerful Morality Police in Firing Line
51 minutes ago
By John R. Bradley
JEDDAH (Reuters) - They prowl the streets and shopping malls, hunting down women who don't shroud themselves and Muslim men who ignore the call to prayer.
Saudi Arabia's pervasive and powerful morality police have been a pillar of the ultra-conservative kingdom since its foundation.
Answerable only to King Fahd and separate from ordinary police, members of the "Authority for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" patrol with police escorts, ensuring that their strict interpretation of Islamic social customs remain the norm among a youthful, Westernized population with wide access to the Internet and satellite TV.
They check that women wear the abaya, the all-enveloping black cloak, that men and women together in public are related, that drugs and alcohol are not being traded and that Muslims do not observe "frivolous" customs such as Valentine's Day (news - web sites).
Their Web site invites citizens to inform on those suspected of any manner of immoral behavior.
The role of the morality police has come under unprecedented scrutiny in Saudi Arabia, which has been accused in the West of breeding Islamic radicalism which in turn creates more recruits for Saudi-born Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
The influence of the morality police varies throughout Saudi Arabia and is strongest in the central Riyadh area, a bastion of the kingdom's unique, strict Muslim creed known as Wahhabism.
The austere brand of Islam, and its ramifications on all aspects of Saudi society, was thrust in the international spotlight after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. cities.
Most of the men blamed for the attacks were Saudis linked to bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
U.S. officials accused the Saudi education system of breeding "terrorists," but this appeared to have been largely ignored by the authorities until suspected al Qaeda militants struck in the heart of Riyadh on May 12 with devastating suicide attacks on expatriate housing compounds.
The bombings, the first indiscriminate attack against civilians in the kingdom, caused much soul-searching among ordinary Saudis and their rulers, who admitted publicly they have a serious problem.
Some Saudis say that the religious police -- known as the "mutawaeen" or "enforcers" -- are the core of this problem.
Saudis say the mutawaeen, with their trademark beards and loose-fitting red headscarves, are on the lookout for people using the latest mobile phones with cameras, lest they use them for flirting and to identify possible suitors.
REFORM HOPES
Last month, dozens of Saudis approached the mass circulation, reformist daily al-Watan newspaper with tales of being mistreated by the mutawaeen.
One woman from a remote southern town wrote to say that she had been beaten and held in solitary confinement for riding alone in the back of a taxi. A distraught man went to the paper's Riyadh bureau saying he would commit suicide if they did not run his story of being detained incommunicado.
"The whole thing was started by the religious police when they arrested one of our reporters, insulted him and even cut his hair," said Jamal Khashoggi, a former editor who was fired after a senior Islamic scholar called for a mass boycott of the paper as a result of the stories.
Other, more conservative papers criticized the mutawaeen last year after they prevented men from rescuing girls in a burning school because they were not relatives.
Fourteen girls died in the blaze and dozens were injured.
The rare public discussion about the mutawaeen comes amid much anticipation of reform in the kingdom, ruled largely by royal decree with an unelected parliament.
Businessmen and well-known Saudis in January petitioned the royal court asking for elections, more rights for women and equality among the country's diverse social groups.
There has been growing domestic and foreign criticism that giving religious leaders a free hand to act, preach, and police society fosters the kind of fanaticism and intolerance which encourages young Saudi men to become suicide attackers.
Religious figures are concerned that pressure is mounting to crowd them out of public life.
A statement issued by prominent clerics has said "extremist writers" are using the Riyadh blasts to attack the religious establishment.
And in a recent interview Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh, the kingdom's top religious authority, rejected calls to dismantle the morality police.
Anthropologist Saad Sowayan said the Saudi royal family would never scrap the morality squad because it bolsters their own rule, which has involved decades of absolute power.
But he added that the authorities could use the mutawaeen to advance reforms, as King Faisal did in the 1970s to push education for women and the spread of television.
"The government should choose people among the mutawaeen to justify reforms today. People will accept anything more readily if it is framed in a religious discourse," he explained. |
