Saudi Arabia’s 'Religious Police' Reforms

[rug]

6:05 PM, Oct 9, 2012
By IRFAN AL-ALAWI and STEPHEN SCHWARTZ

In the seven years since King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz assumed the throne of Saudi Arabia, the absolute monarch, whose reformist aspirations are widely believed to be sincere, has attempted to curb some of the outrageous human rights violations for which the desert kingdom is known. Many of these have involved the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV), the ubiquitous “moral guardians” that patrolled Saudi Arabian public space and occasionally raided private homes. But change has been obstructed by members of the royal family, state officials, and clerics representing the ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi sect that is the official Islamic interpretation in the country and dominates it in a marriage-based alliance with the Al-Saud family.

At the beginning of October, Saudi Arabia announced reforms in the activities of the CPVPV that could mark a turn in the evolution of Saudi Arabia toward normality as a society.

Westerners call the CPVPV “the religious police,” although they have lacked law-enforcement training or other professional characteristics of public-order bodies. Saudi subjects and foreign Muslims who visit Saudi Arabia refer to them as the “hai’a” (commission), or the “mutawiyin”—the latter meaning “the pious,” “the devotees,” or “the volunteers” but with a strong implication of vigilantism. Dressed in white robes and red-checkered headscarves, they remain feared and hated by the Saudi populace.

In January 2012, King Abdullah appointed Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh as the new head of the mutawiyin, replacing a figure with a reformist reputation, Abdul Aziz Al-Humain. Paradoxically, Abdul Latif Al-Sheikh is a lineal descendant of Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi movement. But Al-Sheikh is credited with more advanced attitudes, especially on the status of women. Al-Sheikh has pointed out that Wahhabi-style strict separation of unrelated men and women, and a bar on women working in contact with men, contradict traditional Islamic law. In addition, among his first executive actions was to dismiss volunteers from the mutawiyin. In April 2012, he warned that members of the mutawiyin found to be harassing people would be punished, and castigated CPVPV personnel considered overzealous.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/saudi-arabia-s-religious-police-reforms_654065.html

[onager]

1. I saw them in action many times.

One incident I personally witnessed, and I'll make it as brief as possible:

Prayer Call in Saudi Arabia is rigidly enforced, and Westerners don't want to be out on the street when it happens. So we would try to get into a restaurant etc. before the P.C. sounded.

One night I sheltered from the P.C. in my fave Chinese restaurant. (The owner's sister lived in San Francisco and he liked Americans.)

Like all restaurants in Saudi Arabia (by law), this one had a "Men's Section" up front, and a "Family Section" in the back. All women and kids were supposed to be in the Family Section.

An older British couple, sixtyish or so, was sitting near my table.

Then in swept 2 members of the Religious Police, accompanied by a real cop. (Because they have no real "police" power, as the article noted, they often brought along a real cop. In case somebody needed to be arrested immediately, I guess.)

The matowa berated, harassed and generally dicked with this couple until the Prayer Call ended - about 20 minutes.

Their crime was sitting in the Men's Section, when one of them was obviously a woman.

The couple apologized profusely, and tried to explain that they only wanted to enjoy their meal in peace and quiet, not surrounded by screaming kids.

Didn't matter. The R.P.'s demanded proof that they were married. In the context of Saudi Arabia, that's an insult. When unmarried foreigners were discovered on a date, they were usually taken straight to jail and the woman was charged with "prostitution." But these people were grandparent age and pretty obviously not out on a date.

Eventually the restaurant owner came over and helped the miscreants move to the Family Section. The R.P. left, with a stern warning to the couple to never sit in a Men's Section again.

And that was life in the Magic Kingdom. One thing about the R.P. - you never knew what would set them off. A bunch of us Americans ran into an English-speaking R.P. one afternoon. He got pissed off because some of us were laughing, and admonished us that it was "UNSEEMLY for a woman to laugh in public."

[rug]

2. Vivid.

The only thing I can relate to that is Rosa Parks sitting on the bus.