Saudi religious police aren’t funny

[rug]

Posted: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:04
By Terry Sanderson

If you are going to have a special police division to enforce morality in a country that is already very religiously conservative, then they are bound to make frequent idiots of themselves.

In Saudi Arabia, where religious mania seems to be a requirement of citizenship, the religious police have just forcibly evicted three men from an annual cultural festival and sent them back to Abu Dhabi from whence they came.

The men had been deemed "too handsome" and that women would find them irresistible, according to the Arabic language newspaper Elaph.

"A festival official said the three Emiratis were taken out on the grounds they are too handsome and that the Commission [for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices] members feared female visitors could fall for them," Elaph reported.

http://www.secularism.org.uk/blog/2013/04/saudi-religious-police-arent-funny

In the custody of the Mutaween:

[longship]

1. Reminds me of this.

Good ol' Monty Python.

[rug]

2. They were geniuses.

Everything the Saudi police are not.

[2ndAmForComputers]

3. We are very lucky to live in a country where Reason, Science and Progress grew strong enough...

...to keep religion in check.

[rug]

4. I'm sure it has nothing to do with living in a democracy as opposed to an absolute monarchy.

[2ndAmForComputers]

7. Of course it does. One thing stimulates the other, and vice versa.

[rug]

8. And one is the prop used to support the other.

I'm sure we disagree but I have little doubt that the monarchy is using Islam as the prop.

[2ndAmForComputers]

9. Yeah, yeah, I heard it before. It's not religion, it's the dictators.

If not for religion, they'd oppress their people with lawn furniture or something.

[rug]

10. I marvel at your grasp of history.

[skepticscott]

5. Religion is just an excuse

to persecute handsome men. We all know that Islam doesn't motivate people to do anything, and certainly not anything bad. If there were no Islam, the Saudi religious police would have ginned up some other reason to harass the good looking.

[rug]

6. Religion never persecuted me.

Oh, wait . . . .