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  johnpi 10:30 am on January 2, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Aceh (7), indonesia (54), Muttawa, Pakistan (570), religious police (3)

  A feature article on the religious police of Aceh.

  Officers are relatively cheerful, they carry no weapons and they almost always let wrongdoers off with a warning.

  “Punishment is not the objective of the law. We must convince and explain,” says Iskander, the sharia police chief in Banda Aceh, who goes by only one name.

  Activists in Aceh – which just passed laws allowing the stoning to death of adulterers and the flogging of homosexuals – are worried about what the religious police could turn into, and offer the darkest, most scariest cautionary tale in all of the contemporary Muslim world:

  “Aceh could look like Pakistan one day,” she warned.

   

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  johnpi 4:21 pm on December 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: gender mixing (4), gender segregation (16), Muttawa, religious police (3), saudi arabia (135)

  Head of Saudi religious police says gender mixing is halal.

  The head of the Saudi religious police came out last week and declared that gender mixing “was part of normal life for the Ummah [Islamic nation] and its societies.” He continued:

  Those who prohibit the mixing of the genders actually live it in their real lives, which is an objectionable contradiction,” he said. “In many Muslim houses – even those of Muslims who say mixing is haram [forbidden]– you can find female servants working around unrelated males.”

  Religious and political intrigue ensued:

  Sheikh Al Ghamdi’s comments caused a flood of criticism from hardline Saudi religious figures, some of whom have appeared on Saudi television accusing the sheikh of threatening the place of the religious police in the kingdom.

  Then on Tuesday, unconfirmed rumors that Al Ghamdi has also been fired were all over the Saudi press.

  “Everyone is shocked,” Eman Al Nafjan, an influential Saudi blogger, told The Media Line. “Nobody knows what’s going on.”

  “The way Sheikh Ghamdi phrased his comments it was interpreted as him speaking on behalf of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice,” she said. “That’s probably what got the religious police to work behind the scenes to get him dismissed, but apparently it wasn’t the king who dismissed him so maybe he will intervene.”

   
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  johnpi 10:31 am on November 3, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Muslim women (80), Muttawa, saudi arabia (135), women in Islam (22)

  Saudi Arabia is serious about training a cadre of female firefighters.

  A new batch of Saudi female firefighters graduated from a civil protection course on Monday, bringing the total number of Saudi women trained in fire suppression to over 500.
  ….

  Training women in firefighting is new to the kingdom.

  Wajeha Al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women’s rights activist, said the trend was a change from previous attempts to keep women out of the public eye.

  “It’s great,” she told The Media Line. “Don’t forget that women in this society are treated as irresponsible people. They always have to have a man to do things for them, so many thought this was only a show. Very few welcomed the idea.”

  Response inside Saudi Arabia continues to be mixed.

  Several people commented on their uniforms, with some complaining that they were not Islamic. One reader wrote that such courses should be obligatory in all universities and colleges, while another said that calling these graduates firefighters was “an insult to real male firemen.”

  The story does not say it, but there is no doubt the genesis of the program was the 2002 fire at a Mecca girls school where 14 died and 50 were injured when Muttawa forced the students back into the burning building because they were improperly covered. They also wouldn’t allow firefighters to physically assist the girls for fear of sexual enticement.

   
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  johnpi 9:13 pm on October 5, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Hegemony of human rights discourse (32), Hegemony of human rights discourse watch (29), human rights (381), Muttawa, saudi arabia (135)

  Saudi human rights activists denounce creation of a ‘human rights’ division among the vice police (muttawa).

  Wajiha Al-Huweidar, a Saudi human-rights activist, said the move was nothing short of hypocritical. “Since when is interfering in people’s private lives part of the human-rights agenda?” she asked The Media Line rhetorically. “It reflects what they do. They harass people all year long and during holidays they give away candy to people.”

  “The religious police know very well that most Saudis want to see them disappear from streets and public places, because they only represent aggressiveness and oppression,” Al-Huweidar said. “I think the Saudi government has realized that its reputation is damaged worldwide and its image is ruined among Saudis, so now they are trying to beautify this repressive institution by using a new slogan… The religious police have to understand their time is over and they have to go.”

   
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  johnpi 9:56 pm on June 14, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Extremism (167), Muttawa, saudi arabia (135)

  The image of shop clerks fleeing the malls stick with me – Staff writer for Relativity Online Eman Al Nafjan finds the shiny, happy face of the Saudi “ultra-conservative interpretation of Arab traditions and Islam” and takes you inside the great decorative abaya crackdown of Riyadh 2009:

  (More …)

   
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  johnpi 3:31 pm on May 19, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: africa (30), African Muslims (2), Africans (2), bangladesh (42), bloggers (59), freedom of speech (71), Iblis (2), journalism (44), magic (2), Malaysia (99), Muttawa, racism (201), saudi arabia (135), sexual harassment (8), sorcery (3), sorcery in the Muslim world (2), witchcraft (2), witchcraft in the Muslim world (2)

  This comment gave me pause:

  Committee officials arrested more than 2,000 sorcerers in different parts of the kingdom, mostly from African countries.

  I would infer from this that Africans traveling in Saudi Arabia are more likely to be harassed and accused by the muttawa, which seems completely arbitrary and racist, if you look at the prevalence of sorcery in other predominantly Muslim nations.

  (More …)

   
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  johnpi 2:04 pm on May 18, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: journalists (17), media (408), Muslim dissidents (2), Muttawa, Satanists (2), saudi arabia (135)

  From Satanists desecrating Islam’s holy book to journalists who publically criticize them, Saudi Arabia’s religious police flexed their muscles on Sunday and cracked down hard with a sweep of arrests and lawsuits.

   
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  johnpi 5:19 pm on April 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Muttawa, religious police (3), saudi arabia (135)

  Saudi Arabia’s religious police have been forced to issue a rare apology after a member of one of the country’s most influential tribes said he was beaten by police for allegedly kissing his wife in public. A spokesman for the religious police then accused Mohammed al Qahtani of the Qahtan tribe of lying, which prompted even more outrage. Damaging the reputation of a tribal member in Saudi is considered an insult to the entire tribe, and releasing personal information of those involved in the arrest is something rarely done by the religious police.

  Mohammed al Zulfah, a former member of the Shoura Council, said the police would face more pressure from tribes and other members of society if they continued to make humiliating arrests. “The religious police must protect itself from society,” Mr al Zulfah said. He said the religious police think they are above the law, and that without any avenue through which to press charges, society had no option but to resort to tribal pressure.