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June 12, 2006
Saudi Arabia: Muslim Police Arrest 70 Year Old "Adulteress"
We reported on the Saudi Religious Police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or mutawi, muttawa or mutawi'oon, whose powers were slightly reduced on May 23 by the Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef.
But the muttawa still enact their morality judgements, and though no longer allowed to detain individuals indefinitely for being "un-Islamic", they still have arrest powers.
Today, the Khaleej Times reports that a seventy year old Saudi woman was arrested, according to a report in a Saudi paper, Al-Hayat, on Saturday.
The woman had popped into a shop in Al Deira market in Riyadh on Tuesday, but as soon as she had gone into the store, the religious police descended in full force. The only other person in the shop was the male shop-keeper. The shutters of the shop were open, but she was suspected of planning bad deeds with the man, as she was in "unlawful seclusion" with a male.
The woman can barely walk, stated her nephew. The woman had mysteriously vanished on her shopping trip, and a search of hospitals and police stations proved fruitless. She was eventually discovered in a women's prison late on Tuesday.
The woman was later released.
Though the story is outrageous, even funny (though not for the poor woman), the activities of the muttawa are far from amusing.
On March 11 2002 at Mecca, a fire broke out at a girl's school dormitory. Several girls tried to escape the burning building, but were met my members of the muttawa. They found the girls were not dressed in appropriate attire, and beating the girls to send them back into the flames.
The muttawa also prevented fireman from approaching to deal with the conflagration. As a result of the actions by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, 15 girls died in a preventable tragedy.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 12, 2006 7:42 PM
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