海角大神

With youth pounding at kingdom's gates, Saudi Arabia begins religious police reform

Saudi Arabia's religious police force is infamous for patrolling streets and shopping malls to enforce Islamic conduct. With an eye to restless youth, the kingdom's aging king has ordered reform. 

You may have heard about the case last month of three young men from the United Arab Emirates deported from Saudi Arabia for being 鈥渢oo handsome.鈥�

The kingdom鈥檚 religious police, the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, made that call.

Known to most Saudis simply as the聽贬补颈鈥檃, or 鈥渢he commission鈥�, its employees, called 鈥�贬补颈鈥檃 men,鈥� patrol Saudi streets, shopping malls, and other public spaces in their short white聽robes,聽untrimmed beards, and traditional Saudi headdresses to ensure that businesses close five times a day during prayer time, that women do not drive or mingle with unrelated men, and to enforce a host of other religious edicts that characterize Saudi Arabia鈥檚 Wahhabi Islam.聽

As 89-year-old Saudi King Abdullah celebrates his eighth year on the throne (according to the Islamic calendar), one of his most challenging tasks is to reform and modernize the 贬补颈鈥檃.

Like other countries in the region, Saudi Arabia鈥檚 bulging youth population is pounding at the gates, concerned about jobs, education, and housing. Two-thirds of the kingdom鈥檚 subjects are under 29, and they are more willing to challenge authority聽than the generations before them.聽In recent years, there have been an increasing number of confrontations between 贬补颈鈥檃 men and Saudi youth. A number of physical assaults and fatalities attributed to 贬补颈鈥檃 men, widely publicized on Twitter and Facebook, have inflamed public opinion.

Shortly after Arab Spring revolutions overthrew several neighboring governments, King Abdullah decided that, along with a $130 billion stimulus package, he would appoint a new head to reform the 贬补颈鈥檃 and improve its public image.聽

He chose Sheikh Abdul Latif bin Abdel Aziz Al al-Sheikh, a direct descendant of the 18th聽century theologian who founded Wahhabi Islam and established its alliance with the House of Saud.聽

Refocusing

Sheikh Abdul Latif was an unusual choice.聽Though other members of the Al al-Sheikh family occupy many of the kingdom鈥檚 top religious posts, he is considered to be a liberal. He has been active in聽the聽campaign to end child marriages. His wife works in the health ministry, his sister is dean of the women's section at Riyadh鈥檚 King Saud University and his daughter goes to university, unusual roles for female Wahhabi aristocrats.聽

Relative Sheikh Abdel Aziz ibn Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, the kingdom鈥檚 grand mufti and highest religious authority, is more typical. He has stated that girls are ready to marry by age 10, and that all churches on the Arabian peninsula should be destroyed.

Sheikh Abdul Latif holds the rank of cabinet minister and reports directly to the king. His agency employs more than 4,000 鈥渇ield officers鈥� and is said to have another 10,000 administrative personnel. His 2013 budget is $390 million, an increase of $35 million from 2012.聽The task of bringing change to the police force is likely to be formidable:聽His聽reform-minded predecessor lasted less than three years.聽

Since taking office, Sheikh Abdul Latif has identified five areas the聽religious police聽should focus on: preserving Islam, preventing blackmail, combating sorcery, fighting human trafficking, and ensuring that no one disobeys the country鈥檚 rulers.

One of his first moves was to announce that community volunteers could no longer join 贬补颈鈥檃 men on their rounds. Volunteers used to join Hai'a officials as they pursued, chastised, and interrogated miscreants, considering it a religious duty.聽

He has also encouraged his聽stern and sometimes menacing field officers to 鈥渁pproach people with a smile.鈥� 贬补颈鈥檃 men may no longer use their private e-mails, cellphones, or social media accounts to receive and act on anonymous tips.聽 He also created a 鈥淗uman Rights Division鈥澛爓ithin the police force聽to respond to complaints, with a link on the 贬补颈鈥檃 website to an online incident form. The link does not appear to work.

He affirmed that one of the聽police force's聽most important functions remains rooting out sorcerers. A white phone on the 贬补颈鈥檃 homepage聽links to 41 hotlines dedicated to reporting black magic. Saudis are serious about this, as numerous beheadings prove.

The website lists dozens of tip lines in each province, has online forms for the public to report un-Islamic behavior, and uses Facebook. It also used Twitter until last week, when Sheikh Abdul Latif聽declared聽that anyone using Twitter 鈥渉as lost this world and the afterlife,鈥� the latest in a series of attacks by Saudi government officials on the social networking site. 贬补颈鈥檃 webmasters are still removing Twitter鈥檚 blue bird logo from the website.

Entrenched support

Despite these initiatives, it鈥檚 not clear that Sheikh Abdul Latif controls his notoriously recalcitrant agency. Last spring he banned 贬补颈鈥檃 men from conducting high-speed car chases in pursuit of violators, long a sore point with the Saudi public. But several months later, 贬补颈鈥檃 men caused the death of a young father and badly injured his wife and children doing just that.

One problem is the 贬补颈鈥檃 does not have a聽procedural聽manual. In fact, Saudi Arabia has no written penal code. Saudi judges interpret broad principles of Islamic law as they see fit.聽

The 贬补颈鈥檃 acts similarly, but goes a step further. 贬补颈鈥檃 men often invoke the Islamic legal concept of聽sadd al-dhara鈥檌, 鈥渂locking the means to evil.鈥澛� According to this novel view, not only can 贬补颈鈥檃 men intervene to stop un-Islamic behavior, they can stop acceptable behavior that might lead to un-Islamic behavior. Hence, men can be 鈥渢oo handsome.鈥�

An incident last year illustrates the pushback 贬补颈鈥檃 men now get from Saudi youth. 贬补颈鈥檃 men told a young woman to leave a Riyadh mall because she was wearing nail polish. She聽scolded them, and uploaded a video of the incident to YouTube that garnered almost 3 million views.

But judging from the thousands of 鈥渓ikes鈥� and dislikes鈥� on the video, public sentiment ran more than 3-to-1 against her. Many Saudis thought she was at fault.

Author and former freelancer for the Monitor Caryle Murphy, who published a book earlier thia year on Saudi youth, was surprised at how many young Saudis she met 鈥� even those educated in th West 鈥� who defended the Hai'a's mission.

"If it's gone, that means the country is Westernized, so we should keep it," one Saudi studying in the US told her. "But they should be nice to people."

The Saudi king showers the 贬补颈鈥檃 with resources while seeking to rein it in. He is expanding the 贬补颈鈥檃鈥檚 staff, building expensive new 鈥済uidance centers,鈥� and purchasing fleets of new GMC SUVs for the 贬补颈鈥檃 men. But in January, the Saudi cabinet ruled that 聽贬补颈鈥檃 men may no longer interrogate suspects or determine the charges against them. They may still arrest people, though, for offenses like practicing witchcraft and consuming alcohol, and they continue to enforce the ban public entertainment, women driving, and other religious rulings.聽

If women are ever permitted to drive in Saudi Arabia, an avalanche of new religious rulings for the 贬补颈鈥檃 聽to enforce will almost certainly accompany the move. Already, King Abdullah鈥檚 2012 decision to allow women to work in retail shops has increased the 贬补颈鈥檃鈥檚 workload. New regulations require all women working in stores to wear the聽niqab, or face veil, and shops must erect a 5.25 foot partition separating male and female employees.

Partly to address all these new demands, Sheikh Abdul Latif has announced that for the first time in its history, the 贬补颈鈥檃 will begin recruiting women 鈥� a move that is sure to be interesting in an agency devoted to gender segregation.聽

*Louise Lief, the former deputy director of the International Reporting Project, is a writer in Washington.