Word: saudi
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Fueled by the al-Huraisi case and other allegations of abuse, an unprecedented backlash is stirring against Saudi Arabia's feared religious police, or mutaween - Saudi slang meaning "pious ones." After years of acting as if it were above the law, the commission, which was established in 1926, now faces the prospect of having its considerable powers curbed. Prosecutors launched a high-profile investigation into al-Huraisi's death, and Saudi media reports say they are preparing to put one commission member on trial for his killing...
...Faisal's defiant, one-woman stand is helping spur the unusual public debate about the mutaween's role and actions. Saudi newspapers and blog sites have been filled with reports and commentaries on the subject. A campaign using text messages sent to mobile phones is calling on a million Saudis to declare that "2007 is the year of liberation" from the mutaween. Apparently responding to the discontent, the Shura Council, a quasi-legislative body that advises the monarchy, recently rejected requests to give the commission a 20% pay raise for its members and funds to open additional offices around...
Some of the discontent has been unruly. Last year, according to Saudi Arabia's al-Watan newspaper, there were 21 recorded instances - including a number of shootings and stabbings - in which people attacked mutaween. Just four years ago, the government pressured al-Watan to fire its editor after it published articles criticizing the Wahhabi establishment and holding the mutaween accountable for alleged abuses. Nonetheless, others are speaking up, too, and the outcry is intensifying the pressure on King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud to act against the mutaween. A new nongovernmental organization, the National Society for Human Rights, issued...
...Saudis are convinced that such decrees will put an end to the commission's excesses, given the light slap on the wrist it has received for past breaches. The most scandalous case in recent years involved the deaths of 15 Saudi girls at a school in Mecca, Islam's holiest city, in 2002. Eyewitnesses said that when a fire broke out, mutaween refused to allow the girls to flee, or rescuers to go inside, on the grounds that the students were not wearing the required garments to preserve their modesty. The government, however, absolved the commission of blame...
...Saudi sources have told Time of numerous other instances of disturbingly routine abuse. One involved a female Shi'ite Muslim student at King Saud University in Riyadh who was allegedly badly beaten last year for being in the company of a Sunni Muslim boy. Because Wahhabi doctrine regards Shi'ites as infidels, they have frequent run-ins with the mutaween over their religious practices. Non-Wahhabi Sunnis also regularly run afoul of the mutaween, who - in accordance with Wahhabi doctrine - bar them from celebrating the Prophet Muhammad's birthday or performing certain rites during burials...