Mick Hartley

Concerned at its poor public image, the head of the Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice sets the record straight:

Western media is deliberately trying to malign the commission for unknown reasons, said the national head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in a wide ranging interview with Arab News.

“Or else, why should a respectable institution be denigrated because a few of its officials committed some judgmental errors?” said Ibrahim Al-Ghaith, the commission president.

Indeed, what possible reason could there be, except malice, for criticising an institution among whose triumphs are:

* preventing 15 schoolgirls leaving a burning building in Mecca because they weren’t wearing the correct Islamic dress. Men trying to help were warned that it was sinful to approach. The girls died in the blaze.

* imprisoning a man who drove a sick neighbour to hospital, for the crime of being in the presence of a woman who was not a relative.

* getting a professor sentenced to eight months in jail and 180 lashes for being in a state of khulwa — a state of seclusion — with an unrelated woman (a meeting which may well have been a set-up).

The commission chief also wondered why some sections of the media, particularly in the West, are hostile to the commission, which only aims to persuade people to adhere to their religion and prevent them from morally lapsing.

“Some people are quick to criticize the commission by betraying their ignorance about this noble institution. They are oblivious to the commission’s achievements. They purposefully highlight a few individual mistakes to portray the commission as an evil entity,” Al-Ghaith said.

He added that he disapproves of the term “religious police,” which is commonly used by the Western press to describe the commission. “The official name of the organization is the General Presidency of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice,” Al-Ghaith said.

In order to clarify its stance and defend itself against negative media coverage, the commission has set up a media and public relations department, said Al-Ghaith, adding that the media department has a chief official spokesman at its head office in Riyadh, and regional directors at its branch offices….

“Our goal is to preserve Islamic values, principles and customs. But, we also have to do everything possible to remove misunderstandings about the work we do,” the commission chief added.

Asked what steps the commission has taken to improve its employees’ conducts when dealing with suspects, Al-Ghaith said the commission has taken a lot of effort to guarantee that its members treat suspects and members of the public respectfully.

“The commission is keen to see that its officials are pious, knowledgeable, wise, moderate and gentle in all situations and, above all, never rude or violent,” he said…

There are situations, which we cannot condone, he added. For example, if a man and woman are caught in a situation that is clearly spelled out in the Holy Qur’an or Sunnah to be wrong, then the commission has no choice but to hand those involved to the police, he said

The latest effort by these “pious, knowledgeable, wise, moderate and gentle” individuals is the arrest of a Filipino nurse and her male colleague for the crime of dining together in a restaurant:

The Philippine Embassy is trying to gain access to a Filipino nurse who was arrested by members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice on Monday evening for being with a male colleague at a restaurant.

Commission members arrested Abigail Valdez, a nurse who works at the Riyadh Military Hospital, on charges of “immorality.” Valdez is being held at Al-Malaz Prison….

Mixing of sexes in public places is against Saudi law. Unrelated men and women caught dining at a restaurant would normally be sentenced to four months in jail and 100 lashes. The same punishment applies to a man and a woman caught in a state of seclusion (khulwa).

Valdez’s male colleague, who is of a Western nationality, was released several hours after being taken to a commission center and then to a police station. The man, who asked his name not be published, had his feet shackled when he resisted arrest.

“I am not going to play stupid here,” he told Arab News when asked about his knowledge of the Kingdom’s rules.

“Every country in the world allows access to a legal representative once arresting procedures take place. Here you can get arrested and thrown into jail without anyone knowing,” he said.

He added that with shackles on his feet the commission members forced him out of the restaurant by his belt and into a vehicle, without being shown any identity or an opportunity to contact a lawyer.

“At one point, I even told other Westerners in the restaurant whether they could believe what was happening to me as I was in shackles, but none of them cared to even me look me in the eye,” he added.

The man said he was separated from the Filipino nurse once they reached the commission’s center. “She sent me a text message from her phone saying she was being taken to Al-Malaz Prison and that she was freaking out. That was the last I heard from her,” he said.

Not to be outdone, Iranian police are planning a new crackdown on dress deemed to be insufficiently Islamic:

Iranian police will launch a crackdown next month on small companies which fail to enforce strict religious dress codes, Mehr News Agency reported on Wednesday.

The move indicates an expansion of a clampdown on “immoral” conduct launched last year against women flouting rules to cover their heads and disguise the shape of their bodies in public, in line with Iran’s Islamic system.

“In the first stage, police will only confront companies … that are active in small buildings or complexes,” the head of the moral security police, Ahmad Rouzbehani, was quoted as saying.

Mehr said the move was “to prevent social damage” and the hijab, or veil, “should be respected”. It said the campaign would start from around May 4.

Iran’s religious codes require women to cover their hair and wear long, loose clothing to disguise their bodies in public, including offices where they may work with male colleagues.

Police sometimes check offices to ensure the codes are upheld and can shut them down. Some coffee shops have been closed after police said workers or customers were not meeting standards.