Mick Hartley

I may have been critical in the past of the Saudi Religious Police, but the work of their anti-magic section remains second to none:

Saudi Arabia’s religious police saved a family that had suffered from psychological and health problems because of a magic spell cast by their housemaid before departing from the Gulf Kingdom.

In a report from the capital Riyadh, a newspaper said the family plunged into endless problems just after the departure of their Asian maid. But its members restored normal life once the spell was found and neutralized by experts.

The spell was wrapped in a small old piece of paper carrying unreadable language and hidden inside a deserted bathroom adjoining their house,  the Arabic language daily Sabq said.

“When the spell was found, the family realized that it was he cause of all their sudden troubles,” the paper said.

It quoted relatives as saying the spell had prompted the wife of the elder son to abandon him and live with her parents while the mother started to suffer from trances and nightmares. Another son suddenly had mental problems.

The paper said the family took the spell to the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which has an anti-magic section.

“There, the Commission experts dismantled the spell and destroyed all its contents, using Koran verses…once they did so, the mother fell unconscious and when she woke up later, she felt much better…the son who had mental problems said he does not remember he had any,” the paper said.

“The family then took the elder son to his wife’s parents and asked for her return….the family was surprised that the wife and her parents welcomed the idea and she did return to her husband.”

Via the "Related articles" column, on the right there, you can read about further successful cases from the files of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice's anti-magic section. All of them, bizarrely, involve maids.

Which suggests – without getting all Freudian about it – that Saudis might possibly have deep unresolved issues concerning their relationships with their domestic servants.