Advice for the vice squad

NOT long ago even members of the royal family were cowed by Saudi Arabia’s religious police, formally known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. The mutaween, as they are called in Arabic, roamed the malls and streets, enforcing the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islamic law. Their zeal was matched only by their cruelty. Most notoriously, in 2002 15 schoolgirls died in Mecca after members of the mutaween allegedly prevented them from fleeing a burning building because they were not covered up.

Today the mutaween are a weakened force, partly thanks to social media. Saudis have taken to filming their excesses and posting the footage online. Anyone with a smartphone can watch these courageous guardians of virtue harassing women for wearing nail polish. This has provoked a backlash. In April the government declared that the mutaween could no longer stop, pursue or arrest people and ought to be “gentle and kind” in their conduct.

Still, as the government enacts painful economic reforms, it needs the support of the religious establishment. So many people feared that the curbing of the piety police would turn out to be merely symbolic. But six months on, the change is striking. The mutaween, thought to number several thousand, have disappeared from public spaces. In Riyadh, the capital, men express relief at not being hounded to attend mosques during prayer time. Women wear more colourful (and sometimes open) abayas, a mandatory robe-like overgarment. “Now when I leave my house, I don’t expect someone chasing me in his car. When I go to the shopping centre, they are not following me,” says Fawzia al-Bakr, an activist and writer. “They were out of their minds.”

Founded in 1940, the religious police were popular at first. (Many Saudis, after all, favour virtue and deplore vice.) In 1979, after Islamic extremists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca and denounced the royal family, the state doubled down, handing more power to conservative clerics and allowing the mutaween to grow more assertive. There were few repercussions when, for example, they reportedly chased two brothers off a bridge in 2013 for playing loud (though patriotic) music in their car on Saudi Arabia’s national day.

Now, instead of dishing out punishments on the spot, the mutaween must report violators of Islamic law to the police. The government is also trying to suppress vice among the vice-suppressors. Many mutaween were ex-convicts whose only qualification for the job was that they had memorised the Koran in order to reduce their sentences, wrote Lawrence Wright in his book, “The Looming Tower”. Now they must be “of good character and behaviour, known for their good reputation” and must not have served more than a year in prison. A stricter chain of command now has them answering directly to the king.

Liberals applaud the changes, but few Saudis believe the mutaween should be completely disbanded. Conservatives fear that morals will decline if less vigorously policed. In April a prominent cleric, Nasser al-Omar, said the mutaween should be given more power, “otherwise, this portends great danger.” Such as women flagrantly wearing nail polish, presumably.