MUTAWEEN

The 'Mutaween' ('') (variant English spellings: mutawwain, muttawa, mutawallees, mutawa’ah, mutawi’, mutawwa') are the government-authorized or -recognized 'religious police' (or clerical police or public order police) who enforce varied interpretations of Sharia Law within Islamist theocracies (in which the governments are either directly controlled by, or fall significantly under the influence of, Islamic clergy).

Contents

Etymology

Mutaween in Saudi Arabia

Other groups

See also

References and notes

External links

Etymology

"Mutawwa'în" (plural; sing. mutawwa') originally referred solely to Saudi Arabia's infrastructure of proselytization and enforcement of Wahhabist tenets; but the phonetic romanization "mutaween" has gained increasing use as an 'umbrella term' indicating any religious-policing organization in an Islamic nation with at least some government recognition or deference. This may range from official state bureaucracies to unabashed terrorist enforcers aligned to powerful local clerics (e.g., the Komité Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp and more militant Basij and Pasejis ^[1] all simultaneously exist in Iran).
Recently (2005), "mutaween" has appeared to describe the enforcement of Sharia by autonomous groups within Muslim enclaves located inside secular nations^[2][3], and has also entered the lexicon of blogosphere slang as a sarcastic pejorative describing politicized, non-Islamic religious groups.^[4]

Mutaween in Saudi Arabia

Main articles: Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice

The Mutaween in Saudi Arabia are tasked with enforcing Sharia as defined by the government, specifically by the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV). The Mutaween of the CPVPV is comprised of "more than 3,500 officers in addition to thousands of volunteers...often accompanied by a police escort." They have the power to arrest unrelated males and females caught socializing, any one engaged in homosexual behavior or prostitution; to enforce Islamic dress-codes, and store closures during the prayer time. They enforce Muslim dietary laws, prohibiting the consumption or sale of alcoholic beverages and pork, and seize banned consumer products and media regarded as un-Islamic (such as CDs/DVDs of various Western musical groups, television shows and film). Additionally, they actively prevent the practice or proselytizing of other religions within Saudi Arabia, where such a thing is banned.^[5][6]
Among the things the ''Mutaween'' have been criticized or ridiculed for include, use of flogging to punish violators, ^{[7][8][9][10]}
banning Valentines Day gifts,^[11][12]
arresting priests for saying Mass,^[13]
and being staffed by "ex-convicts whose only job qualification was that they had memorized the Quran in order to reduce their sentences."^[14]
Perhaps the most serious and widely criticized incident attributed to them occurred on March 11, 2002, when they prevented schoolgirls from escaping a burning school in Mecca, because the girls were not wearing headscarves and ''abayas'' (black robes). Fifteen girls died and 50 were injured as a result. Widespread public criticism followed, both internationally and within Saudi Arabia itself. [1]

Other groups

Religious police were very active and powerful in Afghanistan during the 1996-2001 reign of the Taliban, which also established a Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, Based at least in part on the Saudi mutaween, although commonly referred to as "munkrat" not "mutaween", the police enforcement of Sharia was one of the main activities of the Taliban regime and even stricter than that of the Saudi Mutaween.^[15]

See also

★ Apostasy

★ Dhimmi

★ Foreign worker

★ Politics of Saudi Arabia

★ The Religious Policeman

★ Sharia

★ Wahhabism

References and notes

1. Pasejis are "a volunteer religious watchdog group" reportedly "set up by Rafsanjani." Visit to Tabriz
2. Mutaween in Oakland
3. "wannabe mutaween"
4. Gov. Perry to Address his Mutaween
5. http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=5869
6. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2399885.stm
7. http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=reform&ID=IA15804]
8. http://www.corpun.com/webjcpnz.htm#saudi]
9. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE230572000?open&of=ENG-SAU]
10. http://www.indexonline.org/en/indexindex/articles/2005/1/saudi-arabia-flogging-used-to-silence-protes.shtml
11. Valentine's Day in Saudi Arabia by Stephen Schwartz & Irfan al-Alawi 03/05/2007, Volume 012, Issue 24
12. "200 Arrested in Mina for Celebrating Valentine's Day", ''Arab News,'' February 18, 2004
13. Catholic priest arrested and expelled from Riyadh, April 10, 2006, AsiaNews
14. Wright, Lawrence, ''Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,'' by Lawrence Wright, NY, Knopf, 2006, p.149
15. Rashid, Ahmed, ''Taliban'' (200), p.105-7

External links

★ "Saudi police 'stopped' fire rescue" BBC, March 15, 2002

★ The Saudi Media Debates Flogging by the Saudi Religious Police Middle East Media Research Institute, January 19, 2004

★ Saudis Arrest Christians For Spreading 'Poison' NY Sun, May 2, 2005

★ Inside Saudi Arabia

★ "Saudi minister rebukes religious police", BBC, November 4, 2002

★ Website of Saudi Mutaween

★ The Religious Policeman