Saudis slowly stop tolerating religious police

A delicate rapport
The Saudi government is reluctant to tamper with its religious establishments for fear of angering conservatives and weakening its credentials as custodian of Islam’s two holiest shrines. The conservative impulse has lately been illustrated by a request from 14 faculty members of King Saud University’s medical school to ban male students from treating women and vice versa, on the grounds that handling bodies of the other sex is un-Islamic.

But there are signs the commission is acting to limit the damage to the religious police’s reputation. It now has a spokesman and a legal department to guide its members.

Umm Faisal — her full name is withheld in reports on the case — says she, her 21-year-old daughter and her Indonesian maid went to pick up her two teenage sons from the amusement park in the family’s new Chevrolet Caprice.

“I kept asking the men, ‘Are you terrorists?’ They finally said they were members of the commission,” she said. “When I asked what they wanted, they called me names, including adulteress.”

Umm Faisal said the men drove so fast and badly that smoke came out of the car.

The men stopped the car, called their friends and asked them to pick them up. The women, who don’t know how to drive (and can’t anyway, under Saudi law), were left to the mercies of passers-by.

Accused of being 'indecently covered'
Umm Faisal headed to the police to lodge a complaint. “When questioned, the commission members claimed we were indecently covered,” because her daughter’s veil didn’t cover her eyes, she said.

In early 2004 she filed suit at Riyadh’s General Court, but says several judges pressed her to drop it and late last year the case was dismissed.

She then turned to the Grievances Court, which fined one official $540 for mistreating the women and acquitted the other.

Umm Faisal isn’t satisfied, and her appeal opens before the court on Monday.

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