Witch hunt in the making
The Authority for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice will set up special centres in each city to monitor and eliminate so-called sorcerers, held to be "blasphemous". According to the authorities, most magicians are either Indians or Africans.
Riyadh (AsiaNews/Agencies) Saudi Arabia's Authority for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is planning to establish special centres in all cities to "register complaints on sorcerers and charlatans, track them and terminate them," the authority's chief Sheikh Ibrahim bin Abdallah al-Ghaith told al-Madinah newspaper.
Islam forbids magic and practicing it is considered blasphemy. Local newspapers often report news about so-called sorcerers, mainly from the Indian subcontinent and Africa. The press said many Saudis paid these magicians large sums of money, hoping to "uncover hidden treasures or get jobs".
In Saudi Arabia, where Wahabite integralism is enforced, the religious police are very powerful; the notorious muttawa undertake to prevent the spread of drugs, alcohol and prostitution and to ensure that unmarried men and women do not meet in public. They also monitor the practice of other faiths, permitted only in private. The excessive "zeal" of the muttuwa often leads to summary arrests and torture in prison. Often the religious police imprison members of minority groups, Christians and Shiite Muslims, who are freed only after they sign a document abjuring their faith.
In recent years, society, formerly passive, started to become more critical of the religious police. In 2002, at least 14 student girls died in a fire after the religious police forbade some men, who were not relatives of the girls, from entering into the burning building to save them.
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