Anti-Witchcraft Squad Versus Twitter

Saudi Arabia's anti-witchcraft squad, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, is back in the news declaring war on Twitter. The religious police have announced a crackdown on the popular social media site, targeting accounts that "promote sorcery and witchcraft." And as I just added Augoeides to Twitter in January, I suppose that includes bloggers like me, so I won't be visiting Saudi Arabia any time soon. Not that I had any such plans.

Saudi Arabia’s feared religious police authority has decided to launch a war against what it described as vice and sorcery accounts on Twitter inside the conservative Gulf kingdom, saying it aims to destroy all those accounts.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said it had formed special teams to track those accounts and arrest those who are behind them.

Quoted by the Saudi news network Al Arabiya, the Commission’s spokesman Ahmed Al Jardan said its members are watching those accounts which “are spreading vice and witchcraft” through the country’s society.

“We will track down all those who are behind these accounts whether they are men or women…we are determined to eliminate these accounts before they become widespread and out of control,” he said.

Twitter played an important role in organizing the "Arab Spring" revolutions in the Middle East, a bullet that Saudi Arabia has so far managed to dodge. The religious authority's motive here is clearly political, and I imagine that to them "sorcery and witchcraft" will look a lot like political activism. After all, it's pretty unclear how tweets about magical practices could "become widespread and out of control." Political protests, on the other hand, can topple governments if they become large enough. Witchcraft is just a convenient excuse for hunting enemies, as it has been for centuries.

Anti-Witchcraft Squad Still Going Strong

Maybe it was all just a publicity stunt after all. Back in October I covered the Saudi Arabian government's efforts to rein in the so-called Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, known to readers of this blog as the anti-witchcraft squad. At the time, it sounded like the government was serious about cracking down on abuses or at least trying to mitigate the bad press surrounding several high-profile executions on the charges of witchcraft and sorcery.

Unfortunately, as The Atlantic reports, the anti-witchcraft squad has kept up the persecution game despite the government's supposed reform of the unit. While there has been no news of executions since the October announcement, charges are still being levied and those convicted can face lashings and long prison terms.

The campaign of persecution has shown no signs of fizzling. In May, two Asian maids were sentenced to 1,000 lashings and 10 years in prison after their bosses claimed that they had suffered from their magic. Just a few weeks ago, Saudi newspapers began running the image of an Indonesian maid being pursued on accusations that she produced a spell that made her male boss's family subject to fainting and epileptic fits. "I swear that we do not want to hurt her but to stop her evil acts against us and others," the man told the news site Emirates 24/7.

According to Adam Coogle, a Jordan-based Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch who monitors Saudi Arabia, the relentless witch hunts reveal the hollowness of the country's long-standing promises about liberalizing its justice system.

How Far They've Fallen

Remember Saudi Arabia's deadly anti-witchcraft squad, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices? After being responsible for a series of brutal executions of accused magical practitioners, the Saudi government reined in the organization last October. They likely did so because the religiously motivated prosecutions looked a little too much like classic witch hunts and they were getting a lot of bad publicity. That's a good thing for any Saudi in danger of being targeted, but at the same time this is just pathetic.

At least three men attending an annual culture festival in Saudi Arabia were kicked out of the country after religious police officers deemed them "too handsome" to stay. The men, delegates from the United Arab Emirates, were minding their own business at the Jenadrivah Heritage & Cultural Festival in Riyadh when members of the mutaween suddenly "stormed" the pavilion and removed the men by force.

"A festival official said the three Emiratis were taken out on the grounds they are too handsome and that the Commission [for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices] members feared female visitors could fall for them," the Arabic-language newspaper Elaph reported this week. The Emirati delegates were subsequently deported back to their home country.

I mean, seriously? This is a group that used to inspire fear by beheading suspected witches, and now they're busy chasing good-looking people out of the country instead. That's like a former President of the United States speaking at a shopping mall opening. Apparently, instead of the formerly dreaded anti-witchcraft squad the Commission for the for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices is now little more than the eminently mockable sex appeal police. I suppose that means they can still chase after witches, but only if they happen to be attractive ones.

Saudis to Rein In Religious Police

For awhile now I've been covering the sometimes deadly antics of Saudi Arabia's anti-witchcraft squad, the so-called Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. At first some of the stories were amusing, but they rapidly devolved into classic witch persecutions similar to those going on in parts of Africa and Asia. In Saudi Arabia they were all the more terrifying because they carried the government's stamp of approval. It seems, though, that even the Saudis are becoming fed up with this out-of-control organization. The committee's new chief has pledged to limit some of the civil liberties abuses for which the group is well-known around the world.

“The new system will set a mechanism for the field work of the committee’s men which hands over some of their specialisations to other state bodies, such as arrests and interrogations,” Al-Hayat daily quoted religious police chief Sheikh Abdullatiff Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh as saying. Agents of the body known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice will also be banned from carrying out “searches without prior approval from the governor,” he said.

Okaz daily also reported that the religious police agents will be prohibited from “standing at the entrances of shopping malls to prevent the entry of any person,” referring to attempts by agents to ban women who do not comply with the Islamic dress code and unmarried couples from entering malls. Relatively moderate Sheikh, appointed in January as the new chief of the religious police, has raised hopes that a more lenient force will ease draconian social constraints in the Islamic country.

While the article makes no mention of witchcraft prosecutions, I'm hoping that these new policies also mean that people will be freer to practice alternative religious beliefs without fear of arrest and possible execution. Saudi Arabia so far has a pretty dismal record in that department. I would certainly expect that the limitations on searches and so forth will make such cases more difficult to pursue, and hopefully that means we'll be seeing a lot fewer of them. Of course, even one instance of religious persecution is still one too many, and in that regard the anti-witchcraft squad has a long way to go.

Ghost Hunting in Saudi Arabia

In part due to the success of the "Ghost Hunters" television franchise, paranormal investigation of haunted sites has become popular here in the United States and in Europe. These investigations are not just limited to Western nations, either - ghost hunting goes on all around the world, as this story out of Saudi Arabia demonstrates. The Saudis just have a rather different take on how to go about it. Last week a group of Saudi teenagers broke into an abandoned and reputedly haunted former hospital and essentially trashed the place under the guise of hunting ghosts - literally.

"Teenagers sent text messages calling for an operation against some of the jinn who live in the hospital, and they broke into the hospital and smashed its facilities and burned 60 percent of it," Okaz newspaper reported last week. The rampage prompted angry press complaints the authorities were allowing the building to fall into disrepair.

Several films have since been posted on YouTube showing grinning young men exploring the building's deserted rooms in search of evidence of spectral activity. One showed blazing palm trees that had been torched by the ghost hunters. Jinn fever reached the point where the Health Ministry issued a terse statement on Monday disclaiming responsibility for the decaying building, which it said was privately owned and too decrepit to be revived as a working hospital.

A columnist in the English-language Saudi Gazette daily on Tuesday recommended that authorities form "a committee for the jinn" to help the owners of possessed houses.

I suppose that fits right in with the mandate of the Anti-Witchcraft Squad, and it would give the group something else to do besides arranging executions for accused magicians. On the other hand, given the squad's history I can only imagine that they would find a way to twist even ghost hunting into something very very wrong. I would hate to see anyone winding up charged with witchcraft and killed, for example, just because they reported some weird paranormal activity in their home.

Anti-Witchcraft Squad Proves Deadly Again

Back in September I covered the story of a Sudanese man who was executed in Saudi Arabia after being convicted of practicing sorcery. The man's arrest and conviction were due to the efforts of Saudi Arabia's "anti-witchcraft squad" known as the Mutawa'een. Now this oppressive organization has proved deadly once more, with the execution earlier this month of a woman arrested in 2009 on similar charges.

The London-based newspaper, al-Hayat, quoted a member of the religious police as saying that she was in her 60s and had tricked people into giving her money, claiming that she could cure their illnesses. Our correspondent said she was arrested in April 2009.

But the human rights group Amnesty International, which has campaigned for Saudis previously sentenced to death on sorcery charges, said it had never heard of her case until now, he adds.

A Sudanese man was executed in September on similar charges, despite calls led by Amnesty for his release. In 2007, an Egyptian national was beheaded for allegedly casting spells to try to separate a married couple.

What continues to strike me as both tragic and ridiculous about cases like these is that even if these executed individuals were frauds, elevating their actions to capital offenses is practically the definition of "cruel and unusual punishment" that the Founding Fathers sought to ban in the United States Bill of Rights all the way back in 1789. Despite worldwide outrage from organizations like Amnesty International the Saudi anti-witchcraft squad shows no signs of easing up their investigations, which is bad news for anyone seeking to practice esoteric spirituality within their jurisdiction.

Anti-Witchcraft Squad Proves Deadly

When I last wrote about Saudi Arabia's anti-witchcraft squad my tone was mostly humorous, suggesting that the organization could be the basis for a television pilot featuring mismatched buddy cops who happened to be in the business of hunting down sorcerers and breaking spells. At the end of the article, though, I noted that since "witchcraft" is a capital offense in Saudi Arabia part of the squad's job is to round up people who could be killed simply for practicing their spiritual beliefs. Last week this is precisely what happened, as a Sudanese man convicted of practicing sorcery in 2007 was executed despite protests from Amnesty International.

A Sudanese man convicted of sorcery was beheaded by sword on Sept. 20, in Medina, Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Gazette says the Interior Ministry issued a statement saying the African had “’Practiced witchcraft and sorcery,’ which are illegal under Shariah law.”

Abdul Hamid bin Hussein Mostafa al-Fakki, a migrant worker from Sudan, was arrested in 2005 in Medina on charges of witchcraft, by the Mutawa’een, the religious police known as the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. His trial was held in secret in 2007 and according to Bikyamasr al-Fakki was found guilty of “Producing a spell designed to lead to the reconciliation of his client’s divorced parents.”

It doesn't surprise me at all that al-Fakki was a migrant worker from Africa and therefore had little status in Saudi Arabian society, since for centuries witchcraft persecutions have usually fallen upon those with few resources to fight back against the authorities. I'm also very glad that I live in the United States, because if I lived in a country like Saudia Arabia I could probably be charged and maybe even executed just for writing blog entries discussing my ongoing magical work.

For the sake of religious freedom I hope that attitudes in Saudi Arabia surrounding alternative spiritual beliefs change, but I can't say that I'm holding my breath. After all, this is a country where a woman driving a car is considered a serious criminal offense. In light of that, what chance do magicians really have any time soon?

"The Jaws of the Wolf"

Somebody should turn this story into a new television pilot.

When witchcraft strikes, never fear. The Anti-Witchcraft Squad of Saudi Arabia is on the case! Bonus points for centering the show around an older traditional Muslim agent paired up with a hip, impulsive youngster that he can't stand but who nevertheless manages to save the day over and over again. Because of all cop shows ever. Here's the pitch:

When the severed head of a wolf wrapped in women's lingerie turned up near the city of Tabouk in northern Saudi Arabia this week, authorities knew they had another case of witchcraft on their hands, a capital offence in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.

Agents of the country’s Anti-Witchcraft Unit were quickly dispatched and set about trying to break the spell that used the beast’s head.

Wow, that sounds like a tough case. Hard to film, too, since I'm not sure you can even show women's lingerie on TV in Saudi Arabia. A severed wolf's head, on the other hand, is no problem. As an aside, what's with all the spells involving dead things lately, like weasels and goats? Could this be the start of some sort of pattern?

In the case of the wolf's head, the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in Tabouk was able to break the spell. The Saudi daily Okaz reported on Monday that the unknown family that had fallen victim to the spell had been "liberated from the jaws of the wolf.”

Whew! That's a relief. Clearly the magick of the Anti-Witchcraft Squad is mighty! But that raises a question - doesn't Islam ban magick? So where is the squad finding its sorcerers? Given the legal climate in Saudi Arabia I can't blame anyone for wanting to keep a low profile, but if counter-spells are being set in motion somebody must be casting them.

All joking aside, the disturbing part of this story is that a modern government has set up an agency specifically charged with persecuting magicians. Odds are a lot of the folks the squad rounds up won't be guilty of anything but having unusual spiritual beliefs, and since "witchcraft" is a capital crime in Saudi Arabia those beliefs could get them killed.