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Unfolding Stories
Changing times for Saudi's once feared morality police
"Anything I should ban is now allowed, so I quit," Faisal, a former stick-wielding guardian of public morality in Saudi Arabia, said gloomily.
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A picture taken on January 19, 2018 shows Saudi women and men walking during the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival in Rumah, some 160 kilometres east of Riyadh. (AFP/Fayez Nureldine)
I
n deeply conservative Saudi Arabia the religious police once elicited terror, chasing men and women out of malls to pray and berating anyone seen mingling with the opposite sex.
But the stick-wielding guardians of public morality have watched gloomily as in recent years their country eased some social restrictions -- especially for women -- and grumble bitterly at the changing times.
"Anything I should ban is now allowed, so I quit," Faisal, a former officer, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect his identity, told AFP.
Saudi Arabia, home to the two holiest Muslim sites, has long been associated with a rigid branch of Islam known as Wahhabism.
The notorious morality police -- officially titled the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, but known simply as the mutawa -- were previously tasked with enforcing the observance of Islamic moral law.
That included overseeing any action considered immoral, from drug trafficking to bootleg smuggling -- alcohol remains illegal -- down to monitoring social behaviour including the strict segregation of the sexes.
But the force was sidelined in 2016, as the oil-rich Arab kingdom tried to shake off its austere and ultra-sexist image.
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