Mutawas: Saudi Arabia's Dreaded Religious Police

By Joy Raphael

The mutawas, the dreaded religious police of Saudi Arabia, consider themselves the supreme guardians of public morality. They are keepers of their faith the way they see it. They have the backing of the Kingdom and they are watching you - everywhere, all the time.

And, they are ruthless with anybody who does not conform to their concept of what is right and wrong.

They will come for you if you drink. If you grow your hair long. If you are seen with a female who is not a blood relative. If you are a female and dont wear the abaya or expose your hair or face or legs. If you are a female and drive a car. If you worship your own God in the privacy of your home or carry any symbol at all of your faith. Or if you are a Muslim and miss even one of your ritual prayers.

They will target you if you are a Shia, Ahmadiya or a Sufi or even a liberal Sunni or, for that matter, a Muslim from any other Islamic sect different from theirs - for they believe they are the ultimate upholders of pristine Islam.

They are the bane of all expatriates in Saudi Arabia but you need to be doubly careful if you are a Hindu, a Sikh or a Christian. In which case, they will use every opportunity to coerce, cajole and bribe you to convert to their faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joy Raphael
• Release date: Feb 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9788188071746

Book preview

The Almighty

Mutawas. That word still turns me into ice. Many years after leaving Saudi Arabia, I still dread that word. Thousands of others, who have left Saudi Arabia, also shudder when they speak or even think of the mutawas. Day or night, the religious police hover around you as a monstrous reality, as an integral part of life. You see them everywhere: at street corners, in supermarkets and malls, outside schools and colleges.

I first heard of the mutawas within hours of my arrival at Riyadh’s majestic King Khaled International Airport, designed like a cluster of date palms.

Dusk was well on its way into the dark pits of the night by the time I picked up my baggage from the carousel after being cleared at passport control. An agonising wait at the customs followed. Outside, Mohammed Ashraf, an old friend from Mumbai days, was waiting. A senior editor at Riyadh Daily, he had recommended me for a job in the newspaper.

A blue Subaru jalopy, its paint peeling, waited in the dimly-lit parking lot. Dumping my baggage in the back seat, we piled into the car. After silently steering the car out of the parking area, he turned to me. This is the land of Wahabi Islam and Wahabis. Be careful about every step you take, every word you utter. All newcomers are told these things, he warned.

He began asking about common friends in Mumbai as the ancient Subaru sedan raced down the six-lane airport highway. The desert sprawled endlessly on either side, evoking images of a soggy dark blanket. No buildings could be seen. No houses. Just a vast nothingness ornamented the silvery stars above. The landscape seemed almost eerie.

Ashraf explained that Wahabism is popular in Saudi Arabia. And the mutawas – the religious police – are the principal contemporary enforcers of this brand of Islam, he said.

Green lanterns sprang up here and there in the sky as we reached the outskirts of the city. I was awestruck for a few moments. No, they weren’t the footprints of God in the dark heavens. They were just man-made mosque minarets bathed in deep green light.

I was curious to know more about the mutawas and Wahabi Islam. That night, as we chatted over tea in his apartment, Ashraf told me a lot more about them and their atrocities. I listened in horror.

Over the years, I heard many stories about their extremism, about how they live in a self-spun cocoon of intolerance and fundamentalism. Some stories seem stranger than fiction; almost unbelievable. But, my experience later showed, they were true.

An Australian and his family were the main players in one such story. On August 29, 1994, the Australian was strolling in a Riyadh souk, a traditional market, after dark with his wife and two children. A sudden gust of wind swept up the wife’s abaya, the black cloth enveloping her body, revealing her uncovered legs below the shin. The mutawas were watching. They approached the lady and threatened her. Her husband protested. The angry mutawas beat him up.

The Australian embassy lost no time in lodging a formal complaint with the foreign ministry. The ambassador met the Saudi chief of protocol. Later, Consul J N Elliot discussed the affair with the acting deputy governor of Riyadh, gave him a copy of the report of the incident and formally protested against the behaviour of the mutawas.

The acting deputy governor promised to look into the matter. But there was one big problem: the attackers would have to be identified. How could a foreigner not knowing Arabic identify a mutawa who suddenly emerges from the shadows, beats him up and then swiftly vanishes into the darkness of the night?

The mutawas are everywhere. They might even be waiting outside the door of your apartment with their ears pressed to a door or a window, checking out some sound they found suspicious. It’s difficult to believe such things, but these things do happen in Saudi Arabia. Murali, a press worker at the Riyadh Daily, discovered this truth about the mutawas a bit too late and suffered.

Tired after a hectic day’s work at the printing press, Murali returned to his ground-storey bachelor apartment. None of his five friends with whom he shared the place was around. After changing into a loose shirt and lungi, an Indian version of the sarong, he went to the kitchen to cook his dinner. Rice, a daal curry and fried fish were ready in an hour.

The meal over, Murali checked to see if the front door of the apartment was bolted. He then sat on the bed to watch a Malayalam – the language of the South Indian state of Kerala – video movie. The suspense thriller, with Mamooty in the lead, captured Murali’s full attention. The doorbell rang suddenly. Muttering curses, not bothering to switch off the video, he went to the door and opened it.

Two Saudis stood outside. Mutawas. Without waiting for an invitation, they stormed in. The fat dark mutawa ran to Murali’s room. His companion caught Murali’s penis and squeezed it. The stunned Murali took a few seconds to comprehend what was happening. They had heard the sound of the video and had been lurking outside the closed window of his room, trying to make out whether he was watching a blue movie. Unable to understand whether it was a normal or porn film, they had decided to check. The fat mutawa had rushed inside to check the TV screen. The other was simply checking if a porn film had aroused him.

Satisfied that Murali was not watching a dirty film, the fat mutawa asked if there were other video films in the room. A lie would not help as they might conduct a search. Yes, replied the petrified Murali.

The mutawas asked for them. Murali took out six cassettes from a bag under his bed. They viewed parts of each cassette one by one, keenly looking for the faintest trace of vulgarity. Nothing. They were all Malayalam feature films with Mamooty, Mohanlal or Suresh Gopi in the lead.

As they finished checking the cassettes, there was a knock on the windowpane. Murali did not respond. The knocking became louder. He was in a tizzy. The fat mutawa then whispered, Tell him to come inside.

Murali saw no way to warn the visitor to make a getaway. He knew who it was: his friend, Mohan. Nervously, he shouted, Come to the door.

The fat mutawa went to the door and unbolted it. A few seconds later, he returned to the room holding Mohan, carrying a videocassette, by the collar of his shirt.

The other mutawa grabbed the cassette and inserted it into the video player. Moments, anxious moments later, bright-coloured scenes appeared on the small screen. Two white men and two black women were moaning and howling in ecstasy.

There was a sound like a crack. Murali saw Mohan rubbing his right cheek where he had received a hard slap. The fat mutawa then shoved his knees hard into Mohan’s groin. Crying out in pain, Mohan cupped his hands protectively over his crotch. He then slumped to the floor in excruciating pain.

Mohan cried out for mercy time and again. Hunched on the floor, his attempts to ward off the blows and kicks with his arms proved in vain. Driven by untameable anger, the mutawas screamed curses as they kicked his face, his backside and every part of his body.

Mohan’s agony lasted nearly 10 minutes.

While leaving, the fat mutawa warned, We will be watching you. Next time you will be in kalabooz, handcuffs, and in jail for a long time.

Murali and Mohan have repeatedly thanked all the Hindu deities for not having been jailed, lashed and deported. And, since that day, the two haven’t even thought about watching a blue film in Saudi Arabia.

Such stories filled me with fear. I often prayed I would not be their prey some day. And I decided to find out more about the mutawas. What made them tick? Why was so little known about them to people living in other countries? What were their origins? What was their mandate? How did they operate?

The mutawas are guided by ultra-orthodox precepts, based on the core principles of one God, preached by Sheikh Mohammed Abdul Wahab, a zealot who held sway in the central parts of the Arabian desert in the middle of the 18th century. Abdul Wahab’s followers are called Wahabis. Though different from the rest of the Muslim world, the Wahabis are an integral part of Sunni Islam. Contemporary Saudi Arabia is officially dedicated to the preservation and propagation of the ‘pure Islam’ propounded by Abdul Wahab.

The House of Saud under Sheikh Mohammed bin Saud, the ruler of Diriya, now a suburb of Riyadh, was the first to take steps to encourage Abdul Wahab to spread his vision of Islam. And to strengthen his position in strife-torn Arabia, Sheikh Mohammed had his son marry Abdul Wahab’s daughter.

The marriage alliance between the House of Saud and Abdul Wahab has ensured that the Wahabi leadership is vested in the member of the House of Saud who becomes the king. And even today, the Saudi royal family leans heavily on Wahab’s descendants, who are its spiritual advisers. The Saudi government, in turn, denies any division between secular and spiritual authority, and claims there is no distinction between religious belief and temporal action.

The first true messengers of Wahabism were the Iqwan, meaning ‘The Brotherhood’. The Iqwan at first thrived in Artaviyah, a small village on the outskirts of Riyadh. In the early days of the 20th century, since around 1912, the Iqwan enforced Wahabi Islam at the point of the sword and drew the blood of thousands, on the orders of Abdulaziz – the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its first ruler – who appointed himself as the movement’s first leader.

Abdulaziz steadily paved the way for the Iqwan’s incursion into the Saudi way of life. He ordered all Bedouin tribes owing allegiance to him to join the Iqwan. He also demanded a declaration of loyalty: they had to accept him as their imam and swear to uphold Wahabi orthodoxy as ‘the true servants of God’. The members of the Iqwan proved to be diligent. Utterly fearless, their sole motto was annihilation of the ‘enemy’. They became veritable messengers of death from whose grasp no one ever escaped.

The Iqwan and Abdulaziz’s first target was Hussein bin Ali, the Turkey-appointed sheriff of Mecca who proclaimed himself the ‘King of the Arabs’. Abdulaziz, who fancied himself as the sole leader of the Arab world, could not tolerate this proclamation. Hussein then made another mistake. With British support, he sought a ban on the Iqwan during the Haj season, claiming they were a menace to the pilgrims. Abdulaziz lost no time in letting the Iqwan loose on Hussein. The consequent battles ended with the victory of these ‘soldiers of God’.

The fanatic Iqwan later proved to be a menace for Abdulaziz. He soon discovered that they were becoming a challenge to his power. The zealots began to simmer with discontentment over his veering off the true path of piety he was supposed to tread. They considered modern inventions introduced to Saudi Arabia as satanic. Their relationship began to deteriorate. Abdulaziz then had no other option but to turn to the British for help to hit hard and quell the Iqwan.

The successors of the Iqwan are today’s mutawas. The mutawas became an institution under Abdulaziz, taking upon themselves the onerous task of enforcing public morality. Though he tried to control them later, he failed. And today, the mutawas are everywhere in Saudi Arabia. In Riyadh and the central region of Gassim, they are extremely powerful.

The mutawas are controlled by the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which has its headquarters in the Murabba area of Riyadh. Expatriates have given several names to this department. Some Asians jokingly refer to it as ‘The Department for the Promotion of Vice and Prevention of Virtue.’ Another popular term is ‘Religious Gestapo’. The Americans call it ‘The Promotion’.

The chiefs of The Promotion have ministerial rank. Experts on Wahabi Islam, they control 3,500 mutawas. Many are full-time workers, usually from the lower strata of society, drawing a salary. The part-time mutawas do not draw a salary and have joined The Promotion out of religious zeal.

There are also over 600 administrative personnel, more than 100 security officials, around 100 messengers, nearly

Reviews for Mutawas

[sara · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book is very poorly written, it sounds something taken off the internet