The Religious Policeman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Religious Policeman is a weblog written by an anonymous blogger, who claims to be a Saudi Arabian man, writing under the pseudonym of Alhamedi Alanezi. The name of the site is a deliberate reference to the Saudi religious police (Muttawa or Mutaween), who are more officially known as the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

1 History
2 Common subjects
3 Biography
- 3.1 The identity question
4 See also
5 References

[edit] History

Alhamedi started blogging from Riyadh in March 2004, dedicating his efforts to the memory of, so he said, "the lives of 15 Makkah Schoolgirls, lost when their school burnt down on Monday, 11th March, 2002. The Religious Police would not allow them to leave the building, nor allow the Firemen to enter." He soon became known for his scathing satirical attacks on the Saudi government and the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect which governs all aspects of Saudi society.

In August 2004, Alhamedi announced that he would not be blogging for some time for reasons he did not wish to elaborate on, leading many readers to become concerned that he had been discovered by the Saudi authorities. After a year of silence he reappeared, claiming to have moved to London, UK, from where he continued to post regularly until announcing in June 2006 that he was retiring from blogging in order to write a book. Whilst there have been no further entries since then, it still remains a very active blog, attracting hundreds of visitors each day.

[edit] Common subjects

Most of Alhamedi's posts are highly critical of the Saudi ruling family, their policies and the strict imposition of fundamentalist Islamic morals on Saudi society by the Saudi religious police. The treatment of women and of guest workers in Saudi Arabia is also a regular target of criticism. He makes extensive use of satire and humour in his writing.

He generally regards the Saudi royal family as corrupt and incompetent, with a few exceptions, and the religious police and the country's religious leaders as backwards and repressive. While many posts are straightforward factual reporting and analysis, some take the form of imagined conversations between senior Saudi figures such as Prince Naif ibn Abdul Aziz, the Interior Minister, and King Abdullah.

Another common theme is what he sees as hypersensitivity by Muslim leaders to what they see as criticism or blasphemy from non-Muslim countries. During the controversy over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by a Danish newspaper in 2005, Alhamedi created the fictitious Muslim Offense Level, a satire of the color-coded threat level advisory system used by the US Department of Homeland Security, intended to keep Muslims informed of how offended they should be feeling on any particular day.

Alhamedi frequently ridicules the inherent racism and xenophobia which is fostered within some aspects of Saudi culture, as well as the official malevolence towards Israeli Jews in particular. For example, in this post he challenges the reader to differentiate between phrases taken from Mein Kampf and those found in current Saudi textbooks, which are believed to "promote an ideology of hatred toward people, including Muslims, who do not subscribe to the Wahhabi sect of Islam." In a typically satiric fashion, he writes:

"In Saudi Arabia, we don't feed our children alcohol. Instead, we feed them race hate. It's a progressive thing, building up layer by layer, using the material you see above. Thankfully, many forget it, just like we all forget algebra and bits of history. But there is a proportion for whom it sticks. They are our "alcoholics". And their hatred extends not only to Jews worldwide, but also the countries that are seen to support them - North America, Europe, Australasia. And a proportion of these decide to do something about it, and sign up with the terrorist groups. Eventually they might get caught, and repatriated. And we have our own "drying-out clinics". It's a program where we get people to talk them round, to see the error of their ways, to be rehabilitated. And unlike a drying-out clinic, we keep them in prison in between times, so you can imagine that the "success rate" is a lot higher."

While most of Alhamedi's posts are critical of the Saudi authorities, he does post positive articles when senior Saudi individuals or bodies take steps or enact policies which he regards as a step in the right direction.

[edit] Biography

Very little is known about Alhamedi, who guards his anonymity closely in order to avoid the attentions of the Saudi authorities. He claims to be a family man, that he was educated in the UK and the US, and that he is from a fairly prominent tribe in Saudi Arabia, but not one with significant links to the House of Saud.

Though his posts are written exclusively in the English language, Alhamedi has also demonstrated an excellent command of French in the comments section of his blog.

He is known to have a fondness for both camels and cats.

[edit] The identity question

Owing partially to his excellent English - and the ferocity of some of his attacks on the Saudi establishment, as well as his irreverent sense of humor, he has sometimes been accused of not being a Saudi at all, but a Westerner masquerading as a Saudi. He strongly denies these accusations. He also strongly denies being not a Muslim at all, or a heretic, an apostate or an interloper trying to bring Saudi Arabia and Wahhabi Islam into disrepute.

Some Saudi bloggers, as well as non-Saudi bloggers who are familiar with the Arabic language, have claimed that Alhamedi is ignorant of basic Arabic and Islamic terminology. Though this is in dispute since Alhamedi appears to have posted numerous times discussing Arabic writing [1], meanings of Arabic words and giving guidance to understanding and navigating certain Arabic websites [2]. He has also given, within his comment thread, an Arabic lesson regarding the use of "al" (the) in the Arabic language. Although this information can also be derived from information on the internet, it nevertheless requires the linguistic skill to be able to use it, and so this in itself does not disprove that he knows or can communicate in Arabic.

His detractors also claim that he has made mistakes while spelling an English transliteration of an Arabic word (although there can be sometimes be more than one transliteration of the same word), and has been noted on one occasion posting under the name of "Sol Rosenblum", in an apparent attempt to bring levity to an intense debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It should also be noted that posting under two (or more) different pseudonyms, with neither pseudonym being the author's real name, is a fairly common occurrence during a heated internet debate and does not lead to the conclusion that any one of the pseudonyms must therefore express the "true identity" of the writer. Neither would it automatically invalidate an author's claims regarding his or her actual identity.

His critics believe that these claims, coupled with their belief that his primary audience is either a) politically conservative (although Alhamedi himself could be described as a liberal, based on his own published opposition to the Iraq War and the American Guantanamo Bay detainment camp) or b) Arabs who support his ultra liberal pro-Western ideas, show that he is not a Saudi but an impersonator. Other bloggers, notably Bahraini blogger Mahmood Al-Yousif, have disagreed with this analysis. Some Saudi bloggers have shown their support for him by including a link in their blogrolls and by commenting occasionally on his blog, such as the anonymous "Aya" of Alien Memoirs and Saudiblogs.org. Ultimately, because of Alhamedi's strict anonymity there is no simple way to prove the argument either way.