Islamic religious police

The Islamic religious police (Arabic: مطوع‎ muṭawwiʿ, plural مطوعون muṭawwiʿūn – derived from classical Arabic: mutaṭawwiʿa/muṭṭawwiʿa)^[1] is the official police of some Islamic states, who on behalf of the state, disperses sharia-rules in respect to religious behavior (morality),^[2][3] or the precepts of Wahhabism.^[3] The establishment of a religious police is considered justified with the Quran doctrine, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong or promotion of virtue and prevention of vice.^[2][3] Some controversy, though, exists and opinions are divided on the function or purpose of religious police,^[2][3] for example, in Saudi Arabia some see them as limiting secularization, while some foreign Islamic imams, see them as an outdated over-conservative annoyance.^[3]

Names

The word mutaween (المطوعين muṭawwiʿīn; variant English spellings: mutawwain, ''muttawa", mutawallees, mutawa’ah, mutawi’, mutawwa') most literally means "volunteers" in the Arabic language,^[4] and is commonly used as a casual term for the government-authorized or government-recognized religious police (or clerical police) of Saudi Arabia. It was originally a casual synonym for the religious police of Saudi Arabia. The formal short term for the Saudi religious police is هيئة "hay'ah".

More recently the term has gained use as an umbrella term outside the Arabic-speaking world to indicate religious-policing organizations with at least some government recognition or deference which enforce varied interpretations of Sharia law. The concept is thought to have originated from Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia.^[5] However, the use of religious police was prevalent during Taliban rule as a means to promote their fundamentalist interpretation of Deobandi Islam.

Activities by country

Saudi Arabia

Seal of the CPVPV

The Mutaween in Saudi Arabia are tasked with enforcing Sharia as defined by the government, specifically by the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV). The Mutaween of the CPVPV consists of "more than 3,500 officers in addition to thousands of volunteers...often accompanied by a police escort." They have the power to arrest unrelated males and females caught socializing, anyone engaged in homosexual behavior or prostitution; to enforce Islamic dress-codes, and store closures during the prayer time. They enforce Muslim dietary laws, prohibit the consumption or sale of alcoholic beverages and pork, and seize banned consumer products and media regarded as anti-Islamic (such as CDs/DVDs of various Western musical groups, television shows and film which has material contrary to Sharia law or Islam itself). Additionally, they actively prevent the practice or proselytizing of other religions within Saudi Arabia, where they are banned.^[6][7]

Among the things the Mutaween have been criticized or ridiculed for include, use of flogging to punish violators,^[8][9] banning Valentines Day gifts,^[10][11] arresting priests for saying Mass,^[12] and being staffed by "ex-convicts whose only job qualification was that they had memorized the Qur'an in order to reduce their sentences".^[13]

Perhaps the most serious and widely criticized incident attributed to them occurred on March 11, 2002, when they prevented schoolgirls from escaping a burning school in Mecca, because the girls were not wearing headscarves and abayas (black robes), and not accompanied by a male guardian. Fifteen girls died and fifty were injured as a result. Widespread public criticism followed, both internationally and within Saudi Arabia.^[14]

In June 2007 the Saudi Mutaween announced "the creation of a 'department of rules and regulations' to ensure the activities of commission members comply with the law, after coming under heavy pressure for the death of two people in its custody in less than two weeks".^[15]

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

Kabul, 2001, image obtained by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan showing a religious policing member responsible for promotion of virtue and prevention of vice dispersing sharia-rules to a woman for removing in public her burqa headpiece.

Taliban police in a pickup truck patrolling a street in Herat, in July 2001.

Afghanistan's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was first instituted by the 1992 Rabbani regime, and adopted by the Taliban when they took power in 1996.^[16] It was closed when the Taliban was ousted, but the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Afghanistan reinstated it in 2003.^[17] In 2006 the Karzai regime submitted draft legislation to create a new department, under the Ministry for Haj and Religious Affairs, devoted to the "Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice".^[16] Radio Free Europe quoted many Afghans who greeted news of the draft with alarm.

Other countries

Islamic religious police forces outside of Saudi Arabia include:

• Polisi Syariat Islam of Indonesia's territory of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam
• Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Gaza Strip)
• Kano State Hisbah Corps in Nigeria's Kano state
• From 1990-1999 there reportedly was a morality police in Sudan, or at least the capital Khartoum. They "insured that women were veiled, especially in government offices and universities".^[18]

ISIL

The militant group ISIL has employed the use of religious police in areas under its control, commonly known as the Hisbah.^[19]

See also

• Sharia patrols
• The Religious Policeman
• Hisbah
• Muhtasib
• Muṭawwaʿ

Further reading

• Cordesman, Anthony H. (2003). Saudi Arabia Enters the Twenty-first Century: The military and international security dimensions 1. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. pp. 294–296, 298. ISBN 978-0275980917. 

References and notes

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Religious police

• Sharia police block women's rally – BBC News
• Sharia police: who are they? – The Jakarta Post