Daily Times

An appeals court in Makkah, Saudi Arabia has upheld a sentence of one month in prison and fifty lashes for a woman found guilty of cursing the morality police and calling them liars. As absurd as it sounds, the utterly incommensurate nature of the punishment for the ‘crime’ makes one wonder whether this is a joke or a tragedy. The incident has left sane people wondering to what extent Saudi Arabia’s puritanical efforts can go to exert its Wahhabi ideology through state actors like the morality police. Apparently, a morality police patrol had entered the woman’s café to check if there were any moral violations going on and got into an argument with the owner, a businesswoman, who during the conversation called them liars. Since its inception in 1926with the advent of the rule of the Saud family, the morality police, formally known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, has a controversial and acrimonious history when it comes to its conduct towards Saudi citizens. The notoriety of this police’s abuse of citizens’ rights is common knowledge. Such instances of repeated abuse led to the former police chief’s dismissal when footage went viral showing a morality police patrol nagging people in shopping malls. Islam does not allow such abusive behaviour towards citizens nor draconian punishments over a minor dispute. But the Saudis have their own version of Sharia.
As if banning women from driving wasn’t enough embarrassment for Saudi Arabia in the world’s eyes, the country has now painted itself in even darker hues with such irrational punitive measures, especially against women. It hardly needs reminding that Saudi Arabia is amongst the few countries that have yet to endorse the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A state so heavily invested in oppressing its women through irrational laws and for minute transgressions brings no credit to Saudi Arabia, particularly in the twenty first century. After hearing this news Pakistani women probably now have more to celebrate after the Saudi authorities banned Saudi men from marrying South Asian women recently. In today’s global village, the kind of religiously conservative and dogmatic society the Saudi rulers are still stuck to can only isolate them further. It is a dynamic world we all live in and to halt the inevitable march of progress is not going to help them. If they persist on following their irrational path, arguably the future of Saudi society seems bleak, the state’s remaining oil wealth notwithstanding. *