Virtue Commission Member Calls for Fairness From People

Yes folks, my favourite Ministry, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (perhaps better labelled the Commission for Lasciviousness and Licentiousness), has called for a fair go. Why has it done this? Well, here is a chronicle of some of the efforts of its members over the past couple of months.

• Shut down the Canadian stand at an education exhibition event because the Canadians were so vice-ridden by having actual women manning their stand
• Refused to attend a court hearing after two women (a mother and her daughter) took them to court for beating their driver and damaging their car
• broke into a man’s house (admittedly he had been drinking in this dry country and was allegedly a drug and alcohol dealer) and then subsequently beat him to death
• detained a man who then died of a heart attack, probably from the stress, for the crime of allowing a non-related woman to enter his car (er, he was acting as a taxi driver for the woman and her guardians had arranged this by the way)

This Commission would be laughable if it was not so evil. It was formed in 1926 in Riyadh and is supposed to promote morality and traditional Arab values (whatever they are). Traditional Arab female dress, for example, does not include the abaya which was only introduced to Saudi Arabia in about 1932 from Syria. I would guess that they are not there to promote traditional Arab values as many more of these would predate Islam, but rather to punish those that they consider are not being Islamic enough in their view of Islam, as one of the criticisms they face is forcing people into mosques at prayer time for prayer.

All of this is un-Islamic however in that the Quran teaches Muslims to speak to people about Islam but also that people cannot be forced to listen.

The Media Officer for the Commission for Lasciviousness and Licentiousness noted when calling for a fair go that:

“In 2005, the commission dealt with more than 400,000 cases that involved 400,000 people. About 800,000 people were dealt with by being given advice on the spot,” said Al-Ahmadi, adding, “If the commission made a mistake in let’s say 100 of these cases, what is the percentage of the total number? Not even one percent.”

Well, on the mathematics of that argument (and remembering that the Commission has been operating for over 80 years now) 1,200,000 people had contact with the Commission in 2005. Saudi Arabia has a population of around 27,500,000 people of which about 5,500,000 are foreigners (from the CIA Factbook). This means that the Commission is touching the lives of just under 5% of the population each year. Given that they have been promoting Virtue for 80 years then they are failing abjectly and as such a big failure really, should be shut down in the interests of social efficiency.

As I mentioned at the start, these clowns would have to be considered as buffoons were it not for the fact that they do serious damage to peoples lives and they are un-Islamic.