Asharq Alawsat picks up the story of how the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice seem to equate foreign things, including fashion, with evil and moral degeneracy. That’s an interesting way to look at things, I guess, but wildly mistaken. Hair styles and clothing fashions seem to be upsetting a lot of the religious police. They see them as one of the steps down the slippery slope of moral corruption, not because there’s anything inherently bad about them, but solely because they are foreign to Saudi Arabia.

This attitude is uncannily similar to that of Christians expressed in the lyrics of the hymn ‘Give Me That Old Time Religion’. It takes a snapshot of a particular period of time and place (here, the 7th C. Arabia) and deems it perfect, something to be emulated for all time. It ignores, utterly, the fact that even 7th C. Arabia was a complicated place with varying thoughts and practices.

It also shows a high level of hubris to think that foreign things are evil while still using automobiles, phones, and the Internet to promote reactionary thoughts.

Perhaps if the Commission stopped to think, rather than react, it might become a better integrated body in Saudi Arabian society.

Saudi Religious Police Troubled by Youth Fashion Trends
Khaled al Oweigan

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat – The Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is looking into a number of customs it believes to be “foreign” as part of study that it will embark upon in cooperation with King Saud University in Riyadh.

Sources close to the Committee told Asharq Al-Awsat that the study will focus on a number of observations that it made related to the way that Saudi youths dress, cut their hair and the kind of accessories that they wear.

According to sources, the study adopts creating new methods and objectives to guide youths as well as new methods of giving advice upon which the fieldworkers of the Committee base their work.

The Committee will bear the full cost of the study that will be conducted by the National Centre for Youth Studies at King Saud University in a bid to explore various mechanisms to tackle some of the Committee’s problems as it has been heavily criticized by local residents over the past few years.
…