A little over a week ago an American women's society met over a restaurant here in Riyadh. It was a women-only affair, they ate a little dinner and had a few stalls to buy trinkets from.
The muttawa arrived and told the ladies that they all had to leave. Their reason? Too many ladies together in one place.
A western friend of a friend was caught dating a Saudi girl here in Riyadh. The muttawa were tipped off and whilst I don’t know what happened to her, I understand that he got a bit of a beating and he has been deported from Saudi Arabia. The story surprised me because whilst the muttawa have rules to enforce, I thought that the beatings were becoming a thing of the past.
Anyway, I was reading about the young unmarried couple that were caught by the muttawa in a supermarket and it made me wonder how they tell who is and who is not married…
Teacher: …and you must arrest any unmarried couples without a chaperone.
Student: But teacher, how will I know if they are not married?
Teacher: Well, look at that young couple over there. Are they arguing?
Student: No, they are not.
Teacher: Are they ignoring each other?
Student: No, they are not.
Teacher: Do they look tired and bored?
Student: Well, no. Actually they look quite happy.
Teacher: Then clearly they are not married! Arrest them!
We went quad biking again last weekend with another married couple. Why is it that with such a vast desert surrounding Riyadh we have to have quad bikers, 4x4s and people having picnics in the same small area? Doesn’t anyone see a problem with that? It was very busy so I had a constant fear I'd go over a sand dune and straight into a family eating a picnic or a big 4x4.
Neither of the ladies covered their hair, but they did manage to quad bike with their abayas on (it can’t be easy). When my friend’s quad bike broke down he got on the back of his wife’s quad and they went back down to the road to get a new bike. There they met the muttawa who became very upset about the fact that they were sharing a bike and that his wife’s hair was uncovered.
Fine. But where was the muttawa when all of the guys were hooting and hollering at our wives from their 4x4s? Where was the muttawa when they were making rude gestures and acting like chimpanzees? What about when some guys in a huge truck did a doughnut right around my wife, putting her life in danger? What did you think, chump? That my wife was going to see your impressive doughnut and decide to leave me for you? You’re an idiot.
I suppose the muttawa would blame the ladies. The impression I got was that those guys felt it was acceptable to whistle and shout at a woman when she hasn’t covered her hair.
Right.
I know the majority of guys in KSA aren’t like this. I can try to forgive the bad ones to some extent because they don’t get to interact with women often enough to learn how to behave correctly. But someone needs to teach them or next time I’ll use some muttawa logic. It won’t be my fist’s fault that your nose is broken. It will be yours for putting your nose within its reach.
Anyone even remotely connected to Saudi Arabia knows about the muttawa. For those that don’t they are the basically the religious policemen here. Most Westerners will experience them in shopping malls as they walk around asking the women to cover their hair. There are some sinister stories about them ( http://muttawa.blogspot.com ) but in my first experience with one last week he was so polite we were actually unsure about whether he was muttawa or just a fuss-pot.
One story I recently heard involved a group of western women who went to Bata to do some shopping. Sometimes Bata is not the sort of place that western women should go to alone. Whilst they were there a group of guys groped them. The muttawa witnessed what happened and stopped both the men and the women. They then gave the women their sticks and invited them to beat the men who groped them. Unfortunately they didn’t avail themselves of the opportunity. :-(
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