‘Defanged’ Saudi religious cops bring relief, foreboding
RIYADH — A veiled Saudi woman and an unrelated man jig and twirl on a busy street, stirring a furious debate about the waning influence of the once-feared religious police, notorious for enforcing sex segregation.
For decades the "mutawa", as they are known, wielded unbridled powers as arbiters of morality, patrolling streets and malls to snare women wearing bright nail polish and chastise men seeking contact with the opposite sex.
In recent years, Saudi Arabia launched a series of reforms, including gradually diminishing the mutawa's powers to arrest.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has further cut back the political role of hardline clerics in a historic reordering of the Saudi state.
The brief video of the street dance — no minor infraction in a society steeped in conservatism — roiled public opinion as it surfaced this week, prompting calls for the couple to be arrested.
Authorities pledged swift action amid raging commentary on social media, which laid bare the resentment in conservative quarters over the mutawa's diminishing presence and the uncertainty over their future role.
"Where are the religious police?" was a popular refrain among angry Saudi social media users, with some also asking "Why are they silent?" and "Does their silence mean approval?"
The mutawa, who fall under a government agency known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, did not respond to AFP's repeated requests for comment.
The mutawa's declining presence has also been met with relief from many of the country's young.