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cali

(114,904 posts)
Mon Aug 19, 2013, 11:10 AM Aug 2013

Our Ally: Saudi Arabia's War on Witchcraft

The sight of her bare flesh startled the prudish officers of Saudi Arabia's infamous religious police, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV), which had barged into her room in what was supposed to be a routine raid of a magical hideout in the western desert city of Madinah's Al-Seeh neighborhood. They paused in shock, and to let her dress.

The woman -- still unclothed -- managed to slip out of the window of her apartment and flee. According to the 2006 account of the Saudi Okaz newspaper, which has been described as the Arabic equivalent of the New York Post, she "flew like a bird." A frantic pursuit ensued. The unit found their suspect after she had fallen through the unsturdy roof of an adjacent house and onto the ground next to a bed of dozing children.

<snip>

The fate of this sorceress is not readily apparent, but her plight is common. Judging from the punishments of others accused of practicing witchcraft in Saudi Arabia before and since, the consequences were almost certainly severe.

In 2007, Egyptian pharmacist Mustafa Ibrahim was beheaded in Riyadh after his conviction on charges of "practicing magic and sorcery as well as adultery and desecration of the Holy Quran." The charges of "magic and sorcery" are not euphemisms for some other kind of egregious crime he committed; they alone were enough to qualify him for a death sentence. He first came to the attention of the religious authorities when members of a mosque in the northern town of Arar voiced concerns over the placement of the holy book in the restroom. After being accused of disrupting a man's marriage through spellwork, and the discovery of "books on black magic, a candle with an incantation 'to summon devils,' and 'foul-smelling herbs,'" the case -- and eventually his life -- were swallowed by the black hole of the discretionary Saudi court system.

<snip>

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/saudi-arabias-war-on-witchcraft/278701/?google_editors_picks=true

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