Saudi Arabia’s religious police force is cracking down on summer festivals that the government hopes will promote domestic tourism, in the latest battle between liberals and conservatives in the world’s biggest oil exporter.
The Saudi government is trying to promote internal tourism but restrictions by the powerful religious establishment on singing, dancing and mixing between unrelated men and women has complicated the effort.
Conservative clerics backed by some powerful members of the Saudi royal family oppose efforts to liberalize the country of 25 million, where women are also forbidden from driving.
“These acts contradict the faith and must not be done, taught, spread or encouraged,” religious police spokesman Abdullah al-Mashiti told al-Watan daily this week, referring to circus acts such as fire-eating and lying on beds of glass that he says are a form of magic outlawed by Shariah law.
“They must be fought and those performing them must be reported and punished so as to be deterred and their evil restricted,” he said.
The religious police force is one of the key instruments of clerical control in society, with powers to enforce gender segregation in most government and commercial buildings and search for drugs, alcohol or other items seen as immoral.
Jeddah’s summer film festival was canceled this year despite the support of local governor Prince Khaled al-Faisal. King Abdullah, who ascended the throne in 2005, is seen as backing the reformers but he must balance the opposing forces.
“Unfortunately such actions carried out by religious police do not adhere to the official political will and they sabotage the government efforts to improve and maintain the internal tourism industry,” said Mahmoud Sabbagh, a newspaper columnist.
This month music concerts were also banned from the Abha tourism festival in the mountainous southwest of the kingdom.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s entertainment firm Rotana managed to stage screenings of a Saudi comedy movie last December, but religious police disrupted shows in Riyadh.
“There are no activities here, and when they do have activities they are not accessible to women,” said Samar Edrees, who travels abroad regularly to escape the restrictions. “Here they have festivals that only target children and men. There is nothing for us to do and there are no cinemas.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS