Saudi Arabia: Probably Not the Best Place for a Harry Potter Theme Park
by Jim Washburn
NPR is reporting that sorcery arrests and convictions are on the rise in Saudi Arabia. While the oil-kissed kingdom and the United States are staunch allies, seeing eye-to-eye on several shared interests-resource exploitation, a robust security apparatus, hand-holding-the US has been disappointingly lax in reining in sorcery, with the War on Christmas being but one timely reminder.
While Americans have allowed Willa, Smurfs and other jinn to pollute our children's airwaves, the Saudis have stepped up to the plate, with a scimitar. In the past year at least four persons have been arrested for sorcery, and two of them sentenced to death.
The most recent would-be decapitee is not even a Saudi citizen. Rather, religious police arrested Lebanese TV celebrity Ali Hussain Sibat when he was on pilgrimage to Mecca, which lately has been working rather like a bug-zapper when it comes to luring sorcerers to their doom.
The Saudi god squad recognized Sibat from his TV show, which they'd previously recognized as a snake-basket of sorcery. Sibat was popular throughout the Middle East as host of a call-in show where he was something of a Dear Ali, solving callers' marital problems and other woes. But Sibat stepped over the line by making horoscope-like predictions about the future.
The future may be written, but it's not for the likes of Sidat to read, determined the religious police, who in Arabic are called the Hey'a, not to be confused with the feared security police branches the Howyadoon or the Wassup.
Sibat was evidently told he would be released if he admitted his crimes and repudiated them on TV. When he did, police instead used the confession as evidence to secure his death sentence.
Also awaiting the blade is a man who was convicted of studying witchcraft. Those receiving lesser sentences include an Asian man convicted of giving marital advice-as if there's more than one answer: Submit to your husband!-and another who smuggled a book on witchcraft into the country. If lucky, they may each receive only half-a-beheading. Saudi Arabia is the world leader in beheadings! Too bad it's not an Olympic event.
There are no actual laws covering sorcery on the books in Saudi Arabia. Instead, judges are allowed to invent crimes and sentences based upon their interpretation of Sharia religious law, which is evidently a bit like Schawarma, in that judges can carve out a slice that's as big, small, crispy or juicy as they like.
According to human rights organizations, the religious police and courts have also recently stepped up their prosecutions of those who don't pray five times a day, and of women whose head coverings aren't sufficiently modest.
On a wholly unrelated note, I read this past week that eight of these United States have laws on the books that prohibit atheists from holding public office, other government positions or even in the lovely State of Arkansas from testifying in court. Please check a subsequent blog for more info.
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