Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Saudi Arabia)
The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, and known as the mutawa and by other similar names and translations in English-language sources) is a government religious authority in Saudi Arabia that is charged with implementing the Islamic doctrine of hisbah in the country. Established in 1940, the body gained extensive powers in the 1980s and continued to function as a semi-independent civilian law enforcement agency for almost 35 years until 2016, when societal reforms driven by then-deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman led to limiting some of its authority through a royal decree by King Salman bin Abdulaziz, including the rights of pursuing, questioning, detaining, and interrogating suspects.
Tracing its modern origin to a revival of the pre-modern official function of muhtasib by the first Saudi state, it was established in its best known form in 1976, with the main goal of supervising markets and public morality, and was often described as Islamic religious police.
By the early 2010s, the committee was estimated to have 3,500–4,000 officers on the streets, assisted by thousands of volunteers, with an additional 10,000 administrative personnel. Its head held the rank of cabinet minister and reported directly to the king. Committee officers and volunteers patrolled public places, with volunteers focusing on enforcing strict rules of hijab, sex segregation, and daily prayer attendance; but also non-Islamic products/activities such as the sale of dogs and cats, Barbie dolls, Pokémon, and Valentine's Day gifts.
Names
The name of the committee has also been translated as Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Elimination of Sin, abbreviated CAVES. They are known colloquially as hai’a.In academic sources, committee officers or the volunteers have also been called by several Arabic terms derived from the root ṭ-w-ʿ, including mutaṭawwiʿūn, muṭawwiʿ, and muṭāwiʿa. These words are etymologically related to the Quranically derived terms muṭṭawwiʿa and mutaṭawwiʿa. English-language press has used the names mutawa and mutaween.
History, structure, role
The committee's rationale is based on the classical Islamic doctrine of hisba, which is associated with the Quranic injunction of enjoining good and forbidding wrong, and refers to the duty of Muslims to promote moral rectitude and intervene when another Muslim is acting wrongly. In pre-modern Islamic history, its legal implementation was entrusted to a traditional Islamic public official called muhtasib, who was charged with preventing fraud, disturbance of public order and infractions against public morality.This office disappeared in the modern era everywhere in the Muslim world, including Arabia, but it was revived by the first Saudi state and continued to play a role in the second, due to its importance within Wahhabi doctrine.
;First state 1727–1818
Following the conquest of the Hijaz in 1803 a chronicler records bonfires made from confiscated tobacco pipes and stringed instruments by enforcers of sharia.
According to the US Library of Congress Country Studies, mutawwiin
"have been integral to the Wahhabi movement since its inception. Mutawwiin have served as missionaries, as enforcers of public morals, and as 'public ministers of the religion' who preach in the Friday mosque. Pursuing their duties in Jiddah in 1806, the mutawwiin were observed to be 'constables for the punctuality of prayers... with an enormous staff in their hand, were ordered to shout, to scold and to drag people by the shoulders to force them to take part in public prayers, five times a day.'"Robert Lacey describes them as "vigilantes". "The righteous of every neighbourhood banded themselves together into societies for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice."
;Second state 1823–1887
According to a study by Michael Cook, based on "Wahhabi writings and rulers' decrees" the role of commanding good and forbidding wrong developed a prominent place during the second Saudi emirate, and the first "documented instance of a formal committee to enforces the duty dates to 1926", when the official Saudi newspaper in Mecca published the news of its establishment. "One ruler orders his emirs to seek out people who gather together to smoke tobacco... scholars and emirs should keep a check on the people of their towns with regard to prayer and religious instruction." Performance of hajj "is likewise to be monitored."
;Third state
Under the third Saudi state, the most zealous followers of Ibn Sa'ud were appointed as muhtasibs. A foreign visitor reported that in Riyāḍ in 1922-23 flogging was "commonly" administered for "smoking, non-attendance at prayer and other such offenses".
This severity caused conflict with the local population and foreign pilgrims when the Hijaz was conquered and Wahhabi strictness arrived.
In response, committees were established in Riyadh and Mecca in 1932 to check their excesses. After their establishment in the Hijaz, the committees "rapidly spread" to the rest of the kingdom.
Evidence that enforcement could "swing from a soft line to hard one and back again" comes from reports from Jeddah in early 1930, and summer of 1932, during a temporary move away from Wahhabi puritanism by King Ibn Saud early in his reign.
In 1976 the two formerly mutually independent directories in the Hijaz and Najd were united under an official of ministerial rank, acting under direct royal command, and, the Al al-Sheikh director of the committee gained a seat on the Saudi cabinet, strengthening its prestige. Its control extended to small towns as well as the cities.
The unified Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was then mainly responsible for supervising markets and public order and assisted by volunteers, who enforce attendance of daily prayers and gender segregation in public places.
Following the November–December 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure, when religion became more conservative in Saudi Arabia,
"people noticed that imams and religious folk seemed to have more money to spend... with the religious police benefiting most obviously from government injections of cash. They started to appear in imposing new GMC vans, with their once humble local committees of mutawwa... taking on the grander, 'Big Brother' aura of their original, collective name – Al Hayah, 'the Commission'. They developed attitude to match."
They were still, however, "essentially volunteers engaged in their own variety of social work."
In 2002, the deaths of 15 young girls in 2002 in Mecca after the mutaween's refused to let them leave a burning school was widely publicized and damaged the mutaween's image.
;Beginning of restrictions on power
In May 2006 it was announced that the committee would no longer be allowed to interrogate those it arrests for behavior deemed un-Islamic. Prior to this, commission members enjoyed almost total power to arrest, detain, and interrogate those suspected of violating the Sharia.
In May 2006 the Interior Ministry issued a decree stating that "the role of the commission will end after it arrests the culprit or culprits and hands them over to police, who will then decide whether to refer them to the public prosecutor." In June 2007 the Saudi mutaween announced "the creation of a 'department of rules and regulations' to ensure the activities of commission members comply with the law, after coming under heavy pressure for the death of two people in its custody in less than two weeks". The governmental National Society for Human Rights criticised the behaviour of the religious police in May 2007 in its first report since its establishment in March 2004.
In August of that year Time magazine ran a report about the mutaween. It noted that "a campaign using text messages sent to mobile phones is calling on a million Saudis to declare that '2007 is the year of liberation.'" Despite statements of reform, the mutaween turned down Time's request for interviews.
In 2009, the committee created and formalized a special "Anti-Witchcraft Unit" to "educate the public about the evils of sorcery, investigate alleged witches, neutralize their cursed paraphernalia, and disarm their spells". The unit also had a hotline on the committee website for Saudis to report any magic to local officials.
At the beginning of October 2012, during the Arab Spring, Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh announced that the powers of the mutawiyin would be significantly restricted. According to Irfan Al-Alawi,
They will be barred from making arrests, conducting interrogations, or carrying out searches without a warrant from the local governor. They will no longer stand at the entrances of shopping malls to keep women out who do not adhere to the Wahhabi dress code or who are not accompanied by "approved" men—husbands, siblings, or parents.
"Community volunteers", who were the original mutaween, were forbidden from joining Hai’a men on their rounds and pursuing, chastising, and interrogating miscreants, as "a religious duty". Field officers were also ordered to "approach people with a smile," and forbidden from using their "private e-mails, cellphones, or social media accounts to receive and act on anonymous tips."
In January 2012, Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh was appointed head of the mutaween. He "holds the rank of cabinet minister and reports directly to the king". His agency employs more than 4,000 "field officers" and reportedly has another 10,000 administrative personnel. Its 2013 budget was the equivalent of US$390 million.
;Loss of power under MbS
However, in 2016, Mohammed bin Salman sharply curtailed the powers of the CPVPV.
In a September 2019 article, Arab News, portrayed the time period from about 1979 to 2016 as an era when CPVPV "strayed" from its "original intent" of advising and guiding Saudi Muslims. Starting around 1979, the Sahwa or Islamic Awakening era commenced, "extremism ideology" flourished, and the powers of the CPVPV went "unchecked". Then, in 2016, Mohammed bin Salman took an "unprecedented, risky yet necessary move" bringing the CPVPV to heel and returning it to its correct role as "society's spiritual guide".
The newspaper describes CPVPV before and after the curtailing of its power:
They destroyed musical instruments, raided beauty salons, shaved heads, whipped people, burnt books, and continued being unchecked — until an unexpected decision came out on April 11, 2016. The Saudi Cabinet issued a royal decree that stripped the religious police of its privileges, banning its members from pursuing, questioning, asking for identification, arresting and detaining anyone suspected of a crime. They are now obliged to report back to the police and security forces if need be.
Ahmad bin Qasim Al-Ghamdi describes the post-2016 policy as one where the
“... CPVPV has managed to defuse the strife in the relationship between its past self and society. It has prevented the distortion and weak confidence that the people had in the procedures that were followed in the past, damaged the reputation of the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice as a ritual, and the reputation of the Kingdom as a state that applies the provisions of Islam.”