General Middle East & North Africa Thread

Because the regular police is:

1. Not qualified for these kinds of things (you need someone well-versed in sharia to avoid making excessive judgements... not that it stops the agency from hiring ultraconservative morons who keep going to the extremes, anyway).
2. They're busy handling other kinds of criminal activity (e.g. busting covert alcohol production operations). Keep in mind that our police force is actually divided into several departments, each of which is strictly limited to a specific area (they treat it like some kind of quasi-feudalism, like with the rest of the government): The "crime-fighting" police are probably a lot smaller than you'd think, while the traffic police are probably the largest department that you get to see in urban areas.
3. They have their own morally loose idiots who would abuse their power to harrass people. Having a mutawi' or two around makes sure they're kept in check out of fear (the only way to stop them from reporting you is to either kill them or deal severe brain damage... which gets you into a whole other set of possibly even worse problems since there's little to no way you could hide your crime).

You nailed it. That said, even in the older times where Islamic society was generally more morally sound (not to say there weren't any "bad seeds" around), we still had analogues of the modern religious police, though they were more often concerned with making sure the merchants didn't break the rules set out by the sharia for selling and buying stuff (especially about cheating a customer), and similar sorta-secular stuff.

edited 15th Apr '16 5:51:38 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

See, when I hear religious police I am reminded of this incident.

edited 15th Apr '16 8:26:46 AM by SeptimusHeap

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

But if sharia is the basis for your laws then shouldn't the police be versed in it? I mean that's simply having the police versed in the law isn't it? The feudal like structure point I get, but why isn't it simply another weirdly specific police department rather then an entity separate thing? As for the police's moral failings, do the mutawi' not have their own corrupt people though? If corruption is a problem isn't it going to be one whatever group you have policing?

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Yeah me too.

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.

& And that is unfortunate, because it makes the lives and jobs of the decent members (who are more numerous than you think) that much harder. You know of the crazies because they're the ones the news bother to focus upon, whereas the moderate/decent ones are relegated to obscurity because they're boring.

In theory, yes. In practice, however, the government prefers to have obedient automatons who would be more than happy to violently crack down on any uppity rioters than to do the right thing. The "we are the guardians of the sharia" spiel is just propaganda and lip service, if you haven't realized yet.

Probably because someone from on high or someone who had their ear didn't like the idea, and wanted to be completely separate from the whole Ministry of the Interior (yes, the Hai’a is completely outside the authority of the Minister of the Interior, and their head is actually a minister-level government official).

Of course it's a problem. You only have to look at the very top of the pyramid to figure out why corruption is so pervasive across our institutions.

edited 15th Apr '16 12:13:47 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

So what do the moderate/reasonable ones do? Because until now I thought that the religious police literally only got involved in stuff like the school fire, like that was their only function, being batshit crazy because the police aren't that stupid.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

'd previous post for clarifications.

I already explained that on the previous page. Or perhaps you want more detailed hypothetical examples of what they're cutting down on to get an idea of how they're different from the crazies?

edited 15th Apr '16 12:15:20 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Yeah something more detailed is what I'm after, you gave a general outline but an example would help me understand.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

OK, let's take the sexual harrassment in public, since this should be the most relatable and least affected by varying norms between the Muslim world and the Western world. And I'll even use anecdotes from my own mom's experiences.

See, we don't have a driver (last one was so incompetent and reckless, it still leaves too much of a bad memory to consider hiring a new one), and the route from our home to mom's workplace is pretty long and time-consuming (partly compounded by the endemic problem of heavy traffic). So my mom decided to spare me the trouble of having to go all the way to her workplace, and instead rides a private bus service to a gas station relatively close to home, where I'm usually already waiting for her.

The problem is that sometimes I find myself running late for her (often because of the police blocking up the roads to make way for the ultra-VIP car convoys, i.e. the Saud royals and high-ranking foreign dignitaries). More than once this led to my mom being effectively stranded at the station, waiting for up to 10 minutes. And more than once, she'd find a car stopping next to her and the youth riding it making crude come-ons at her, and she'd have to actually threaten to attack them with her shoe before they'd take off — and sometimes they'd be laughing in spite of that.

Now imagine the same thing happening to a modestly dressed woman while she's walking through a mall on her own (without a car, of course). Wolf whistles, unsubtle pick-up lines.... Mom even tells me stories of how it sometimes progresses to the boys/men actually grabbing the woman they're harrassing by the hand/arm.

I swear, if I ever catch one doing this in front of me, I'd immediately punch their teeth out... and then stomp them in the groin. Repeatedly. Probably until I no longer feel anything distinctly solid under my foot. Scumbags, the whole lot of them.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Careful, a few idiots are not worth aggravated assault charges.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele

Okay that sound reasonable, so basically in cases like they they'd step in and stop the youths in question for carrying out their harassment?

And yeah as for harassment cases, I'd advise against assault, there are easier ways to stop it. You'd be amazed at how much sexual harassment you can stop by playing the idiot and smiling the entire time (as I've done several times at clubs/bars, 'accidentally' bumbling into the guy trying to group a girl or 'randomly' asking the girl who a guy's trying to drag on top of him to dance), if they then assault you in frustration that's on them and you're welcome to your right of self defence.

edited 16th Apr '16 9:38:46 AM by Silasw

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Stop them nothing, before the power restrictions the mutawi' would start verbally railing on them all while having the accompanying police/security officers drag the offenders to their car, and take them in for detention (persumably until their legal guardians come; I'm not sure on the details, but it's probably not much different from when the regular police arrest someone for a non-trivial crime).

Sorry, it's just a big Berserk Button for me, especially since the fact that I personally don't walk around the malls and such places much means that I pretty much miss any and all of those incidents; about the only thing I did notice was the nigh-omnipresent... well, presence of such degenerates in the malls as I walk by them. You really can't mistake them for anything else; a prime case where "I know it when I see it" is a perfect principle, largely because they don't bother being subtle about it in the way they dress (guys with loose morals here always adopt stereotypical "cool" Western clothes like cut-off jeans and T-shirts with often garish slogans or images, wear ridiculous hairstyles, and generally imitating those street youth gang sorts that you tend to see in American streets).

edited 16th Apr '16 9:49:27 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

That's just youth and the wonderful world of fashion trends, nothing even close to resembling gangs. I get what you mean though in this context.

edited 16th Apr '16 10:15:16 AM by TerminusEst

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele

Do the guys with loose morals ever keep their morals to themselves? As in do the crowds every simply do the loose morals stuff themselves and avoid being a pain to others?

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

... I do not understand what you're trying to ask. Please rephrase the question.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Do you get guys with "loose morals", or who at least dress that way, that aren't assholes.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

I've personally never met or seen one who isn't an asshole.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Interesting generational shift.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele

And all because the government can't be half-assed to bother with societal education and reform to fix the many problems at their root. Our youth are not just becoming increasingly morally depraved, they're becoming increasingly academically bad too. A whole generation has had their Arabic dictation skills ruined by the imposition of a completely moronic "reform" to how teachers should teach the subject... which more or less consisted of them simply writing a passage on the board, telling the students to copy it down, and poof, end of class. Apparently it was prompted by a few parents complaining of how "unjustifiably complicated" the original way of teaching was (that is, the teacher actually checking the students' work, making them redo if it's not sufficiently correct, and giving them homework to bring next class).

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

The way you put it, Marq, it seems to me that your sexual harassment problem is getting dangerously out of hand. Shouldn't there be enough concerned people by now for the society to start doing something about it?

Apparently not. Complaceny and Double Standard^note That is, they don't make a fuss if it's complete strangers that are being harrassed, but will raise hell upon earth if someone in their family is the victim. are pervasive in our society, coupled with the government not seeing how dangerous the problem is to societal integrity (because, you know, they're extremely detached from the reality of us plebians, what with them spending their entire lives in their ivory towers).

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Doesn't sound too different than North America to be honest; everyday harassment goes unnoticed unless the event escalates to something far worse and/or the victim is notable in some way.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Yes, but it's probably nowhere near as bad as there.

In Israel there's been a huge crackdown on harassment in recent years - so much that people are quitting their jobs over mere allegations of sexual harassment. A couple of days ago someone even complained about being harassed by a minister who died sixteen years ago.

Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.

... And why did they not talk about that for all those years?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I don't know... I guess complaining about it wasn't that acceptable in those days and the whole crackdown only started in the past couple of years?

Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.