The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, often called
the Mutaween by locals, accused the young men of "wearing indecent clothes and
playing loud music and dancing to it to attract girls' attention," according to
the Saudi Gazette, an English-language daily published in the kingdom.
The young men's defenders said they were just trying to "have fun" without
"imposing themselves" on women.
The Mutaween are often at the center of Saudi Arabia's controversies over sex,
morality and women's rights. This month they banned florists from selling red
roses on Valentine's Day. According to the Agence France-Presse, a leading
Saudi cleric seven years ago declared the celebration of love "a pagan
Christian holiday."
One blogger, Intlxpatr at Here, There and Everywhere, who wrote that he or she
had once lived in Saudi Arabia, asked what the arrests might have looked like:
"I remember the Mutaween were NOT police, but sometimes they took on the
prerogatives of the police. So I have to wonder, like, who made the arrest in
the malls? Was it the police? Was it the Mutaween hitting the boys with their
little sticks?"
