Subject: [AthofSV] The state as an arm of the church

From: "Jim Bill" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 15:32:15 -1000

This is actually kind of amusing.  Maybe "News of the Weird" would be interested in it.

Amusing, but this is what it is like when you live in a theocracy.

I love the name "Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice."   Reminds me of "Citizens for Moral Decency" in "La Cage aux Folles."

>From the San Jose Mercury News

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/11476823.htm

           Posted on Sun, Apr. 24, 2005  

            Saudi police scold reality-show star
            RELIGIOUS ENFORCERS DETAIN TV FIGURE WHEN MIXED CROWD GREETS HIM AT MALL
            By Rawya Rageh
            Associated Press

            DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Star or not, religious authorities briefly detained Saudi singer Hisham Abdel Rahman for causing an indecent scene at a Saudi mall, a Riyadh police official said Saturday.

            The singer gained fame in the Arab world for winning this year's ``Star Academy'' reality TV show, based on a French program of the same name. The broadcast has the same kind of fan base that makes the U.S. show ``American Idol'' such a big moneymaker for Fox television.

            Male and female fans had spotted Abdel Rahman, 24, strolling through Kingdom Tower Mall in Riyadh on Wednesday and rushed to shake his hand and bestow congratulatory kisses, a police official said.

            Saudi Arabia's enforcers of virtue make no exceptions: Handshakes and congratulatory kisses in mixed company are a no-no in public. Police said Abdel Rahman had ``violated a rule and created chaos in the Tower Mall and that had to be stopped.''

            The religious police tried to disperse the crowd and told Abdel Rahman to leave the mall, according to local newspaper accounts confirmed by the police official. The young star, however, reportedly refused and started squabbling with the enforcers of virtue.

            Abdel Rahman was forcibly escorted out of the mall and taken to religious-police offices for questioning. A senior government official then intervened and ordered him freed, the police officer said. The Arab News, an English-language Saudi daily, reported that the intervention was a telephone call from the office of Riyadh Gov. Prince Salman.

            But in a Friday interview with the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat, Abdel Rahman denied that he had been detained or mistreated, calling the reports ``merely purposeful rumors.''

            ``What really happened was that a committee member approached me, with all due respect, and asked me not to stay among a big crowd. I took my family members . . . until the crowd disappeared and then we left for Jidda as if nothing had happened,'' Abdel Rahman said.

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