Clash of Civilizations Alert
Arab News reports on the latest outrage by Saudi Arabia's Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice: the "arrest" of a 36-year-old businesswoman identified only as "Yara" for the crime of drinking coffee in a Riyadh Starbucks with a male business associate described as a "Syrian financial analyst."
Yara was "apprehended" by a member of the religious police--at least, a man assumed to be such, since he produced no identification--and taken to Al-Malaz Prison, where she was forced to sign a confession. The crime of which Yara, who grew up in the United States, was accused is "'khulwa' (a state of seclusion with an unrelated man)." The Saudi Society for Human Rights, however, notes that "Yara was not in a state of khulwa. She was in a public place where people were all around them.” An iron-clad defense, one might think.
The Arab News reports that the religious "policeman" "forced Yara to go with him in a taxi." But wait! Why isn't that a "khulwa" (not to mention kidnapping)? Perhaps because the motives of an officer of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice can only be pure.
Yara says she was strip-searched in prison, too. Good thing the search was carried out by officers of unimpeachable purity. Otherwise, infidels who don't understand Virtue and Vice might wonder whether the strip-search was more dubious than sharing a cup of coffee at a Starbucks.
