Free Republic

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia's religious police, normally tasked with chiding women to cover themselves and ensuring men attend mosque prayers, are turning to a new target: cats and dogs. The police have issued a decree banning the sale of the pets, seen as a sign of Western influence. The prohibition on dogs may be less of a surprise, since conservative Muslims despise dogs as unclean. But the cat ban befuddled many, since Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet Muhammad loved cats - and even let a cat drink from his ablutions water before washing himself for prayers. The...

17 May, 2005 PAKISTAN - SAUDI ARABIA Government should help Christians detained in Saudi Arabia, says Bishop of Lahore by Qaiser Felix Pakistani immigrants arrested because they were celebrating mass in a Riyadh home. Pakistan should treat the case without any religious discrimination; they are citizens like everybody else, say Mgr Saldanha. Faisalabad (AsiaNews) – The Catholic Church and human rights groups are calling on the government of Pakistan to intervene on behalf of 40 Pakistani Christians arrested by the muttawa, Saudi Arabia’s religious police. In an interview with AsiaNews, Mgr Lawrence Saldanha, Archbishop of Lahore, called on the authorities...

RIYADH, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The leader of the al Qaeda attack on the U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia had been jailed for "extremist ideology" and once worked for the kingdom's austere morality police, local newspapers said on Wednesday. Saudi dailies said Fayez Awad al-Jihani was the head of an al Qaeda cell in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, where the brazen daylight attack on the U.S. consulate took place on Monday. Jihani was one of four attackers who died in the assault. A fifth was wounded and arrested. Saudi authorities identified three of the assailants, none of whom...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia has appointed a new chief for its powerful religious police, a force that came under criticism earlier this year. The new director of the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is Sheik Ibrahim Abdullah al-Ghaith, said a royal decree published by the official Saudi Press Agency on Wednesday night. Al-Ghaith succeeds Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Sayed, whose four-year term recently ended. The post is equivalent to that of a minister. The religious police, or muttawa, are charged with ensuring that women are covered in black robes outside their homes, the...

The fire that wont go out,fire at girls school in Mecca has the fanatical Islamist and Saudi moderate leaders at loggerheads