Omar ibn Al-Khattab, the second caliph, said: “May God bless whomever presents me with my shortcomings and flaws.” Another famous proverb says, “Your friend is the one who tells you the truth.” With these as a starting point, we would like to discuss the recent media coverage of three events which provoked a great deal of public interest and comment. The three were the deaths of two men in centers belonging to the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice and the maid who fell from a building in Jeddah when commission members raided her residence.
Regarding the death of Sulaiman Al-Huraisi in a commission center in Riyadh, his brother stated that the commission members beat his brother when they arrested him in his house. And before that, other incidents were reported including one involving a Saudi and his wife. The man had stopped in front of his house when two members of the commission suddenly appeared and accused the two of not being married. They beat the husband and then followed and physically attacked the woman as she attempted to escape from them. Subsequently, a committee was formed to investigate the incident; members included members of the commission and representatives from the governorate, the police and the General Investigation Committee.
There was also the incident of a young man in Manfuha who was beaten in public by commission members until his face bled and his clothes were ripped to pieces. After checking the man’s ID, the members apologized, saying it was all a case of mistaken identity.
One of the worst incidents involved a mother with her 22-year-old daughter, her 12-year-old son and a maid. Two members of the commission attacked their car, beat the driver, threw him out of the car and then drove the car to an isolated area. They then left the women alone in the car and accused one of the woman of being a sinner and a wrongdoer. They locked them in the car which the daughter attempted to drive but the car became stuck in sand. The mother later reported the incident and filed a lawsuit against the commission. The judge at the preliminary court in Riyadh issued a sentence saying that the commission members had made a mistake but that they should not be punished.
In yet another incident, the commission arrested 38 Saudi employees of a shopping center in Riyadh and then chained and beat them. One of them suffered a broken leg. One of the customers, 17-year-old Muhammad Shaheen, was in a toy store with his parents and three sisters when commission members accused him of flirting with girls. They beat him, got into a fight with his family and swore at his mother. The police intervened and Shaheen was transferred to the emergency room at King Khaled Hospital. The Tabuk police initiated an official investigation into the incident.
In 1992, Saeed Al-Farash died in a commission center in Makkah after he was detained for more than 10 hours. So did Ahmad Al-Melablab in 1998 in Ahsa.
Looking at these incidents, one cannot help but notice a pattern. In none of these cases is the commission doing what it is supposed to do. In fact, the matter should be considered from the psychological perspective that studies the impact of authority on individuals. At Stanford University in 1971, 24 volunteers were chosen for a experiment funded by the US Navy. The volunteers were given jobs as prison guards but were strongly forbidden to use violence against prisoners. It soon became evident, however, that the volunteers had become overwhelmed with their own power and authority, to the extent that they were offering to work longer hours without being paid.
The experiment was originally scheduled to run for two weeks but it ended after six days because the torturing of prisoners had become a real problem, especially at night when the guards thought the surveillance cameras were turned off.
The results of this experiment are always used to justify and explain why people with authority abuse their power. There are always two aspects which facilitate abuse: The belief by the abusers that they can escape detection and punishment plus the lack of clearly-defined public rights under the power and control of authorities.
