Islamic religious police
[1] Modern Islamic religious police forces were first established in the late-1970s amidst the Iranian Revolution (1979) and the Islamic revival that the event brought to the Muslim world; prior, the administration of public morality in most Muslim-majority countries was considered a socio-religious matter, and was enforced through application of civil laws and/or through more informal means.
This last part of public morality was missing in early and medieval Islam but the office was revived in Saudi Arabia, and later instituted as a committee, aided by a volunteer force focused on enforcing religious observance.
With the rising international influence of Salafism and Wahhabism, the conception of ḥisba as an individual obligation to police religious observance has become more widespread.
This has led to the appearance of activists around the world who urge fellow Muslims to observe Islamic rituals, dress code, and other aspects of sharīʿah,[4] with vigilante incidents in London (2013-2014) and Wuppertal, Germany (2014) resulting in criminal charges.
[4][6] Elsewhere, policing of various interpretations of sharia-based public morality has been carried out by the Kano State Hisbah Corps in the Kano State of Nigeria,[7] by Wilayatul Hisbah in the Aceh province of Indonesia,[8] by the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in the Gaza Strip, by the Taliban during their first rule of Afghanistan (1996–2001),[4] as well as by other groups.
Islamic religious police forces include: Afghanistan's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was first instituted by the 1992 Rabbani regime, and adopted by the Taliban when they took power in 1996.
[11] In 2006 the Karzai regime submitted draft legislation to create a new department, under the Ministry for Haj and Religious Affairs, devoted to the "Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice".
[12] The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Arabic: هيئة الأمر بالمعروف والنهي عن المنكر hayʾa al-ʾamr bil-maʿrūf wan-nahī ʿan al-munkar) is a group in the Palestinian territory of Gaza Strip, responsible for enforcing traditional Muslim codes of behavior (Sharia).
[13][14][15] According to journalist Khaled Abu Toameh and Middle East researcher Dr. Jonathan Spyer, the group forms part of the police forces of the Hamas de facto government.
[13][16] In 2009, the Hamas government's "Islamic Endowment Ministry" deployed Virtue Committee members to warn citizens of the alleged "dangers" of immodest dress, card playing, and dating.
[21] On September 16, 2022, the Guidance Patrol arrested Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who they claim suffered heart failure, dying comatose two days later.
[30] Malaysian morality police are often accused of overstepping their mandate, with legal confusion resulting from overlapping and ambiguously defined jurisdictions of secular and sharia-based laws.
The duties of the Hisbah Corps include arbitrating disputes on a voluntary basis, verbally chastising violators of Sharia, and maintaining public order at religious celebrations.
They monitor observance of the dress code, gender segregation in public spaces, and whether shops are closed during prayer times.
[40] Established in its best known form in the mid-1970s,[4] by the early 2010s, the committee was estimated to have 3,500–4,000 officers on the streets, assisted by thousands of volunteers and administrative personnel.
[41] Committee officers and volunteers patrolled public places, with volunteers focusing on enforcing strict rules of hijab (which in Saudi Arabia meant covering all of the body except the hands and eyes), segregation between the sexes, and daily prayer attendance;[4] but also banning Western products/activities such as the sale of dogs and cats,[43] Barbie dolls,[44] Pokémon,[45] and Valentine's Day gifts.
[2] Officers were authorized to pursue, detain and interrogate suspected violators, flog offenders for certain misdeeds,[46][47] and arrest priests for saying Mass in private ceremonies.
[21] In 2016 the power of the CPVPV was drastically reduced by Mohammed bin Salman,[51][52] and it was banned "from pursuing, questioning, asking for identification, arresting and detaining anyone suspected of a crime".
The Community Service Police is in charge of enforcing regulations on certain personal behaviors, including indecent clothing, alcohol consumption, offensive acts and seduction, among others.
In December 2019, it repealed a public order law that granted police the power to arrest women "who were found dancing, wearing trousers, vending on the streets or mixing with men who weren't their relatives", who might then be punished by "flogging, fines and, in rare cases, stoning and execution".
[59] A 3 September 2020 agreement (as part of a 2019 'legal reform program and rebuilding and developing the justice and rights')[60] declared Sudan "a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural society", where the state would "not establish an official religion" and where no citizen would "be discriminated against based on their religion",[61] thus eliminating the raison d'être for the Community Service Police.
In 2010, to protect "public morality", the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas ordered the removal of scantily-clad mannequins and pictures of models in underwear from clothing shops in the Gaza Strip.
