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The sorceress was naked.
The sight of her bare flesh startled the prudish officers of Saudi Arabia's
infamous religious police, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the
Prevention of Vice (CPVPV), which had barged into her room in what wassupposed to be a routine raid of a magical hideout in the western desert city of
Madinah's Al-Seeh neighborhood. They paused in shock, and to let her dress.
Saudi Arabia's War on
WitchcraftA special unit of the religious police pursues magical crime
aggressively, and the convicted face death sentences.
R Y A N J A C O B S | A U G 1 9 , 2 0 1 3 | G L O B A L
Members of the religious police attend a training course. The Saudi authorities have a unit dedicated specifically to
hunting witches
Ali Jarekji / Reuters
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The woman -- still unclothed -- managed to slip out of the windowof her
apartment and flee. According to the 2006 accountof the Saudi Okaz
newspaper, which has been describedas the Arabic equivalent of theNew York
Post, she "flew like a bird." A frantic pursuit ensued. The unit found their
suspect after she had fallenthrough the unsturdy roof of an adjacent house and
onto the ground next to a bed of dozing children.
They covered her body, arrested her, and claimed to uncover key evidence
indicating that witchcraft had indeed been practiced, including incense,
talismans, and videos about magic. In theAl Arabiyareport, a senior Islamic
cleric lamented that the incident had occurred in a city of such sacred history.
The prophet Muhammad is buried there, and it is considered the second most
holy location in Islam, second to Mecca. The cleric didn't doubt the details of
the incident. "Some magicians may ride a broom and fly in the air with the
help of the jinn [supernatural beings]," he said.
The fate of this sorceress is not readily apparent, but her plight is common.
Judging from the punishments of others accused of practicing witchcraft in
Saudi Arabia before and since, the consequences were almost certainly
severe.
In 2007, Egyptian pharmacist Mustafa Ibrahim was beheaded in Riyadh after
his conviction on charges of "practicing magic and sorcery as well as adultery
and desecration of the Holy Quran." The charges of "magic and sorcery" are
not euphemisms for some other kind of egregious crime he committed; they
alone were enough to qualify him for a death sentence. He first came to the
attention of the religious authorities when members of a mosque in the
northern town of Arar voiced concerns over the placement of the holy book in
the restroom. After being accused of disrupting a man's marriage through
spellwork, and the discoveryof "books on black magic, a candle with an
incantation 'to summon devils,' and 'foul-smelling herbs,'" the case -- and
eventually his life -- were swallowed by the black hole of the discretionary
Saudi court system.
The campaign of persecution has shown no signs of fizzling. In May, two Asian
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maids were sentencedto 1,000 lashings and 10 years in prison after their
bosses claimed that they had suffered from their magic. Just a few weeks ago,
Saudi newspapers began running the image of an Indonesian maid being
pursuedon accusations that she produced a spell that made her male boss's
family subject to fainting and epileptic fits. "I swear that we do not want to hurt
her but to stop her evil acts against us and others," the man told the news site
Emirates 24/7.
According to Adam Coogle, a Jordan-based Middle East researcher for Human
Rights Watch who monitors Saudi Arabia, the relentless witch hunts reveal the
hollowness of the country's long-standing promises about liberalizing its
justice system.
In a country where public observance of any religion besides Islam is strictly
forbidden, foreign domestic workers who bring unfamiliar traditional religious
or folk customs from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Africa, or elsewhere can make
especially vulnerable and easy targets. "If they see these [folk practices or
items] they immediately assume they're some kind of sorcery or witchcraft,"
he said.
The Saudi government's obsession with the criminalization of the dark arts
reached a new level in 2009, when it created and formalized a special "Anti-
Witchcraft Unit" to educate the public about the evils of sorcery, investigate
alleged witches, neutralize their cursed paraphernalia, and disarm their
spells. Saudi citizens are also urged to use a hotline on the CPVPV website to
report any magical misdeeds to local officials, according to theJerusalem Post.
According to a director of the religious police's witchcraft division in Riyadh,
the unit providesconfidentiality to informants. "We deal with sorcerers in a
special way. No one should think that we mention the name of whomever files
a report about sorcery," Sheikh Adel Faqih told the Saudi Gazette. In 2009
alone, at least 118 peoplewere charged with "practicing magic" or "using the
book of Allah in a derogatory manner" in the province of Makkah, the
country's most populous region.
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Faqih also claimed that the process of arresting someone for crimes of magic
involved more than just receiving a tip from a neighbor or employer. A formal
investigation would be pursued, and "information must be collected before an
arrest can be made." What sort of information do they need? The answer was
unsurprisingly vague and innocuous: if the suspect sought to purchase "an
animal with certain features." For example, "he asks for a sheep to be killed
without mentioning Allah's name and asks to stain the body with the animal's
blood or if he asks for similar unusual things."
By 2011, the unit had created a total of ninewitchcraft-fighting bureaus in
cities across the country, according to Arab News, and had "achieved
remarkable success" in processing at least 586 cases of magical crime, themajority of which were foreign domestic workers from Africa and Indonesia.
Then, last year, the government announcedthat it was expanding its battle
against magic further, scapegoating witches as the source of both religious and
social instability in the country. The move would mean new training courses
for its agents, a more powerful infrastructural backbone capable of passing
intelligence across provinces, and more raids. The force booked 215 sorcerers
in 2012.
***
The most aggressive pursuit of witches tends to be in the interior of the
Arabian peninsula, a parcel of the country that hosts the capital city Riyadh
and many of the most dedicated followers of Salafism, the ultra-conservative
school of Sunni Islam that the government enforcesthroughout the country inits religious courts.
Wresting the country's criminal proceedings from the grip of one of the
strictest strains of Islam would involve more than just the development of a
more progressive outlook; it would require cosmic revisions in Saudi history
and religious identity.
The Saudi government and many of its citizens subscribe to the 18th-century
teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a revivalist Islamic scholar who
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called for a return to literal interpretations of the Quran, and for the
abandonment of folk rituals that had developed around the worship of Islamic
shrines and grave sites. Accordingto historian Vladmir Borisovich Lutsky:
He sharply criticised such superstitious survivals as fetishism and
totemism, which, to him, were indistinguishable from idolatry.
Formally all the Arabs were Moslems. But, in reality, there existed
many local tribal religions in Arabia. Each Arab tribe, each village
had its fetish, its beliefs and rites. The variety of religious forms that
stemmed from the primitive level of social development and the
lack of cohesion between the countries of Arabia were seriousobstacles to political unity. Abd el-Wahhab set up against this
religious polymorphism a single doctrine called tauhid (unity)...
....
The Wahhabis fought against the survivals of local tribal cults. They
destroyed the tombs of the saints, and forbade magic fortune-
telling. But at the same time their teachings were directed against
official Islam.
Under Wahhabi doctrine, magic is seen as a serious affront to the pure and
exclusive relationship one is supposed to share with Allah.
But belief in the supernatural and magic is actually quite common in Muslim
culture. According to the Quran, thejinnare demonic supernatural beingsthatwere created out of fire at the same time as man. Some believe thatjinnhave
the power to cause harm, and it is not uncommon for the possessed to visit
faith healers or sorcerers tasked with ridding the evil.
Accordingto the Pew Research Center's Religion and Public Life Project:
In most of the countries surveyed, roughly half or more Muslims
affirm thatjinnexist and that the evil eye is real. Belief in sorcery is
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somewhat less common: half or more Muslims in nine of the
countries included in the study say they believe in witchcraft.
Accusations ofjinnworship and witchcraft once even touchedthe
administration of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when his
advisers and aides were arrested on charges of black magic. Ahmadinejad
denied the charges, but a sorcerer well-known among the ruling class claimed
that he met with the President at least twice and gathered intelligence for him
on "Jinn who work for Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, and for the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency," according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to the Pew survey, the majority of
Muslims agree that Islam restricts making
contact withjinnor using magic. But
Wahhabism is particularly opposed to this
notion, according to Muhammad Husayn
Ibrahimi's analysisof the sect:
Based on some verses of the Qur'an,
Shaykh Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab,
Ibn Taymiyyah and the contemporary
Wahhabis regard seeking help from other
than God or asking for their intercession
{shafa'ah} as an act of polytheism. Theirmain proof is the phrase, "other than
God" in verse 18 of Surah Yunus. The
Wahhabis regard the prophets, saints,
idols, thejinn, and the dead as the most
vivid manifestations of this verse.
This might explain why Saudis, many of whom are devout Wahhabi
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practitioners, are so fierce when it comes to the pursuit of witches.
***
The courts are controlled by judges -- commonly religious clerics -- who have
unlimited latitude to interpret and define the content of witchcraft crime, thedetails of which are not articulated in a spare, barely existent penal code. They
can also mete out capital punishments as they see fit. Saudi Arabia ranks third
behind China and Iran for its number of executions. Evidence in these cases is
limitedto witness testimony and the presentation of the "magical" items
discovered in the possession of the accused.
The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia did not respond to requests for comment
on the specifics of its dealings with witchcraft crime.
The ability to defend against the charges seems to depend on the caprice of the
particular judge assigned to the case. In the 2006 caseof Fawza Falih, who
was sentenced to death on charges of "'witchcraft, recourse tojinn, and
slaughter' of animals," she was provided no opportunity to question the
testimonies of her witnesses, was barred from the room when "evidence" was
presented, and her legal representation was not permitted to enter court. After
appeals by Human Rights Watch, her execution was delayed, but she diedin
prison as a result of poor health.
The police can also use questionable tactics. In 2008, a well-known Lebanese
television personality, Ali Hussain Sibat, who made a living by telling callers'
fortunes and instructing them on other superstitious matters, was lured into an
undercover sting operationwhile making a religious pilgrimage to Mecca.
According to theNew York Times, he was arrested shortly after the police
recorded conversations he held about providing a magical elixir to a woman
that would force her husband to separate from his second wife. His death
sentence was later stayed after outcry from international human rights
organizations.
Belief in magic is so widespread that it is often invoked as a defense in Sharia
courts. "If there's an employer dispute -- say the migrant domestic worker
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claims she wasn't paid her wages or her conditions are unlivable -- a lot of
times what happens unfortunately is the defendant makes counterclaims
against the domestic worker," Coogle said. "And a lot of times they'll make
counterclaims of sorcery, witchcraft, and that sort of thing."
Domestic workers, many of whom who are not fluent in Arabic, face significant
challenges in defending themselves against these charges, according to
Coogle. Sometimes, he says, "they don't even know what's happening." "I
think that there are cases where the authorities will provide translation, but
I'm told the translation isn't always available and isn't always reliable." Many
don't have the resources to hire a lawyer, so they are often representing
themselves, unless a human rights organization takes on their case.
Even then, they must face a religious cleric who serves simultaneously as a
judge and a prosecutor and can often introduce new charges or modify existing
ones during the course of the proceedings. "When you have a situation that's
so arbitrary and left to the discretion of a judge, women without the means to
defend themselves can sort of be left alone," he said. Though some of the
cases receive international attention, Coogle expects that many don't make
headlines at all. "Given the isolation of these individuals," he said, "I just
expect that a lot happens that we don't know about."
A B O U T T H E A U T H O R
RYAN JACOBSis a former producer for TheAtlantic.com.
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