Committee For The Promotion Of Virtue And The Prevention Of Vice (Saudi Arabia)

The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice ( ar, هيئة الأمر بالمعروف والنهي عن المنكر, hayʾa al-ʾamr bil-maʿrūf wan-nahī ʿan al-munkar, abbreviated CPVPV and colloquially termed ''hai’a'' (committee), and ''mutawa'', ''mutaween'' and by other similar names and translations in English-language sources), is a Saudi government religious authority charged with implementing the Islamic doctrine of ''hisbah''.

Tracing its modern origin to a revival of the pre-modern official function of ''muhtasib'' (market inspector) by the first Saudi state (1727–1818), it was established in its best known form in 1976, with the main goal of supervising markets and public morality, and was often described as Islamic religious police.
By the early 2010s, the committee was estimated to have 3,500–4,000 officers on the streets, assisted by thousands of volunteers, with an additional 10,000 administrative personnel. Its head held the rank of cabinet minister and reported directly to the king. Committee officers and volunteers patrolled public places, with volunteers focusing on enforcing strict rules of hijab, segregation between the sexes, and daily prayer attendance; but also non-Islamic products/activities such as the sale of dogs and cats, Barbie dolls, ''Pokémon'', and Valentine's Day gifts. Officers were authorized to pursue, detain and interrogate suspected violators.

The power of the CPVPV was drastically reduced with the 2016 reforms of Mohammed bin Salman, and it was banned "from pursuing, questioning, asking for identification, arresting and detaining anyone suspected of a crime".

Names

The name of the committee has also been translated as ''Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Elimination of Sin'', abbreviated CAVES. They are known colloquially as ''hai’a'' (literally "committee", also transliterated as ''Haia'' or ''Hayaa'').

In academic sources, committee officers or the volunteers have also been called by several Arabic terms derived from the root ''ṭ-w-ʿ'', including ''mutaṭawwiʿūn'' ( ar, متطوعون, volunteers), ''muṭawwiʿ'' ( ar, مطوع, one who compels obedience),
and ''muṭāwiʿa'' (no literal translation given). These words are etymologically related to the Quranically derived terms ''muṭṭawwiʿa'' and ''mutaṭawwiʿa'' (those who perform supererogatory deeds of piety). English-language press has used the names ''mutawa'' and ''mutaween''.

History, structure, role

The committee's rationale is based on the classical Islamic doctrine of '' hisba'', which is associated with the Quranic injunction of ''enjoining good and forbidding wrong'', and refers to the duty of Muslims to promote moral rectitude and intervene when another Muslim is acting wrongly. In pre-modern Islamic history, its legal implementation was entrusted to a traditional Islamic public official called ''muhtasib'' (market inspector), who was charged with preventing fraud, disturbance of public order and infractions against public morality.

This office disappeared in the modern era everywhere in the Muslim world, including Arabia, but it was revived by the first Saudi state (1727–1818) and continued to play a role in the second (1823–87), due to its importance within Wahhabi doctrine.

;First state 1727–1818 (Emirate of Diriyah)
Following the conquest of the Hijaz in 1803 a chronicler records bonfires made from confiscated tobacco pipes and stringed instruments by enforcers of sharia (after a list had been made of the owners).Cook, ''Forbidding Wrong'', 2003, p.125

According to the US Library of Congress Country Studies, mutawwiin

"have been integral to the Wahhabi movement since its inception. Mutawwiin have served as missionaries, as enforcers of public morals, and as `public ministers of the religion` who preach in the Friday mosque. Pursuing their duties in Jiddah in 1806, the mutawwiin were observed to be `constables for the punctuality of prayers ... with an enormous staff in their hand, howere ordered to shout, to scold and to drag people by the shoulders to force them to take part in public prayers, five times a day.`"

Robert Lacey describes them as "vigilantes". "The righteous of every neighbourhood hatbanded themselves together into societies for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice."

;Second state 1823–1887 ( Emirate of Nejd)
According to a study by Michael Cook, based on "Wahhabi writings and rulers' decrees" the role of commanding good and forbidding wrong developed a prominent place during the second Saudi emirate, and the first "documented instance of a formal committee to enforces the duty dates to 1926", when the official Saudi newspaper in Mecca published the news of its establishment. "One ruler orders his emirs to seek out people who gather together to smoke tobacco ... scholars and emirs should keep a check on the people of their towns with regard to prayer and religious instruction." Performance of hajj "is likewise to be monitored."Cook, ''Forbidding Wrong'', 2003, p.126

;Third state (1902–)
Under the third Saudi state, the most zealous followers of Ibn Sa'ud were appointed as ''muhtasibs''. A foreign visitor reported that in Riyāḍ in 1922-23 flogging was "commonly" administered for "smoking, non-attendance at prayer and other such offenses".
This severity caused conflict with the local population and foreign pilgrims when the Hijaz was conquered and Wahhabi strictness arrived.
In response, committees were established in Riyadh and Mecca in 1932 to check their excesses. After their establishment in the Hijaz, the committees "rapidly spread" to the rest of the kingdom.Cook, ''Forbidding Wrong'', 2003, p.127

Evidence that enforcement could "swing from a soft line to hard one and back again" comes from reports from Jeddah in early 1930, and summer of 1932, during a temporary move away from Wahhabi puritanism by King Ibn Saud early in his reign.

In 1976 the two formerly mutually independent directories in the Hijaz and Najd were united under an official of ministerial rank, acting under direct royal command, and, the Al al-Sheikh director of the committee gained a seat on the Saudi cabinet, strengthening its prestige. Its control extended to small towns as well as the cities.
The unified ''Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice'' was then mainly responsible for supervising markets and public order and assisted by volunteers, who enforce attendance of daily prayers and gender segregation in public places.

Following the November–December 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure, when religion became more conservative in Saudi Arabia,

"people noticed that imams and religious folk seemed to have more money to spend ... with the religious police benefiting most obviously from government injections of cash. They started to appear in imposing new GMC vans, with their once humble local committees of mutawwa ... taking on the grander, `Big Brother` aura of their original, collective name – Al Hayah, `the Commission`. They developed attitude to match."

They were still, however, "essentially volunteers engaged in their own variety of social work."

In 2002, the deaths of 15 young girls in 2002 in Mecca after the mutaween's refused to let them leave a burning school was widely publicized and damaged the mutaween's image.

;Beginning of restrictions on power
In May 2006 it was announced that the committee would no longer be allowed to interrogate those it arrests for behavior deemed un-Islamic. Prior to this, commission members enjoyed almost total power to arrest, detain, and interrogate those suspected of violating the Sharia."Virtue Squads Toning Down Shows of Power in Saudi Arabia"
Rob L. Wagner, The Media Line, 23 May 2010

In May 2006 the Interior Ministry issued a decree stating that "the role of the commission will end after it arrests the culprit or culprits and hands them over to police, who will then decide whether to refer them to the public prosecutor." In June 2007 the Saudi mutaween announced "the creation of a 'department of rules and regulations' to ensure the activities of commission members comply with the law, after coming under heavy pressure for the death of two people in its custody in less than two weeks". The governmental National Society for Human Rights

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