Saudi Vice, episode 10: The Sting

Like most working men, the employees of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice sometimes have to attend stupid mandatory training sessions. Pinheaded academics who know nothing about the raw, hard real world of enforcing Sharia law come and say things like "you shouldn't bash women's heads with your batons" and "you should be more sensitive when beating foreigners."

In one recent, boring session, our heroes became fed up when the instructor suggested that they should be polite to the public. Other Vice Commission members were upset when this same teacher gave some of them failing grades.

Clearly, this man - a professor of psychology at Umm al-Qra University in the holy city of Mecca - was an immoral attacker of Islam who spat on time honored customs like beating women. The only thing that our heroes needed to do was catch him in the act.

So they set up a sting.

They "persuaded" a woman to call up the professor, pose as a student and ask to meet with him to discuss her grades. He agreed to meet her in a public place, as long as she shows up with a chaperone - her brother.

As soon as he arrived, he was surprised to find the girl alone. The professor then found himself surrounded by our heroes, the religious police, who handcuffed him and hauled him into custody.
He was accused of being in a state of khulwa – seclusion – with an unrelated woman.

The professor has been sentenced to 180 lashes and eight months in jail, and the heroic Muttawa has restored its honor. And by extension, the honor of Allah has been protected as well.