Upholding Islamic Values

"It was very annoying."
"They did cause a big problem. However, it is the law I suppose, so we just have to put up with it."
Saudi Arabian store clerk, Riyadh

"All roads lead to Mohammed bin Nayef when it comes to the people who are in prison for political reasons."
"They say he's very effective in fighting terrorism. From my point of view that is not true, but in any case otherwise it seems that civil society is over."
Saudi activist, selfp-protectively anonymous

The new Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef is losing no time in alerting Saudis to the fact that the old rule is gone, and the new rule is beginning. Under King Abdullah, who died last month at a respectable 90, a cautious, slow and hopeful relaxation of the venerated misogyny inherent in the culture surrounding Islam had begun to creep into Saudi society. Not too soon, never enough, for the liberated women of Saudi Arabia who are anything but liberated.

But a law had been enacted giving them permission to run for public office at the municipal level; eventually. And a more tolerant view of some day permitting Saudi women to drive, to go off on trips without their husband's specific permission, and to take employment in places where, for example, women's lingerie is sold. But still, women must be modest and wear the all-concealing abayas.

Under the impression that their country was slowly but inevitably drawing itself into the 20th Century while other parts of the world were solidly in the 21st Century, Saudi women were beginning to think they were butterflies, not merely moths, and the flame they were attracted to was colour; not necessarily vibrant colour, but colours other than black. Black is the approved colour for the abayas.

Some are avialable now in grey, in blue, in brown; not earth-shatteringly flamboyant and expressive of joy, but a tad different. Forget it; colour is seen as a violation of the modesty code. Sending public decency officers sweeping through Riyadh's shopping malls streaming into stores selling the abayas that Saudi women by law must wear to ensure that vulnerable men are not sent out of their minds with desire if they see a bit of female flesh.

Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef is not as encumbered with concern over permitting women a bit of equality; he knows where they belong, and it is definitely behind a black abaya, quietly accompanied by a male relative in public if she is not at home tending to the house and children. Known familiarly, but not evidently fondly as "MBN" this man is the first of the generation of princes who will become king.

At age 55, he is grooming himself for the grim purpose of taking the absolute monarch into the future by echoing the past. He has been busy seeing that dissidents are being securely locked up. Lawyers and writers who succeeded in the recent past in insisting on due legal process, or those who argued for a constitutional monarchy are now thinking about the errors of their ways as they serve their punishing decade in prison.

Montreal city council is lending its support to Raif Badawi, as well as his wife and three children who are currently living in Quebec. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)

Among them is Raif Badawi, sentenced to prison but also to a thousand lashes, to mercilessly flog the insolence of criticism out of his very core. And the beheading videos that have so appalled the world that ISIS so proudly places on YouTube for the delectation of their appreciative audience? It is simply a common sentence handed down to those whom Saudi justice recognizes as a deviant and devious threat to the state.