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In characteristically subdued Saudi style, the debate prompted by Fahd's proposed reforms is neither conducted in public meetings nor reported in the country's media. The government bans public gatherings of three or more people, and press censorship precludes coverage of internal disputes. Instead, petitions and pamphlets, widely disseminated by photocopiers and fax machines, inform the public of conservative and liberal views. Both minorities seek to influence Saudi Arabia's silent majority, but the literature of the well- organized ultraconservatives is more plentiful and vituperative. Religious extremists have even advocated the execution of so-called secularists -- men without beards. So vicious are the accusations that the country's most influential Islamic scholars last week condemned the ultraconservative campaign as "counter to the interests of the Muslim society." Like the moderates, the conservatives have endorsed the concept of a Consultative Council and called for an end to corruption. But they also want Shari'a (Islamic law) applied to banks, courts and the media. The government, for example, would be barred from borrowing money from banks, and noncriminal offenses would be tried in religious courts. So far, King Fahd has rejected the demand.
During Ramadan, the month-long Islamic fasting period that followed the war, vigilante members of the religious police, the mutawain, stepped up their harassment of Saudi and foreign women who displayed too much skin in violation of dress codes. Women appearing in public without veils, or without wearing head-to-toe abayas, have been abused and occasionally assaulted by the cane- wielding morals squads.
The vigilantes, mostly semi-educated young men bitterly opposed to Western values, have broken into compounds in Riyadh and Jidda to threaten and arrest Westerners drinking home-brewed liquor in defiance of the ban on alcohol. A women's tennis tournament in Riyadh was halted when the mutawain learned of it. The government advised an oil-company executive to cancel a party because members of both sexes were invited. Wives of Western businessmen and diplomats are fearful of leaving their villas in the evening unless accompanied by their husbands. To do otherwise in the atmosphere of intimidation created by the mutawain is to risk imprisonment.
To curb the excesses of the fanatics, the King appointed a religious moderate, Abdul Rahman al-Said, to head the mutawain, officially known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Al-Said, a former dean of Islamic studies at Imam Mohammed Ibn Saud Islamic University, received an $18 million budget increase and instructions to rid the mutawain of zealous volunteers. But harassment of Saudis and foreigners by the mutawain continues, underscoring how difficult it will be for al-Said to gain control of the organization and its durable network of faculty and student supporters.