Saudi Thought Police Bust Mom in Starbucks

The 7th century geniuses who brought us jihad are still hard at work, this time making the world safe for male Muslim coffee drinkers:

A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia’s religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.

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She sat in a curtained booth with her business partner in the café’s “family” area, the only seats where men and women are allowed to mix.

For Yara, it was a matter of convenience. But in Saudi Arabia, public contact between unrelated men and women is strictly prohibited.

“Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked ‘Why are you here together?’. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin,” recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.

The men were from Saudi Arabia’s Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.

Yara, whose parents are Jordanian and grew up in Salt Lake City, once believed that life in Saudi Arabia was becoming more liberal. But on Monday the religious police took her mobile phone, pushed her into a cab and drove her to Malaz prison in Riyadh. She was interrogated, strip-searched and forced to sign and fingerprint a series of confessions pleading guilty to her “crime”.

“They took me into a filthy bathroom, full of water and dirt. They made me take off my clothes and squat and they threw my clothes in this slush and made me put them back on,” she said. Eventually she was taken before a judge.

“He said ‘You are sinful and you are going to burn in hell’. I told him I was sorry. I was very submissive. I had given up. I felt hopeless,” she said.

I imagine the Promoters of Virtue got a naughty little thrill out of abusing the woman that’s not atypical for their kind.

It’s the Sharia law that these fine fellows are so diligent about enforcing that is, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury ("Culture Buried", per Gaius) says is inevitable in Britain.

I refuse to believe that.  Stupidity of this kind should be opposed everywhere, at all times.  Hopefully Yara will fight the good fight in Saudi, though one could hardly blame her for abandoning it.  We’ve seen what they do to victims there.