Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Saudi Religious Police Troubled by Youth Fashion Trends | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat – The Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is looking into a number of customs it believes to be “foreign” as part of study that it will embark upon in cooperation with King Saud University in Riyadh.

Sources close to the Committee told Asharq Al-Awsat that the study will focus on a number of observations that it made related to the way that Saudi youths dress, cut their hair and the kind of accessories that they wear.

According to sources, the study adopts creating new methods and objectives to guide youths as well as new methods of giving advice upon which the fieldworkers of the Committee base their work.

The Committee will bear the full cost of the study that will be conducted by the National Centre for Youth Studies at King Saud University in a bid to explore various mechanisms to tackle some of the Committee’s problems as it has been heavily criticized by local residents over the past few years.

The Committee designated a separate department for research and studies for which researchers and specialists were appointed over the past few years. The Committee released the results of some field research on the number of youths in public places and highlighted a so-called “new look,” a number of odd and foreign haircuts and fashions such as low-waist trousers, which has spread amongst the Saudi youth over the past few years.

Earlier this month, the Committee established what it called the Presidential Council, the duty of which is to endorse the Committee’s policies and strategies, consisting of ten members presided over by Sheikh Ibrahim Bin Abdullah Al Ghaith, Head of the Committee.

This council, the first of its kind in the history of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, is made up of a deputy chairman, three consultants, the director of the Committee’s education department and other members.

The Committee will conduct academic studies as well as fieldwork involving the public to analyse the extent to which the body is accepted in society since a number of cases have been taken to court over the past few years concerning the Committee.