Saudis Clamp Down on Cross Dressers

As seen at TheMediaLine.org

The Saudi religious police arrested several cross-dressers over this week’s Islamic holiday Eid Al-Adha.

The Saudi commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, also known as Saudi Arabia’s religious police, enhanced patrols of the market in A-Dammam, the capital of the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. The vice police claim to have spotted seven or eight cross dressers a day throughout the three-day festival, which ended on Monday.

The cross dressers were seen wearing women’s clothing, such as skirts and heeled shoes, and had feminine hairdos and makeup, the London-based Al-Hayyat reported.

Police say these men are dressing up as women in public commercial spaces so as to enter areas off limits to unmarried men.

“Their general look appeared to onlookers to be inappropriate, socially, religiously and morally,” the police said of the people detained, adding that they were also on the lookout for men harassing women.

“The cross dressers doubled in number during the eid,” Sheikh Ali Al-Qarni, a spokesman for the commission, told Al-Hayyat. “If, on a normal day, we see about two a day, during the holiday we saw about four or five a day, because they are exploiting the congestion of holiday-goers. That’s why the commission beefed up its patrols during this time.”

Officials in the police department pointed to what they called inappropriate pants worn by one of the cross dressers, in addition to hairdos which resemble afro style.

The police said this hairstyle was “unacceptable”, adding that “Western” accessories, including jewelry, had been confiscated from the young men.

The spokesman said the Interior Ministry issued clear directives about prohibited clothing.

Saudi judges have previously imposed sentences on men accused of behaving like women, ranging from imprisonment to flogging.
In addition to cross dressing, the police were also on the lookout for anything deemed as inappropriate, including Western clothing, dress codes imitating stars such as Shakira and Michael Jackson, cell phones that play Western ring tones, clothing with bright colors and shoes with mismatching colors.

Dr. Rima Sabban, a sociologist at the Zayyed University in the United Arab Emirates, said a distinction had to be made between young men who dress up as women in order to enter public spaces where they are not allowed, and men who cross dress because they want to connect to their feminine side.

“It’s a different issue than being transgendered,” she told The Media Line. “The distinction puts the explanation in a different framework where public rules and regulations deny groups from using the public space that should by definition be open for everybody.”

“Here, the male youth are excluded, so they are rebelling against this exclusion,” Dr Sabban said. “It’s a form of rebellion but it’s not a rebellion against who I am, or whether the society is accepting my sexuality or not. It’s a rebellion with an element of fun, adventure and breaking rules. It’s different from cross dressing, which stems from a feeling inside.”

“The people who have issues that are unclear, probably tend more than those who conform, to do things that are against rules and regulations,” she added.

Saudi Arabia is governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic law known as Wahhabism.

Saudi Arabia’s religious police have drawn international criticism for their strict and sometimes brutal clampdowns on what is perceived as un-Islamic behavior.

The organization enforces religious rules such as banning men and women from mixing, Islamic dress code and prayer attendance and prohibiting the possession or consumption of alcohol.

“The religious police have problems and issues with everything and almost everybody,” Sabban said. “They are an entity that is trying to enforce their own power on the society and recently they have been acting more severely on all issues.”

“They want to be in power and reinforce the conservative ideology and prowess,” She added. “Recently, the system has been trying to be liberalized and open up, and they feel threatened and feel a loss of power, so they try to hold on to anything that will give them power and visibility in the society, over the liberal groups and the voice of more reason.”

Earlier this year, Saudi King ‘Abdallah Bin ‘Abd Al-‘Aziz initiated sweeping reforms which included firing the head of the religious police. It is thought the reforms were an effort to moderate the country’s leadership and present to the West a more toned-down image of the Saudi kingdom.

Last June 67 men, mostly foreigners, were arrested in Riyadh, reportedly for wearing women’s clothing. The arrest prompted criticism from the rights group Human Rights Watch, which said the kingdom was violating basic rights of privacy and freedom of expression.

The organization said that Shari’a law, as interpreted and enforced in Saudi Arabia, remains uncodified and no written and accessible legal standards exist that criminalize the wearing of women’s clothing by men.