The religious police in Saudi Arabia recently joined Twitter, despite having condemned the microblogging website as the source of all evil and devastation in 2014. The kingdom’s religious police, also known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, opened its Twitter account @PvGovSa last month, almost immediately attracting over 66,000 followers. The account now has close to 100,000 followers.
Local media reported that the decision was taken by Abdul Rahman Al Sanad, the president of the commission, to improve the public perception of the religious police, commonly known as Haia, in the kingdom.
The first tweet posted by @PvGovSa sought blessings from God for the commission’s well being and its second tweet showed Al Sanad opening the account on his laptop.
معالي الرئيس العام يدشن حساب الرئاسة على (تويتر) http://t.co/v1ZCVKxmvO pic.twitter.com/xjK9Bwe7dR
— رئاسة الهيئة (@PvGovSa) April 22, 2015
Twenty tweets have so far been posted on its page.
The subject of social media has been constantly debated in Saudi Arabia, with Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the grand mufti of the kingdom, labeling Twitter as a source of lies and falsehood in October 2014 and criticizing everyone that considered the microblogging website to offer any credible information. Also, last year, the commission reportedly shut down over 10,000 accounts on Twitter that they accused of having committed religious violations, such as criticizing the royal family or sharing pornographic material. A spokesperson for the commission also clarified that such crimes were in fact punishable by fines of more than £500,000 and prison sentences of up to five years.
Yet, citizens of Saudi Arabia have taken to various social media platforms in droves, with this particular Gulf kingdom clocking the world’s highest Twitter penetration and accounts of 40 percent of all active Twitter users in the Arab world. The Arab Social Media Report, published by Dubai School of Government last year, suggested approximately 2.4 million Saudis tweet regularly. As of 2013, the kingdom has reported over five million Facebook users as well as the highest per capita use of YouTube in the world.
Twitter is also considered rather popular among Riyadh’s ruling classes. A report on world leaders’ use of the platform, which was released on April 28, showed that King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is Twitter’s second most influential figurehead after Pope Francis, with his tweets being retweeted almost 4,500 times by his more than 2.5 million followers.
Saudi Arabia’s religious police, which engage approximately 4,000 officers with a budget of $400 million, are a government agency that has been tasked with the enforcement of Sharia Law within the Sunni-dominated state.
Photo Credits: iPick
