Too much of a virtuous thing, the bastards

See fire at building at Saudi Arabia.

See young women in burning school, at risk of being burned alive.

See members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the mutaween, or religious police) blocking their exit from the building, because the women are not garbed in the abaya (an enveloping outfit similar to the Afghan burqa). See the mutaween also scuffle with firemen trying to get into the building, for the same reason.

See 15 young women die, mostly by being crushed in the ensuing crowd.

See Allah weeping, and considering being extremely unmerciful to the self-rightious assholes who let this happen.

The English-language Saudi Gazette, in a front-page report on Thursday, quoted witnesses as saying that members of the police, known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, had stopped men who tried to help the girls warning “it is a sinful to approach them.”
One civil defence officer told al-Eqtisadiah he saw three members of the religious police “beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya.”
“We told them that the situation was very critical and did not allow for such behaviour. But they shouted at us and refused to move away from the gates,” the newspaper quoted the officer as saying.

When even the tame newspapers in Saudi criticize the mutaween, you know things have gone beyond the Pale.

Of course, if this had happened in Cuba, the conservative right wing in the US would be all over this story. If it had happened in Afghanistan under the Taliban post-9/11, the US government would be issuing broadsides in the press. If this happened in China, there would be formal protests.

But Saudi Arabia is, after all, our ally.

If there are martyrs to be welcomed into the Muslim Paradise, I hope those girls are among them.

(Via Bears-Cave)