In what Al Hayat newspaper described as a “first of its kind” decision, Shoura Council have decided to vote against the expansion of the Committee to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice (aka the Religious Police). The Islamic committee at the Shoura Council has put a report of the performance of CPVPV during the last year, and introduced four recommendations for the council, which voted against three of these recommendations and only approved one of them.

The only approved recommendation was to create more jobs for graduates of the higher institute to promote virtue and prevent vice, which was opened recently. I don’t understand this: why to open this institute when there is no jobs to its students? The three rejected recommendations were: 1) increasing salaries of field workers (whatever that means) by 20%, 2) opening new centers for the committee in all parts of the Kingdom, starting with 20 new centers every year, and 3) supporting the R&D department with SR 5m. This comes after a recent move by the government to limit the power of the religious police.