The Saudi government pays a morals police squad that roams streets and shopping malls to make sure unrelated men and women are kept apart, that women are covered from head to toe and search for alcohol and drugs under the kingdom’s austere interpretation of Islam.
In 2008, Barrak issued a fatwa that two Saudi writers should be tried for apostasy for their “heretical articles” and put to death if they did not repent after the two wrote articles that questioned the Sunni Muslim view in Saudi Arabia that Christians and Jews should be considered unbelievers. He has also denounced Shi’ite Muslims as “infidels” in another edict that coincided with sectarian tensions in Iraq.
