by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Last month, according to\u00a0Emirates247<\/a>\u00a0,\u00a0\u201c<\/strong>A Saudi court sentenced two Asian housemaids to 10 years in jail and ordered their lashed 1,000 times each after they were found guilty of indulging in sorcery at their employers\u2019 houses\u2026 Their Saudi employers reported the two maids to the Gulf country\u2019s feared religious police, saying they had discovered that their families had been harmed because of sorcery practiced by the maids against them.\u201d<\/p>\n Emirates247 does not go into details, perhaps because it\u2019s written for an English-reading audience which has enough difficulties dealing with the bare-bone facts of the report.\u00a0 However, to give the reader an idea of the \u201ccolorful\u201d nature of these many anecdotes of witches and warlocks emanating from Saudi Arabia\u2014the birthplace and chief articulator of Islam\u2014consider\u00a0this 2010 Arabic report<\/a>\u00a0about a flying, naked African sorceress arrested in Saudi Arabia in 2006.<\/p>\n According to\u00a0Al Arabiyya<\/em>:<\/p>\n Men from the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the\u00a0Prevention of Vice were surprised to find a naked African sorceress while conducting a raid on one of the dens of \u201cMagic and Sorcery\u201d in Medina.\u00a0 The men reported that they tried to cover the witch but she refused. \u00a0The biggest surprise for them was when she \u201cflew like a bird\u201d out of the room and disappeared from the apartment leaving the twenty men of the committee in awe.\u00a0 According to the newspaper\u00a0\u2018Ukaz<\/em>\u00a0(issued Monday, May 29, 2006), the men of the Committee carried out the raid on Sunday and found more than 20 women in the den as well as the naked African witch.\u00a0 The newspaper said that men continued to search for the \u201cwitch\u201d on other floors of the building.\u00a0 \u00a0They were later surprised to find a man and his children crying out for help.\u00a0 The man reported that \u00a0\u201cA naked African woman fell from the ceiling in the kids\u2019 room as they slept.\u00a0 The kids woke up scared and started screaming.\u00a0 We all ran away after I was sure she\u2019s a witch.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The report continues by saying that the men finally found the \u201cwitch\u201d and paralyzed her by reciting Koran verses.\u00a0 They covered her up and arrested her, claiming to find \u201cincense, beads and sorcery material as well as videos to teach magic and a piece of a school girl\u2019s uniform, which alerted them to the fact that the \u2018witch\u2019 might have put a school girl under a spell.\u201d<\/p>\n Commenting on the story, \u00a0senior Islamic cleric Sheikh Abdul Mohsin al-\u2018Ubeikan said \u201cMagic is one of the greatest sins and may lead to atheism and polytheism.\u00a0 It is unfortunate that wicked work is practiced in the city of the Prophet [Medina], peace be upon him.\u201d\u00a0 He also declared that \u201csome witches may ride a broom and fly in the air with the help of jinn.\u00a0 This woman flew to another floor to escape the Committee with the help of jinn.\u00a0 I would like to thank the Committee men for their blessed efforts to destroy each spoiler and ask Allah for his help as they support everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Bizarre?\u00a0 The fact is, there is no end to such stories emanating from the prophet\u2019s peninsula.\u00a0 In April 2012, according to the Arabic website\u00a0Al Shorfa<\/a>, an al-Qaeda affiliated group in Yemen, called Ansar al-Sharia (or the \u201cSupporters of Sharia Law\u201d) beheaded a woman for \u201cpracticing magic and sorcery.\u201d Members of the group broke into the home of Sharifa Amr\u2014a local healer who used natural herbs to treat sick people\u2014\u201cbeheaded her, and then hung her severed head in front of the home of another popular healer in the region, as a warning that he might share her fate.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2011, \u201cSaudi Arabia\u2019s religious police arrested an Indonesian housemaid for\u00a0casting a magic spell<\/a>\u00a0on a local family and \u2018turning its life upside down.\u2019\u201d The maid \u201cconfessed\u201d to using sorcery, and \u201ccommission experts took the magic items to their office and managed to dismantle and stop the spell.\u201d\u00a0 In 2008, another women in the Arab kingdom was set to be\u00a0beheaded for witchcraft<\/a>\u00a0and in 2011 yet another woman\u00a0was beheaded<\/a>.<\/p>\n This, then, is the mentality that governs Saudi Arabia\u2014based not on \u201ctribal culture\u201d but Islam\u2019s authentic teachings, including the Koran, which warns against sorcery and jinn.<\/p>\n