The occasion was National Day—the anniversary of the founding of the kingdom in 1932. Although the women who joined the celebration in the stadium and other venues were suitably covered in black abayas, in accord with the law of the land, many Saudis were nevertheless outraged, and #Patriotism_is_not_Sin began to trend:
Some thought even without women in the picture, the celebration lacked sufficient decorum:
Many thought they knew the problem: last year the government scaled back the powers of the infamous Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. If only the Committee could once again arrest people for using the wrong gender entry to the mall or playing musical instruments in public, rather than merely report these infractions of shari'a to the police, society would no longer be on the verge of collapse, what with women going to stadiums and all. And so #The_People_Demand_the_Return_of_the_Committe became a thing.
Others had more fun with the impending breakdown of civilization:
Meanwhile, in neighboring Abu Dhabi, they sat back and enjoyed the show:
Michael Isenberg writes about the Muslim world, medieval and modern. His forthcoming novel, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092. It depicts the war for the Muslim soul between those who seek to enforce shari’a strictly, persecute Jews and Christians, and stamp out "un-Islamic" science, and those who wink at a few sins, tolerate their non-Muslim neighbors, and write science books instead of burning them.
