Islamic religious police

The Islamic religious police (Arabic: مطوع‎ muṭawwiʿ, plural مطوعون muṭawwiʿūn – derived from classical Arabic: mutaṭawwiʿa/muṭṭawwiʿa) is the official police of some Islamic states, who on behalf of the state, disperses sharia-rules in respect to religious behavior (morality), or the precepts of Wahhabism. The establishment of a religious police is considered justified with the Quran doctrine, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong or promotion of virtue and prevention of vice. Some controversy, though, exists and opinions are divided on the function or purpose of religious police, for example, in Saudi Arabia some see them as limiting secularization, while some foreign Islamic imams, see them as an outdated over-conservative annoyance.

Names

The word mutaween (المطوعين muṭawwiʿīn; variant English spellings: mutawwain, ''muttawa", mutawallees, mutawa’ah, mutawi’, mutawwa') most literally means "volunteers" in the Arabic language, and is commonly used as a casual term for the government-authorized or government-recognized religious police (or clerical police) of Saudi Arabia. It was originally a casual synonym for the religious police of Saudi Arabia. The formal short term for the Saudi religious police is هيئة "hay'ah".