That Old Black Magic

COMMENT: We’ve spent much time in these pro­grams on the sub­ject of Saudi Ara­bia. A recent story high­lighted the medieval, benighted  nature of this “ally.” (Saudi Ara­bia has also invested heav­ily in U.S. com­mer­cial and edu­ca­tional infrastructure.)

It seems the Saudi secu­rity forces are tak­ing a highly-touted course in how to negate “black magic” (no kidding!).

Great.

“Haia Offi­cers Get Train­ing to Com­bat Black Magic” by MD Humadain; Arab News; 4/4/2011.

EXCERPT: A total of 30 offi­cials of the Com­mis­sion for the Pro­mo­tion of Virtue and Pre­ven­tion of Vice (Haia) have been trained on how to deal with cases of black magic.

The three-day train­ing pro­gram was held in the East­ern Province city of Al-Ahsa.

The com­mis­sion has achieved remark­able suc­cesses in com­bat­ing black magic in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try. It has set up nine spe­cial­ized cen­ters in the main cities to deal with black magicians.

The major­ity of peo­ple arrested for prac­tic­ing black magic in the King­dom are Africans and Indonesians.

Accord­ing to a report received by Arab News, a sin­gle spe­cial­ized cen­ter had dealt with 586 cases involv­ing black magic, show­ing the enor­mity of the problem.

About 50 cases were reported in Jed­dah alone in the first half of 2009. Gurayat and Qun­fuda also reported high rates of black magic cases dur­ing that year. . . .