Witchy woman

"You can tell by the broom and pointy hat..."

We may as well include the elusive snipe, Leprechans and Nessie in our search for things magical from the land of the two holy places.

Occasionally I am surprised by another piece of information on Islamic weirdness, this one especially. I had no idea Saudi Arabia had an official "Anti-Whitchcraft Unit" tasked with rooting out those mole-ridden, hook-nosed, black-hatted haters of  Islam.  Part of the "Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" brigade, they must be earning their pay as they claim to have broken a spell cast against a family when they were sent a wolfs head wrapped in lingerie.  The unknown family that had fallen victim to the spell had been "liberated from the jaws of the wolf.”

Where would we be without the Anti-Witchcraft Unit to keep safe their people from unwanted spells and incantations.

From The Jerusalem Post July 20 by David E. Miller

Saudi Arabia's 'Anti-Witchcraft Unit' breaks another spell

When the severed head of a wolf wrapped in women's lingerie turned up near the city of Tabouk in northern Saudi Arabia this week, authorities knew they had another case of witchcraft on their hands, a capital offence in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.

 

Agents of the country’s Anti-Witchcraft Unit were quickly dispatched and set about trying to break the spell that used the beast’s head.

 

Saudi Arabia takes witchcraft so seriously that it has banned the Harry Potter series by British writer J.K. Rowling, rife with tales of sorcery and magic. It set up the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in May 2009 and placed it under the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPV), Saudi Arabia's religious police.

 

"In accordance with our Islamic tradition we believe that magic really exists," Abdullah Jaber, a political cartoonist at the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, told The Media Line. "The fact that an official body, subordinate to the Saudi Ministry of Interior, has a unit to combat sorcery proves that the government recognizes this, like Muslims worldwide."

 

The unit is charged with apprehending sorcerers and reversing the detrimental effects of their spells. On the CPV website, a hotline encourages citizens across the kingdom to report cases of sorcery to local officials for immediate treatment.

 

In the case of the wolf's head, the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in Tabouk was able to break the spell. The Saudi daily Okaz reported on Monday that the unknown family that had fallen victim to the spell had been "liberated from the jaws of the wolf.”

 

The Anti-Witchcraft Unit was created in order to educate the public about the danger of sorcerers and "combat manifestations of polytheism and reliance on other Gods," the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

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