Soon behind the wheel, maybe

LIKE all police forces, Saudi Arabia's Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, better known as the Mutaween, performs a range of tasks. Armed with long beards and short sticks, its agents are most notorious for two particular jobs: enforcing the separation of sexes in public places and herding people into mosques at prayer times. How shocking, then, that one of its most senior officers is challenging both missions. Ahmed al-Ghamdi, who is the head of the vice squad in the holy city of Mecca, argues that there is no Muslim prohibition against innocently mixing the sexes and that, since the five daily prayers can be performed anywhere, by individuals as well as in groups, there is no need to force shops to close at prayer times.

Since Mr Ghamdi started airing such views in newspaper columns and television debates last November, rumours of his impending dismissal have abounded. Such expectations rose earlier this month, when the kingdom's most senior cleric, the Grand Mufti, told Mr Ghamdi to keep his opinions to himself, saying that anyone who questioned the need for communal prayers was leading Muslims to hell. Few were surprised when, on April 25th, the state news agency announced his replacement. Yet just two hours later the item was removed, apparently after some senior princes had intervened. Mr Ghamdi remains in office, unrepentant.

The embarrassing flip-flop not only exposed ideological rifts inside one of the kingdom's chief citadels of orthodoxy. It reflected a broader groundswell of debate that is beginning to erode the religious conservatives' long-uncontested control. Saudi Arabia's beleaguered liberals had placed high hopes in King Abdullah, who succeeded to the throne in 2005 with a reputation for reformist tendencies. But the 85-year-old monarch has proved wary of provoking a conservative backlash. It is only now that slow, gentle pressure from the top is producing inklings of change.

Vroom, ladies! Vroom!

Another issue that Mr Ghamdi has weighed in on, for example, is Saudi Arabia's prohibition, unique among Muslim-majority countries, against women drivers. Though Saudis frequently scoff at what they regard as foreigners' obsession with the driving ban, it is a perennial topic of private argument. To date, the ban's supporters have carried the day, citing supposed religious principles, local tradition and professed fears for Saudi women's safety. Yet with younger clerics such as Mr Ghamdi doubting the scriptural grounds for making women rely on male drivers, other arguments are looking flimsier.

Many Saudi observers took note earlier this month when one of the kingdom's best-selling dailies, Al-Riyadh, devoted a long article to exploring how to implement a lifting of the driving ban. One expert, for instance, proposed testing liberalised driving laws in one city at a time. Another suggested that before Saudi women can get licences the public could be conditioned by allowing female foreign residents, including household servants, to drive. This would answer the common complaint, voiced even by conservatives, that the driving ban risks increasing the bigger danger of Saudi women mixing with unrelated men who may not even be Muslims.

Other people interviewed simply said the ban was a silly anachronism and should be dropped forthwith. Such outspokenness is partly because Saudi women are becoming a lot more prominent. They account for 60% of university students and a growing if relatively small part of the workforce. It also reflects exposure to nearby countries such as Kuwait, where women not only drive but are elected to parliament. Last month in nearby Abu Dhabi a Saudi woman drew cheers at a televised poetry contest, reciting impassioned verses against religious bigotry. Earlier this month, audiences in the emirate flocked to watch Faten al-Helw, a lion-taming Egyptian grandmother, put her big cats through flaming hoops.

Saudi Arabia's conservatives are not so cowed. One elderly cleric recently issued a fatwa on his website, decreeing that anyone who advocated mixing sexes was an enemy of Islam and should be killed. But the website was quietly shut down. King Abdullah has said nothing about the fatwa. But he did invite cameras to record a cosy private meeting between himself and Sheikha Mozah, the elegantly dressed and unveiled wife of the emir of Qatar.