From Khelil: ""Agents
of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV), she
said, were causing an unpleasant scene. The government-salaried vigilantes, a
bearded auxiliary police force familiarly known to Saudis as the Hayaa, had
marched officiously into an educational exhibit featuring plaster models of
dinosaurs, turned off the lights and ordered everyone out, frightening children
and alarming their parents. [...]
But
most of the messages singled out the religious police for ridicule. "They
worried that people would find the dinosaurs more highly evolved than
themselves," explained one. "It’s the Hayaa that should be stuffed and mounted
so future generations can learn about extinct animals," quipped another. This
message adopted a more pedantic tone: "Dinosaurs are a paleontological life form
from an ancient geological era, and our clerics are a paleontological life form
from an ancient social era." "Hello? Stone Age? We have some of your people; can
you please come and collect them?" pleaded one tweep. Another wrote: "If the
dinosaurs were still alive they’d be saying, thank God for
extinction.""
