Paleontological Perversity? Saudi Religious Police Shutdown Dinosaur Exhibit

The Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is a religious police force that has been a constant presence in the Kingdom arresting woman having coffee with colleagues or forcing young girls to burn to death in fire rather than run out without their scarves. Now the religious police in Dammam marched into a popular dinosaur exhibit and shut it down without any explanation of why the dinosaurs threatened the virtue of good Muslims.

The religious police reportedly had marched into the educational exhibit featuring plaster models of dinosaurs and turned off the lights — causing panic among the children who found themselves in a dark room with dinosaurs and screaming men.

It is not clear if one of the dinosaurs was the “horny dinosaur” recently discovered in Utah (no not former Senator Larry Craig).

This triggered tweets from Saudis like “Dinosaurs are a paleontological life form from an ancient geological era, and our clerics are a paleontological life form from an ancient social era.” The tweets after the bizarre incident demonstrates why the Kingdom is joining authoritarian governments like China and Iran to seek limits on social media and Internet sites.

Source: Economist