Saudi Arabia's War on Witchcraft - Ryan Jacobs - The Atlantic

Saudi Arabia's War on Witchcraft - Ryan Jacobs - The Atlantic: The Saudi government's obsession with the criminalization of the dark arts reached a new level in 2009, when it created and formalized a special "Anti-Witchcraft Unit" to educate the public about the evils of sorcery, investigate alleged witches, neutralize their cursed paraphernalia, and disarm their spells. Saudi citizens are also urged to use a hotline on the CPVPV website to report any magical misdeeds to local officials, according to the Jerusalem Post.

According to a director of the religious police's witchcraft division in Riyadh, the unit provides confidentiality to informants. "We deal with sorcerers in a special way. No one should think that we mention the name of whomever files a report about sorcery," Sheikh Adel Faqih told the Saudi Gazette. In 2009 alone, at least 118 people were charged with "practicing magic" or "using the book of Allah in a derogatory manner" in the province of Makkah, the country's most populous region.