Is Saudi Arabia bringing sexy back?

The Saudi Commission on Public Entertainment announced May 20 it will start issuing permits for movie theaters to open next year for the first time in four decades. The idea is getting mixed reviews.

Movie theaters have been banned since the 1970s. Before that, theaters were always surveilled and often subjected to raids by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) to make sure movies did not contain sex scenes. Sometimes Saudis in Jeddah, Riyadh and Taif would unofficially show Arab, Indian and American movies in fenced-off areas in exchange for money. But Saudi authorities shut theaters down completely when an organization called “The Salafi Group That Commands Right and Forbids Wrong" seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979 and declared that the Mahdi, the redeemer of Islam, had arrived. The siege lasted only two weeks, but the government subsequently enforced Islamic code more stringently.

The Commission on Public Entertainment is currently working toward opening comedy clubs in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam and will hold music festivals and shows. Although the Council of Senior Scholars appointed by the king still bans singing and music, it has announced its support for the king’s decrees without dealing with the issue of entertainment, as it hopes to avoid upsetting the king and his son Mohammed bin Salman.

King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud established the Commission on Public Entertainment on May 7, at the same time he was issuing several other decrees that involved a major Cabinet reshuffling and ministry restructuring. The commission is charged with organizing and developing entertainment activities to encourage internal tourism, despite the presence of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, which was established in 2000 to attend to internal tourism and improve it.