NEW DELHI, April 15 -- Those who have lived in Saudi Arabia know about the religious police there. They function under a Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. They have unlimited power to detain, arrest, and punish those who violate Islamic practices. The punishment for those who are found eating during the fasting period will be more severe for Muslims than for non-Muslims.

When the religious police, called Mutaween, became a law unto themselves, the King had to intervene and curtail some of their powers. Today, they are not as fearsome as they were in the last decades of the 20th century. At least they had the sanction of the law, and they operated within certain parameters, which may not be acceptable to ma...