‘Enforcers’ Step Up Drive to Keep Saudis in Line : Religion: The fundamentalist Mutawain harass women and break up parties. The government faces pressure to rein them in.

For Saudi Arabia, Operation Desert Storm may have been a double-edged sword.

The U.S.-led allies drove away the Iraqi military menace. But they irritated the kingdom’s Muslim zealots, triggering a backlash by the cane-wielding religious police, the Mutawa, against what they see as a war-induced drift from Islamic values.

Liberal Saudis and foreigners report almost daily incidents involving the white-robed Mutawain, mostly young, bearded zealots.

As Mutawain activity has increased, the authorities have been prodded to rein in the firebrands.

Shopkeepers in Riyadh, the capital, threatened to close unless the zealots stopped harassing female customers. Soon after, unidentified men beat up Mutawain--Arabic for “enforcers”--at a supermarket owned by Prince Mishaal, a brother of King Fahd, witnesses said.

Sheik Abdelaziz ibn Baz, the country’s leading theologian and revered by many of Saudi Arabia’s 12 million people, has called the zealots’ actions “against the teachings of Allah.”

He also denounced vitriolic verbal attacks that are leveled at Establishment figures in mosques and in audiocassettes, condemning those who “whisper secretly in their meetings and record their poison on cassettes distributed to the people.”

Defenders of the Mutawa say it is necessary to be vigilant against slippage in observing Islamic law.

“Individual excesses may occur, but they might have been provoked by deviationary deeds,” said Dr. Ibrahim ibn Mubarak al Juwair, associate professor of sociology at the University of Imam Mohammed ibn Seoud in Riyadh, a conservative stronghold. “Religion is a pillar of our society. We all defend it.”

King Fahd seeks to avoid a confrontation with the fundamentalists. But he has pledged--not for the first time--to establish a consultative council that they oppose.

A council would give Saudis a minimal, but unprecedented, voice in state affairs. Many people believe that would diminish the influence of the religious hard-liners who have successfully resisted modernization.

Many of the Mutawain incidents are in Dhahran, the oil center on the Persian Gulf coast where many of the Westerners in Saudi Arabia live, and in Riyadh, but other cities are affected.

A non-Saudi Arab woman in the Red Sea port of Jiddah said the Mutawain are more active and numerous in some markets, particularly modern shopping centers. She said they seemed more organized since the war.

Like just about everyone in Saudi Arabia, nationals and foreigners alike, she insisted on anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The Mutawain are part of the Department for the Preservation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, established in 1932 by Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdelaziz.

They make sure that people stop for prayers five times a day, as laid down in the Koran, Islam’s holy book. They don’t hesitate to beat anyone who doesn’t.

They jab women with sticks for showing naked arms and legs that Islamic law dictates must be covered in public. They regularly raid video shops to check for what they consider decadent movies.

When a large number of cars are seen parked near a foreigner’s home, the Mutawain usually charge in searching for alcohol, which is banned in Saudi Arabia.

A traveler from Dhahran reported that the Mutawain recently broke into a child’s birthday party attended by foreigners at a hotel. He said they denounced birthday parties as “a Western abomination.”

The surge of Islamic militancy was triggered in part by the deployment of more than 500,000 Western soldiers, including women, in the kingdom after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August, 1990. Fundamentalists feared that the influx would bring changes in what has traditionally been a closed society.

But Saudis note that Islamic fervor also has been fueled by events elsewhere. On Dec. 27, Algeria’s fundamentalists won more seats than any other party in the North African country’s first free general elections since independence from France in 1962. Fundamentalists are also increasingly active in Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia.