A Saudi court has sentenced an employee of the kingdoms religious police to 120 lashes for marrying six women.

According to an official at Ahad al-Massarha court in the southern province of Jazan, the man said he was not educated enough to know that Islam did not allow men to marry more than four women at any one time.

"The judge did not believe him. Nobody believed him. I honestly did not,” the official was quoted as saying.

Passing orders, the court banned the man from standing as a preacher and leading prayers, ordered him not to travel abroad for a five years and to memorize two chapters from the Koran.

The accused, in his fifties, is not a member of the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices morals squad but holds an administrative position there, the official said.

The commission makes sure Saudi society abides by an austere interpretation of Islam, where clerics control the justice system.


Moral police or muttawa roam streets to make sure unrelated men and women are kept apart, that shops and restaurants are shut at prayer time and that women are covered from head to toe.