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Fear and Fundamentalism as the "Modesty Police" Patrol Gaza
(Telegraph-UK) Phoebe Greenwood - Police in Gaza arrested at least 41 men on charges of immodesty in April. Three weeks after his arrest, Ismail Halou, 22, still has streaks of purple bruising on the soles of his feet. On April 4, he was arrested by plain-clothed police, blindfolded and driven to the nearest police station. "I could hear the screams of people being beaten in the rooms next to me. Two men held my legs down and tied them together on a wooden board, then they beat the soles of my feet with a plastic rod....It was the worst pain I've ever felt." It was only after the beating that police officers shaved off the one-inch fin of gelled hair that was the cause of his arrest. "At no point did they tell me why they had arrested me. I found out from neighbors when I got home that it was because of my hair," Halou explained. He could not walk for three days after his release. A violently enforced public modesty campaign is new. Gaza is gripped with a palpable fear that Hamas is driving the population towards militant Islamic fundamentalism.