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In the News Social Media Exposes Sexual Harassment during theHajj A #MeToo type movement hit Saudi Arabia in 2018. A single social media post began a flood of similar stories fromwomen who had been grabbed, groped, and worse while performing tawaf during their Islamic pilgrimages to Mecca. This pilgrimage is called the Hajj, and all Muslims are expected to make it at least once in their lifetime. The tawaf ritual is, in part, the act of circling the Kaaba, the huge black stone at the center of the Great Mosque, by moving seven times around it counterclockwise. Muhammad commanded his followers to visit Mecca at least once in their lives, if possible, to perform tawaf . A Pakistani woman named Sabica Khan began the social movement when she wrote about her experience of having hands on her buttocks and objects poking her backside while circling the Kaaba. Themomentum of the crowd prevented her from turning around for fear of falling and being trampled (2,000 trampling deaths occurred during the 2015 Hajj). Thousands of similar reports of groping hit social media like a storm. Most of the social changes that Saudi Arabia has experienced over the last decade have been because of modernization efforts begun by the country’s former king. Plus, the country has a prom- inent crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, or MbS for short. His father, King Salman, has granted his son authority over security and economic development, making him one of the country’s most powerful leaders. Mohammed bin Salman’s actions as crown prince have shown him to be a brutal leader who tolerates no dissent. Activists have been jailed even after the government has met their demands. Several government officials, even relatives of the crown prince, have been killed or disappeared by Saudi security forces. The death of Saudi opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018, apparently murdered by Saudi security officials, dis- plays the crown prince as either someone who operates outside both Saudi and international law, or as a leader who does not have control

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