Saudi Zealots: 1 Press Freedom: 0

By Scott MacLeod

Diplomats had begun calling it the "Riyadh Spring," so remarkable was the recent willingness of Saudi Arabia's press to challenge the kingdom's powerful religious establishment. Unfortunately, it didn't last. Jamal Khashoggi, the loudest of the critics, was removed last week as editor of the leading Arabic daily Al Watan after he angered conservative Islamic leaders.

Khashoggi, 45, began kicking up controversy in March when Al Watan accused the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice of abusing its powers. Its bearded, zealous cops spend much of their time patrolling streets and shopping malls to make sure that women are veiled, men are kneeling at prayer time and teenagers aren't flirting. Al Watan reported that one of its own reporters had been detained merely for growing his hair too long. Another story alleged that the morals cops had arrested and beaten a woman just for accepting a car ride from a man she wasn't related to. After the May 12 terrorist attacks that killed 34 in Riyadh, Khashoggi ratcheted up his campaign, targeting religious hard-liners sympathetic to Islamist radicals. He published a cartoon (below) depicting a suicide bomber festooned with fatwas--religious edicts issued by Muslim clerics--instead of bombs. "We used to say that we are a good society, that the bad ideas come from abroad," Khashoggi, who describes himself as an Islamist, explained in a TIME interview three days before his dismissal. "Now we are talking about local thoughts that inflame hatred and fanaticism. We are saying, 'Let's look inside ourselves.'" The government, it seems, is saying, "Let's not." --By Scott MacLeod