When snow covered Tabuk Province near Saudi Arabia's border with Jordan for the third consecutive year Sheikh Mohammed Saleh al-Munajjid sprang immediately into action: "It is not permitted to make a statue out of snow, even by way of play and fun," he decreed.
Making of snowmen is apparently against Sunni law.
Quoting from the work of Islamist scholars the Sheikh pointed out that it is "forbidden to create an image of a human being, an action considered sinful under the kingdom's strict interpretation of Sunni Islam."
Photographs we may presume are exempt, otherwise nobody could own a passport or driver's license.
For nurse Miriam Abadi the decree came all too late. She was arrested for making a snowman in her front garden for the amusement of her three children. Unfortunatley for the prosecution, when their emissaries went to photograph the evidence ... they found that it had melted.
It seems God had the last laugh. Nothing lasts,... except control freak laws against things that do not last.
