Islamic religious police

Islamic religious police are official Islamic religious enforcement agencies, often found in Muslim-majority countries, that oversee religious observance and public morality on behalf of national or regional authorities, based on their interpretation of sharia. Modern Islamic religious police organizations were first established in the late 1970s during the Iranian Revolution and the wider Islamic revival it helped stimulate across the Muslim world. Before this period, the regulation of public morality in most Muslim-majority states was generally treated as a socio-religious matter and enforced through civil law or more informal community mechanisms.