RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - A child comes home from school in tears because of a teacher's prophecy of her horrifying death if she does not recite Islam's five daily prayers.
At a cafe, a man is berated because his wife's abaya, the black cloak that women must wear in public, too daringly outlines the shape of her upper body.
A researcher at the Education Ministry who raised questions about religious extremism expressed in some texbooks finds himself suddenly out of a job.
These scenes persist in Saudi Arabia even though the kingdom's leaders — worried at complaints their country is nourishing Islamic radicalism — have urged officials, the clergy and educators to preach moderation and promote tolerance of Western values.
Saudi leaders understand the dangers facing their nation following the Sept. 11 attacks, which were blamed on Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden and carried out mostly by Saudis — 15 of the 19 hijackers were from the kingdom.
Crown Prince Abdullah, the most powerful figure after the king, has urged his people to cling to Islam as "a religion of moderation and wisdom."
"Beware of extremism," he said, "because the annihilation of nations that came before you was caused by religious extremism."
This month, Minister of Religious Affairs Sheik Saleh bin Abdulaziz Al Shiek, told mosque preachers they should not "use Friday sermons to villify people, villify countries ... Villification is not lawful."
The minister warned that preachers should not allow just any worshipper to speak out in the mosque after prayers because they may "say words that incite people. ... Some have called for jihad (holy war)."
Still, a small yet powerful minority of fanatics persists in spreading a radical interpretation of the Quran, Islam's holy book, in their quest to make the kingdom more Islamic.
They are in government, schools, mosques and among the muttawa, the religious police who enforce Islamic social codes.
These radicals create an atmosphere that breeds hatred of the West. They reject any behavior they feel is Western or could lead to what they view as Western-style decadence — mixing of the sexes, drinking, women's emancipation. They try to rule every aspect of people's lives.
Take the Saudi woman who was out shopping. A muttawa agent stopped her because her feet were not fully covered and asked a policeman to make sure she didn't escape while he got her a pair of dark socks from a nearby shop.
Or the mother who angrily recounts what her 6-year-old daughter learned in school — when she dies, her face will turn black and worms and blood will come out of her mouth as punishment for not praying five times a day.
Or a recent, full-page article in a Saudi daily on the sins of men and women mixing, signed by a member of the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which runs the muttawa. Its headline: "It has been medically proven that repeatedly staring at the opposite sex with lust causes sexual weakness."
Then there's the story told by Khaled Nasser, who was having a quiet coffee with his wife at a mall when a muttawa agent barged in, ordering women to cover their faces and hands. "Protect your religion, Muslim women. The Christians and Jews are trying to tempt you away from it," he screeched.
The agent berated Nasser for 10 minutes and threatened to drag him to jail because his wife's face was uncovered and her black cloak was of a type rejected by radicals as un-Islamic because it gives a hint of a woman's bust.
"Extremists like him know nothing about Islam," Nasser said later. "They're racists who are biased against anyone who's not as radical as they are."
While these incidents may seem mainly to infringe on the daily life of Saudis, they also help create a religious environment in which militants can find justification for urging murderous actions against the West and, in particular, the United States.
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, little attention was paid to fanatic elements in Saudi schools, mosques and the government's religious establishment. Now, the hijackings have focused the spotlight on what influence fundamentalist Islam may have had on the hijackers.
Some in the West have blamed the hijackers' militancy on the austere form of Islam the kingdom has adopted, based on the strict teachings of an 18th century cleric named Muhammad bin Abdel-Wahhab.
"Before 9/11 we lived in a world where we accepted the peculiarities of the political system in Saudi Arabia," a Western diplomat said on customary condition of anonymity.
"But that has changed, and the Saudis have to wake up to the fact that the rest of the world is concerned about the religious environment in this country," the diplomat added.
As the birthplace of Islam and as the custodian of the faith's two holiest shrines, Saudi Arabia has always been careful that its Islamic credentials not be questioned.
The ruling Saud family is bound by an 18th century pact between its ancestor, Muhammad bin Saud, and Abdel-Wahhab that allowed the Saud clan to consolidate its control over Arabia in the early 1900s.
Key religious positions are still held by Abdel-Wahhab's descendants, giving them sway over legal and social policy in return for helping maintain the royal family's legitimacy.
But the pact has meant the ruling family finds itself constantly in a balancing act between the quest for modernity and the need not to upset the religious leadership.
That has not always been easy.
When the late King Faisal introduced girls' education in the early 1960s, delegation after delegation of radicals protested at the monarch's court. Today, almost as many girls as boys go to school.
The same extremists fought the introduction of radio, television and even cars, which they thought were driven by the devil.
When satellite dishes began sprouting on balconies in the early 1990s, religious zealots enraged at the amount of flesh on TV often shot at the dishes. Today, many homes have dishes — though they still are not legal — and Saudi Arabia is one of the most high-tech Arab countries.
A woman who is a Western-educated member of the royal family, and who spoke on condition of anonymity, said introducing change slowly has always been important because most Saudis are conservatives who worry about the West encroaching on their society.
"If you react quickly, the alternative may be worse," the princess said.
"There's been a huge change in Saudi Arabia in the past three decades," she said. "People were unequipped to deal with it. The one constant they hold onto is Islam."
After the Sept. 11 attacks, however, even gentle critics of the kingdom say the Saudis must speed up the pace of change.
"They can no longer afford to take their time," said the Western diplomat. "But the problem is how to effect change in a society that's extremely sensitive to outside pressure."
That pressure, many Saudis say, is not helping. At a time when most Arabs view Washington as indirectly helping Israelis kill Palestinians and directly threatening Iraq, extremists see even minor changes in the kingdom as bows to American wishes.
"Even people who want change are now saying, 'I don't want anybody to tell me I have to do this,' especially when it comes from people whose agenda is not only to change the Saudi curriculum but also to separate state from religion," said the princess.
That is the main reason, several Saudis said, why there has been almost no change in the Saudi school syllabus, which has been attacked in the West for promoting anti-Christian and anti-Jewish views.
Hasan al-Malki, the Education Ministry employee who was fired, had prepared a study on extremism in texbooks that contained an unprecedented questioning of the ideas of Wahabism's founder.
"The religious curriculum is based on (the teachings of) scholars such as Sheik Muhammad bin Abdel-Wahhab and the scholars who followed him, who, at the end of the day, are human beings who are sometimes right and sometimes wrong," the report said.
Fired five months ago, Al-Malki said absenteeism was given as the officials reason. But privately he was told the radicals pressured the ministry into doing it. Education Ministry officials would not comment.
In private gatherings and in the occasional editorial, many Saudis complain about the strictures imposed by the radicals. They insist they can be pious, observant Muslims without adopting the extremist, anti-Western version of Islam espoused by bin Laden.
In a recent column in the respected pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, Saudi journalist Dawood al-Shirian said there should be a public dialogue about school curriculums, religious programs and the role of mosques.
"Since the terrorist attacks ... quite a number of writers, journalists and preachers have defended the kingdom by categorically denying (there's a problem)," al-Shirian wrote.
However, he addded, "defending our image does not come by ignoring (the problem) or by surrender but by acknowledging the problem and commencing a national dialogue about it."