Shop Till You're Forced to Stop.

• Author: Sachs, Susan

Mohammed al-Bahri, 18, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, recently checked out the latest imported fad: the mall crawl. In a strict Islamic country with no movie theaters or public concerts, the new mall is one of the few places where the sexes mix. It attracts 300,000 people a week--four times the expected number.

But al-Bahri has to keep his eye out for the conservative religious police of the Committee to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice. "They don't scare us," he says, "but they bother us all the time." If the police believe a Saudi guy is behaving badly--including paying too much attention to a girl they...