Head of Mecca's religious police fired for being too lax

Riyadh - Saudi Arabia on Sunday formally announced that the Mecca head of its religious police force was to be replaced because of his reported remarks that mixing of the sexes should not be considered a crime.

Rumors had been rife that Ahmed bin Qassim al-Ghamidi, who headed the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice for the city of Mecca, would be sacked after the Saudi newspaper Okaz quoted him as saying that interaction between unrelated men and women should not be forbidden.

"Mixing between the sexes is natural," Okaz quoted al-Ghamidi as saying earlier this month. He reportedly added that those who forbid associations between unrelated women and men did not produce enough evidence to support their position.

His remarks contradict the position of the Saudi religious police. Segregation between sexes is strictly imposed in Saudi Arabia. The police frequently detain unrelated men and women found sitting together in public.

But King Abdullah has been pushing for a gradual relaxation of the country's strict moral codes. He recently sacked a senior cleric from the council of religious scholars, or ulema, after he criticized the country's first mixed-sex university.

At the university, which opened in the Red Sea port of Jeddah - traditionally less conservative than the capital, Riyadh - last September, women are allowed to mingle with men, to drive, and are not required to wear the veil in class.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/320484,head-of-meccas-religious-police-fired-for-being-too-lax.html.