New Saudi co-ed Uni: the backlash begins 2, October 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Saudi Arabia.Tags: Coeducational university, Conservative religious backlash, KAUST, Religious backlash, Saudi Arabia, Saudi university
3 comments
No crystal ball was needed to predict that it would only be a matter of time before the religious backlash against the Kingdom’s newest, best funded, best stocked and only University with tenuous world-class aspirations began. Gulf News reports that Sheikh Sa’ad Bin Nasser Al Shethri, a member of Saudi’s powerful Supreme Committee of Islamic Scholars, has denounced the coeducational nature of the University.
“Mixing is a great sin and a great evil…When men mix with women, their hearts burn and they will be diverted from their main goal, which is… education.”
One feels obliged to mention that in the Universities which have garnered the most Nobel Prizes (Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Columbia…) have – obviously – coeducational classes and it seems to do them well…not such a bad system to emulate one might think. However, logic has never been (and will never be) the strongest suit for these relics of religious zealotry.
I fear that it is, again, only a matter of time before the religious authorities strangle whatever progressive moves have been made out of this University.
The Gulf blog 