KAUST: a summary 27, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Saudi Arabia.Tags: Al-Shethri, KAUST, King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia, Saudi education, Saudi Jeans, Saudi reform, Saudi universities
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I have commented many a time on Saudi’s new high-tech University (here, here, here and here) but Saudi Jeans offers a pithy, concise summary of the state of play so far, concentrating on the back-tracking of the great and the good in Saudi as soon as it became clear that King Abdullah really wasn’t joking when he said that it would be a ‘liberal’ coeducational institution.
Before KAUST, segregation was the norm and mixing was haraam. Then KAUST happened, and suddenly mixing turns out to be okay. Al-Shethri opened his mouth. He was sacked. The others got the message.
The new Minister of Justice explained in detail how segregation is a foreign concept and mixing is actually cool. Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi, head of haya’a in Makkah, gave a lengthy interview to Okaz where he basically said that there is nothing wrong with mixing and those who oppose it are opposing Sharia. Meanwhile, his organization continue to terrorize people in other parts of the country.
Clown Mohammed al-Nujaimi before KAUST was inaugurated stressed the importance of segregation in education, something he described as one of the fundamentals on which the Saudi state was built. Few weeks later, after al-Shethri was sacked, he took a full U-turn.
Problem is, apologists like Jamal Khashoggi now have to make up lies to make this sounds normal. Mixing at KAUST is very restricted, he says, that a Venezuelan student can’t have his Mexican female friend over at his place.
Is that true, Nathan? I know you threw a nice Thanksgiving party earlier this year, and from the pics I can see you had some girls over. I hope you didn’t get any trouble after that party.
So confusion prevails. In the past we were told mixing is sinful. Now we are told it is alright. Those who don’t want to appear contradicted talk about good mixing and bad mixing. Are we supposed to believe the “mixers,” the “segregationists,” or the “hypocrites”? Such a dilemma…
The Gulf blog 
In the past the Saudi sheiks (and I will not call them Wahhabies just because it is the new cool trend) used to advocate in the media and school curriculums only certain Hadiths (Prophet Mohammed PBUH narratives) which gave indications of a need for segregation, other Hadiths which indicated the clear mixing of genders were kept quiet and not advocated. Now all of the sudden Sheik AlGamdi is telling us about them and others are coming out to join in. Well, where were you guys a long time ago?! That really makes us think what else is kept hush hush.
But I am happy all this confusion has happened. For one, it showed us that in religion we can no longer blindly follow the Sheiks without questioning and bringing in our own reasoning. Isn’t that what religion is about, about one being accountable for his own decisions, or at least trying to do so, and never showing up saying I was persuaded by the majority or by what I learned from my fathers.