Saudi cleric sacked for attack on KAUST mixed policy

Saudi King Abdullah sacked a hardline cleric from the powerful Council of Senior Ulema on Monday after he criticised the breakthrough policy of mixing the genders at a new university promoted by the monarch.

Sheikh Sa'ad al-Shethry was dismissed from the body of top religious scholars, which sets the religious policy in the Islamic kingdom, by royal order, the official news agency SPA reported.

No reason was given, but the order came in the wake of Shethry's televised comments a week earlier criticising the gender-mixing practice of the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which was inaugurated on September 23.

The $7bn post-graduate international university is the first public education institution in Saudi Arabia to allow men and women to mix freely.

In a television interview, Shethry called mixing "evil" and "a great sin", sparking a huge backlash from progressives in the Saudi media.

Under Saudi Arabia's ultra-conservative Wahhabi school of Islam, women are prevented from mixing with men outside their own family, cannot travel freely and are not allowed to drive.

The new university, located on the Red Sea north of Jeddah, is part of Abdullah's vision of powering his country into the global ranks of advanced science research.

But an unstated goal of the king, according to some Saudi officials, is to break through the restrictions on women imposed by Saudi clerics.

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