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KAUST Gender Mixing Leads to Firing of Conservative Cleric
October 5, 2009 - 10:02amAccording to Agence France Presse, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology has had a controversial moment, two weeks after itsinauguration. King Abdullah fired a hardline cleric from the Council of Senior Ulema for criticizing the University's policy of mixing genders.
Last week, Sheikh Sa'ad al-Shethry was removed from the Council, which dictates religious policy in Saudi Arabia, a week after he decried gender mixing as "evil," and "a great sin" in a television interview.
KAUST, which gave Cornell a five-year research award in 2008, allowing for the creation of the KAUST-Cornell Center for Energy and Sustainability, is a product of the Saudi King's effort to bring Saudi Arabia to the forefront of the scientific community. Given this recent turn of events, it also appears to embody a more progressive stance on many issues, allowing gender mixing at the risk of aggravating deeply conservative Muslims.