Saudi Religious Cop Gets Beaten...by a Woman

This could be the start of a new women's rights movement in Saudi Arabia:

It was a scene Saudi women’s rights activists have dreamt of for years.

When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition.

But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping.

A member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Saudi religious police known locally as the Hai’a, asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another, as it is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix.

For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop.

According to the Saudi daily Okaz, the woman then allegedly laid into the religious policeman, punching him repeatedly, and leaving him to be taken to the hospital with bruises across his body and face.

“To see resistance from a woman means a lot,” Wajiha Al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women’s rights activist, told The Media Line news agency. “People are fed up with these religious police, and now they have to pay the price for the humiliation they put people through for years and years. This is just the beginning and there will be more resistance.”

Go get 'em, ladies!

And in a related story:

A senior cleric has urged the Saudi government to uphold a ban on women's sports in the kingdom in the face of increasing demand to ease the restrictions.

Sheik Abdul Karim al-Khudhair said in a statement Sunday that sports are "corrupting" and "satanic" for women. Instead, he urged women to stay at home.

Sounds like somebody in need of a good thumping.