Al Qaeda hits out at new mixed university
The Yemen-based branch of Al Qaeda has accused Saudi King Abdullah of violating Islam by launching the kingdom’s first public university where men and women can mix, SITE Intelligence reported.
Ibrahim al-Rubaish, a Saudi member of Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, said in an audio message posted on the internet that the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, where post-graduate science students and researchers will work together, violated Islamic sharia law.
According to a transcript issued by SITE, a US-based monitoring group, he said: “What (does one think) of a woman who studies with a Christian or a Jew, whose study is being supervised by an atheist or a pagan?”
Rubaish is a former Guantanamo prisoner who fled to Yemen after being repatriated to Saudi Arabia.
In a direct attack on the Saudi monarchy, Rubaish blamed King Abdullah, saying he is moving the country toward “secularism”.
On September 23 Abdullah presided over the launch of the new university.
While Saudi officials played down the issue, they admitted the $7billion campus aims to break through the Saudi religious establishment’s prohibition of the mixing of unrelated men and women in public.
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