i wonder how long this university (as it exists now) will be around

women mixing with men? women not covering their faces? women driving? oh my goddess (so to speak)

well my heart sings when i know this is happening. however, my heart sinks when i read shite like this:

............. ""Mixing is a great sin and a great evil," Saad bin Nasser al-Shithri was quoted as saying in the al-Watan newspaper. "When men mix with women, their hearts burn, and they will be diverted from their main goal," which he said is "education.""................................

In Saudi Arabia, a Campus Built as a 'Beacon of Tolerance'

High-Tech University Draws the Ire of Hard-Line Clerics for Freedoms It Provides to Women

By Sudarsan Raghavan

Washington Post Foreign Service  

THUWAL, Saudi Arabia -- On this gleaming high-tech campus edged by the Red Sea, May Qurashi crossed a barrier the other day. She played a game on PlayStation with some male fellow students. Her best friend, Sarah al-Aqeel, is also reaching for the forbidden. She's getting her driver's license.

Under Saudi Arabia's strict constraints, Saudi women like Qurashi and Aqeel may neither mingle with men nor drive. But at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which opened last month on this sprawling site 50 miles north of Jiddah, men and women take classes together. Women are not required to wear traditional black head-to-toe abayas or veil their faces -- and they can get behind a steering wheel.

"I don't think religion should have anything to do with higher education," said Qurashi, a 23-year-old biological engineering graduate student.................

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