Man arrested for sharing a meal with Saudi woman
An Egyptian man has been condemned for filming himself sharing breakfast with a burqa-clad Saudi Arabian colleague.
It is well-known that laws in Saudi Arabia prohibit women from doing many things in public without the company of a husband or father. Though women can sometimes be chaperoned by their brothers or sons, women and single men are still obliged by law to sit separately in public spaces.
A video showing a burqa-clad Saudi woman eating breakfast with an Egyptian man in a hotel has shocked many conservatives, who are outraged at the brazen disregard for law that the two display as they joke that the breakfast is just for the two of them, "with no one else invited".
After the video surfaced online authorities identified the man and arrested him for "committing several violations and taking up a post exclusively reserved for Saudis". Many were especially shocked by the way the woman reached her hand out to feed the man a piece of food, an action highly illegal and inappropriate for unmarried Saudi women.
While some believe it is time to relax the hyper-conservatives laws and allow men and women to work together without consequence, those who seek to uphold strict Muslim laws are calling for the woman to be punished just as severely as the man.