Via boingboing comes this marvellous story.
The article reports that two women were approached by the Saudi Religious Police and “politely advised” that their clothing was “inappropriate”. Given that the religious police’s official name is the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, this presumably amounts to calling them sluts, or some similarly sexist epithet. The women responded, entirely reasonably, with a torrent of verbal abuse. For the win, one woman then pepper sprayed the officers while the other filmed the incident on her mobile phone. Alas, a brief Googling has not supplied this blogger with a copy of the video. Had it done so, he would have sat and watched it, repeatedly, with considerable glee and much laughter. I’m quite sure that watching vile, sexist, oppressive, dictatorial, homicidal, deluded religious fanatics getting their comeuppance would be uniquely pleasurable.
It must be said, however, that the cherry on this pie is the wonderfully lax treatment they received subsequently. One might think that they would be publicly beaten for their outrageous disobedience — challenging the authority of men is, after all, a crime against nature — and perhaps mutilated in some fashion. After all, can it really be called punishment if you still possess all of your appendages after the event? Apparently it can. Having been carted off to the police station, they were made to apologise and subsequently released with a caution.
Harry hopes beyond hope that they had their fingers crossed behind their backs.
