Mick Hartley

There's something almost comical about the blithe manner in which hard-line Islamic clerics routinely call for people who disagree with them to be put to death. Almost comical: unfortunately a great many foolish and impressionable people take them very seriously.

A prominent Saudi cleric has issued an edict calling for opponents of the kingdom's strict segregation of men and women to be put to death if they refuse to abandon their ideas.

Shaikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak said in a fatwa the mixing of genders at the workplace or in education "as advocated by modernisers" is prohibited because it allows "sight of what is forbidden, and forbidden talk between men and women".

"All of this leads to whatever ensues," he said in the text of the fatwa published on his website (albarrak.islamlight.net).

"Whoever allows this mixing … allows forbidden things, and whoever allows them is an infidel and this means defection from Islam … Either he retracts or he must be killed … because he disavows and does not observe the Sharia," Barrak said.

"Anyone who accepts that his daughter, sister or wife works with men or attend mixed-gender schooling cares little about his honour and this is a type of pimping," Barrak said.

Barrak, believed to be 77, does not hold a government position but he is viewed by Islamists as the leading independent authority of Saudi Arabia's hardline version of Sunni Islam, often termed Wahhabism.

As the article points out, this should probably be seen as part of a fight-back by the old religious establishment against the (mildest of mild – for instance) reforms being promoted by King Abdullah.