Mick Hartley

Saudi journalist Nadin Al-Badir speaking on Egyptian TV about the Saudi Religious Police:

Transcript here.

Her criticism is timely, given that Egyptian Salafists have recently formed their own religious police, based on the Saudi model.

Though it's not all gone entirely according to plan:

A group of ultra-conservative Salafis seeking to impose their own stringent version of Shari'a Law in Egypt took a royal drubbing in the town of Benha when they burst uninvited into a beauty salon.

According to the online Bikya Masr newspaper the women in the shop were ordered to stop what they were doing or "face physical punishment" from the group, meaning they would be caned by the men.

Instead, the women took matters into their own hands and, according to Bikya Masr, "beat and whipped the vigilante gang with their own canes before kicking them out to the street in front of an astonished crowd of onlookers.”