This video clip is causing a stir in Saudi Arabia. It shows Sheikh Muhammad al-Nujaimi, chairman of the interior ministry's religious advisers, laughing and joking with a woman. Not only that, but the woman – horror of horrors – isn't even wearing hijab and the neckline of her dress is alarmingly low.

As recently as last September, Nujaimi was insisting [in Arabic] that separation of the sexes in education was one of the "pillars" of the Saudi state and that female students must wear "proper" hijab and non-Muslims must observe "obligatory modesty".

Later, he supported a fatwa calling for opponents of gender segregation to be put to death if they refused to change their views.

Last month, though, Sheikh Nujaimi accepted an invitation to a conference in Kuwait marking International Women's Day – which is where the video was recorded. A series of photographs has also been published on the internet showing his encounters with women in Kuwait.

The Saudi Jeans blog comments:

"After pictures and videos of his mingling made their way to the web, he first denied what the pictures and videos suggested, and said some of them were photoshopped, which is something the organisers of the event considered so insulting that they threatened to sue him.

"Today, al-Nujaimi finally admitted that he mingled, but he said he did it for all the right reasons: to prevent vice and help those misguided women find the righteous path."

The Nujaimi affair is the latest twist in a new – and growing – debate among Saudi religious figures on the issue of ikhtilat (gender mixing).

It was triggered by the opening last September of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as the kingdom's first co-educational university. KAUST is a pet project of KIng Abdullah and a senior cleric who dared to criticise its gender-mixing policies was promptly sacked. This has made other clerics wary of making similar remarks, and Nujaimi seems to be among those who have done a U-turn.

Last December, Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi, head of the religious police in Mecca, gave an astonishing interview in which he described the prohibition of gender mixing as "a recent adoption" – adding that mixing "was part of normal life" in early Muslim societies.

Ghamdi has stood by his views, despite opposition from reactionary elements, and even repeated them at the Taif Literary Club last week (as John Burgess notes in the Crossroads Arabia blog). It is hard to believe that he would be saying these things without a green light from on high.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 11 April 2010.