Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - An official from Saudi Arabia's powerful religious police says its leader fired the chief of the Mecca branch for advocating the mixing of the sexes.
Ahmed bin Qassim al-Ghamidi's suggestion in a recent newspaper interview that men and women should be left to mingle freely clashed with a central concern of the force.
The religious police, under the control of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, are charged with enforcing Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islam, which prohibits men and women who are not immediate relatives from mingling.
"Mixing (between the sexes) is just natural and there is no good reason to ban it," al-Ghamidi said in the interview. He was dismissed soon after.