Viral video of woman in ‘immodest clothes’ leads to Saudi arrest
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES— Police in Saudi Arabia have arrested a young woman who wore a miniskirt and crop top, exposing her legs and midriff in public and who had posted the video online, sparking an outcry from people who say she flagrantly violated the kingdom’s conservative Islamic dress code.
Saudi Arabia’s state-run TV reported Tuesday that police in the capital, Riyadh, arrested the woman for wearing “immodest clothes” and referred her case to the country’s public prosecutor.
The video of the woman, identified online only as “Khulood,” prompted a debate on social media soon after it was uploaded to Snapchat over the weekend. It was rapidly shared across the internet by people who supported her display and — perhaps more interesting — by those who opposed it, resulting in the official investigation.
In the short clip, filmed mostly from behind, the woman is shown walking through the ruins of an ancient fort in Ushaiager, a town in Najd province. Najd is the birthplace of the country’s ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement.
In response to calls for the woman’s arrest, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which employs the Saudi religious police, wrote on Twitter on Monday that it had “intercepted a clip of a girl in inappropriate clothing” and had opened an investigation with the “relevant authorities.”
Saudi law imposes stringent rules on women’s appearance and behaviour. Saudi women are required to wear a black garment, called an abaya, that covers everything but the face, feet and hands. They must also keep their heads covered, and are not permitted to drive or socialize with men who are not related to them.
Some people on Twitter accused Saudi Arabia of hypocrisy, saying it often celebrates the beauty of foreign women.
One, Fatima al-Issa, wrote as she shared the clip: “If she were a foreigner, they would sing about the beauty of her waist and the enchantment of her eyes. But because she is Saudi they are calling for her arrest.”
Some supporters of the woman in the video posted images of Ivanka and Melania Trump, who did not cover their heads and wore dresses that exposed their legs during President Donald Trump’s state visit to Saudi Arabia in May.
One Twitter post digitally placed Ivanka Trump’s face on the body of the woman in the video, with the words, “Enough already, the situation has been solved.”
Other Saudis, many of whom posted to Twitter using the hashtag #WeDemandATrialForTheModelKhulood, condemned the woman not just for flaunting her figure but also for flouting the kingdom’s rules.
“She shouldn’t be out in a conservative country looking like this, she should respect the laws, or her destiny will be known,” wrote one person who shared the video despite those comments.
The Saudi news site Okaz reported that the authorities in Ushaiager had requested that the woman face prosecution. The news media blurred the image of the woman’s body to avoid violating the law.