JEDDAH: If you don’t have any spare rags laying around to clean up a mess, it’s probably not a good idea to use a Saudi flag instead. But this is precisely what a foreign worker was caught doing in his shop on Jeddah’s Corniche. A judge sentenced the man to 40 lashes for the crime. The judge also ordered the man to sign a pledge that he would not repeat the offense. While it’s one thing to use a national symbol as an old rag, it’s entirely another thing to use the Saudi flag because it happens to depict the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of belief. Desecrating the Saudi flag is a big no-no for the same reason that the Saudi flag is not depicted on national team footballs.