Al-Barrak, a 77 year-old scholar from Qassim, said the mixing of men and women in the workplace and in educational institutions is religiously prohibited. He also said those who approve gender mixing are “infidels” and that they should either retract their views or be killed. “Gender mixing is totally prohibited by the Qur’an and Sunnah,” said the 28 scholars in a statement issued on Monday in support of Al-Barrak.

“Sheikh Al-Barrak has ruled that those who propagate the correctness of matters deemed impermissible in Islam are infidels. These impermissible things include, by definition, the mixing of the sexes which is totally forbidden by Islam … therefore, anyone who advocates the mixing of men and women is an infidel,” said the scholars.

Most of the signatories of the statement supporting Al-Barrak are from Makkah, and include judges, university teachers, imams, educationalists etc.

“What Sheikh Al-Barrak said is in total compliance with the fundamentals of the Qur’an and Sunnah,” they said, adding that they are astonished at the campaign against the fatwa in the media and that people are calling for gender mixing in the Kingdom. “The mixing of the genders leads to vice. This is why some rational people in the West are also calling for separation between men and women,” they said.