Opponents of the idea of mixed education warn that the move would lead to a sharp fall in the level of women’s education, as the majority of conservatives would prefer to keep their girls illiterate than sending them to schools where they would have to sit with boys.

The controversy first surfaced years ago, when several primary schools in Jeddah reportedly started experiments in coeducation followed by a rumor that the experiment would be introduced in schools in other cities as well. However, the officials of the ministry put an end to the dispute by reassuring that it did not plan any new experiment.

“Coeducation is against the Shariah laws and a violation of the policy of the state and the constitution of the country,” argued conservatives who are dead set against the idea.

However, another move by the ministry provoked the conservatives. It was a proposal for women teachers to teach boys in primary classes. In some schools, females currently teach boys in primary classes. The debate on coeducation gathered momentum when a member of the Council of Senior Scholars, Sheikh Saad bin Nasser Al-Shathri, demanded that King Abdullah University of Science and Technology stop coeducation on its campus.

The religious scholar made the demand in a program aired by Al-Majd TV on Sept. 27, 2009. The sheikh also warned that Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah would not be happy with the mixing of men and women on the campus.

His call evoked mixed reactions from society. Soon, matters reached such a pass that even imams in their Friday sermons urged worshippers to boycott newspapers that opposed Al-Shathri’s views.

Opponents of coeducation stressed the significance of keeping men and women apart in public places in Saudi society, arguing it was a distinctive feature of the Saudi national character. The issue was hotly debated in the Ninth National Dialogue conference held at Al-Ahsa early 2011, following Sheikh Walid Al-Rashoodi’s strongly-worded criticism of the supporters of coeducation.

“Calls for gender mixing made by intellectuals and writers with their own fatwas amount to a brazen challenge to the Shariah. Some of the intellectuals fantasize about Saudi Arabia becoming France. No one but competent scholars should issue fatwas,” Al-Rashoodi said at the conference.

The issue was further exacerbated when former Director of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Makkah Sheikh Ahmad Al-Ghamdi jumped into the fray with a statement that Islam never banned free mixing of genders.

Sheikh Ahmad’s statement drew reactions even from Kuwait with a denouncement of his statement signed by 22 religious scholars of that country.

The issue then took a backseat for a few months, but surfaced again when Deputy Minister of Education Noura Al-Faiz said the ministry was studying the viability of coeducation at the primary school level.

Khalifa Al-Boqaili, a Saudi national of conventional inclinations, said he totally rejected the idea of coeducation even if it was in primary schools.

“If the ministry decides to implement coeducation, we will refuse to send our daughters to schools just as our grandfathers did when the government decided to enforce women’s education some decades ago,” Al-Boqaili said, adding that girls and boys should be educated in different ways to suit their separate natural dispositions.

“I don’t want my girl to be brought up in a style that makes her behave like a boy,” he said.

Another Saudi, Fahd Abdul Latif, said that visitors to any university campus in the world would sadly notice what coeducation did to young people.

“Girls become tomboys and boys become effeminate or transvestites. It is the result of treating boys like girls and girls like boys,” he said, expressing his concern over the future Saudi generation.

He admired the current system of Saudi education — without coeducation — as, according to him, it is capable of producing brilliant leaders, administrators, academics, scientists, doctors and thinkers among both genders.

He pointed out that Noura Al-Faiz, who is behind the move for coeducation, herself is a product of non-coeducation system. It proves that the system has the potential to make women rise to high levels such as the rank of an education minister, he pointed out.

Prince Khaled bin Talal, who also participated in the event, denied reports that the king supported mixed schools when the presenter of the program Muhammad Al-Muqrin asked the prince about the government’s stand on the matter.

“The rulers are not pleased with it and those who claim that they approved it are lying,” the prince said.

Prince Khaled said he was fully confident that the king would make an appropriate decision when the full report of the issue is submitted to him.