An Egyptian man in Saudi Arabia has been arrested after a video of him having breakfast with a woman went viral on Twitter.
In the video, a man with an Egyptian dialect eats breakfast beside a woman wearing a full-face veil, who many assumed to be Saudi.
This is in contravention of the law in Saudi Arabia, wherein workplaces or eateries like McDonald’s and Starbucks, families and single men have to sit in different areas.
Women must sit separately from single men in these places.
The man was arrested by the Saudi Ministry of Labour and Social Development, who accused him of “committing several violations and taking up a post exclusively reserved for Saudis”.
The Arabic hashtag “an Egyptian having breakfast with a Saudi” has been used over 113,000 times on Twitter, where it has become the centre of a cultural divide.
The view from Saudi Arabia
In the 30-second video, the man and woman briefly joke about eating their breakfast together, with nobody else invited.
Many Saudis on social media were highly critical of both the man and the woman, with the majority of people wondering why the man was punished instead of the woman.
“I need to understand why men are constantly punished and not women,” said Twitter user Malak. “I am a Saudi [woman] and I swear I want them to punish her with him. Laughter, eating at the workplace… where are your limits?”
Some people meanwhile stressed that work relationships should transcend gender, with Twitter user Tarek Abd Alaziz calling for colleagues to be able to “joke or eat or do anything else among the general relations of humans”.
The view from Egypt
In Egypt, many people reacted with surprise at the outcry from Saudi Arabia and wondered how anyone could be arrested for what they regarded as an innocuous video.
In particular, people pointed out the discrepancies between the arrest and the country’s recent progression in women’s rights, where women were given the right to drive in May.
While another Egyptian user, Sonia, called it a result of “fragile egos” amongst Saudi men.