A writer in Saudi Arabia prompted his readers to sexually harass women in newly integrated public places, unleashing a war of words in the digital sphere over the country’s views towards women.

Abdullah Mohamed al-Dawood, author of several self-help books published in Arabic, took to Twitter recently to call on his followers to harass and molest women who had been hired to serve as cashiers in Saudi grocery stores. Using a hashtag that roughly translates to “harass_female_cashiers,” al-Dawood urged the nearly 100,000 people following his account to take action against new laws against sexual harassment the Kingdom is considering rolling out.

In one tweet, al-Dawood explained that the mixing of genders in combination of new anti-harassment laws was akin to giving up guarding banks while still punishing those who rob from them. In another, as translated by the Financial Times, the author used a story of a man who wished to prevent his wife from going out while he was attending prayers to illustrate his point. In the story, the man molests his wife in the street under the cover of darkness, prompting the wife to never to wish to leave home again.

At least one conservative Saudi cleric, Khalid Ibrahim al-Saqabi, has backed al-Dawood’s thinking, saying that the proposed law against harassment in mixed gender environments was “only meant to encourage consensual debauchery.” The campaign has opened a fierce debate between al-Dawood’s supporters and those who are in favor of the government’s attempts to kickstart the moribund parts of the Saudi economy not based on petroleum exports.

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