No difference between men, women: Prince Salman

WASHINGTON: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is set to meet with US President Donald Trump in Washington today (Tuesday). In an interview with the US TV channel he said, “We have extremists who forbid mixing between the two sexes and are unable to differentiate between a man and a woman alone together and their being together in a work place. Many of those ideas contradict the way of life during the time of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH),” he said. “We are all human beings and there is no difference,” he added.

The prince acknowledged Saudi society was dominated by particularly harsh strain of conservative Islam. “We were victims especially my generation that suffered from this a great deal,” he said. “This is not the real Saudi Arabia. I would ask your viewers to use their smart phones to find out. And they can google Saudi Arabia in the 70s and 60s and they will see the real Saudi Arabia easily in the pictures,” he maintained.

“We were living a very normal life like the rest of the Gulf countries. Women were driving cars. There were movie theaters in Saudi Arabia. Women worked everywhere. We were just normal people developing like any other country in the world until the events of 1979,” he said.

He defended at length his anti-corruption purge which saw many of the kingdom’s princes and tycoons detained for several weeks inside Riyadh’s luxurious Ritz Carlton hotel widely seen as an attempt to cement his grip on power. “What we did in Saudi Arabia was extremely necessary and legal,” he said.

He said he was able to recover more than 100 billion of ill-gotten wealth from the detainees but added, “The idea is not to get money but to punish the corrupt and send a clear signal that whoever engages in corrupt deals will face the law.” But he insisted his wealth was a private matter. “As far as my private expenses I’m a rich person and not a poor person. I’m not Gandhi or Mandela.