Saudi Arabia has been abuzz in the past couple of days with the hashtag #محتسبة_تقطع_سلك_سماعة, which translates as “a Good Samaritan pulls off the wire of a speaker”.
The hashtag highlights the incident that happened in a public area in a Saudi city on Aug. 5, when a sheila (a type of traditional song) was playing on the speakers and a group of fully veiled women were taking photos and videos while one of them was slightly swaying to the music. A woman then approached the speaker and started angrily tugging off its wire until she pulled it off completely before walking away. Meanwhile, the group of women observe the scene in shock. The music stopped.
A video of the incident quickly spread on social media and the relevant hashtag became trending with many people tweeting their approval of the mystery woman’s act while others disapproved.
Some tweets commended the woman:
“Women dancing and swaying in public! Then this pure woman comes in and removes the abomination with her own hands. We need more women like you”
“She saw an abomination and she stopped it. Well done”
While others tweeted that she stopped the music because she simply thought the noise was too loud and the song was annoying:
“This has nothing to do with religion; this is a place where people need some peace and quiet, not loud songs”
Some said she was basically ISIS:
“She is like an ISIS woman who hates life and can’t see other people enjoying it”
The most interesting bit is that she was offered a reward:
One offered her 5000 Saudi riyals for stopping the other women from dancing!
Some were more generous than others, to the tune of 100,000 Riyals:
