Saudi woman killed for using Facebook

A Saudi Arabian woman was killed by her father after he found her chatting with a man on Facebook, reporters claim.

The woman from Riyadh was beaten and shot at point-blank range after her father walked in on her chatting with a male on the popular social networking site. And although some have called on the Saudi Arabian government to condemn the killing as a harsh response to an innocuous conversation, many in the country see Facebook as the root of all evil for young people.

A 'door to lust'

"Facebook is a door to lust and young women and men are spending more on their mobile phones and the internet than they are spending on food," Saudi preacher Sheikh Ali al-Maliki said.

He went on to explain that women are using Facebook to post revealing pictures of themselves, in an attempt to appeal to Western men that are trying to corrupt Saudi Arabian females.

According to Facebook, there are currently 30,000 Saudi Arabians using its service. Many of Saudi's female users use nicknames and post comic images or drawings on their pages instead of photographs, to ensure that they remain anonymous.

But others see profile pages as a premeditated attempt to break core religious principles, which require all women to communicate only with those people in the same family and class as them.

Saudi Arabian government officials declined to comment on the news of the murder, but as tradition and technology clash in the oil-rich kingdom, more problems could arise.