RIYADH: The Yemen-based branch of Al-Qaeda has accused Saudi King Abdullah of violating Islam by launching the kingdom's first public university where men and women can mix, SITE Intelligence reported.

Ibrahim al-Rubaish, a Saudi member of Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), said in an audio message posted on the internet that the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, where post-graduate science students and researchers will work together, violated Islamic shariah law.

"The father of the daughter or the brother of the sister or the husband of the wife, how can they accept that these (women enroll) in this university, this university that violated Sharia, violating even the system that this government claims to apply?" Rubaish said, according to a transcript issued late on Tuesday by SITE, a US-based monitoring group.

"What (does one think) of a woman who studies with a Christian or a Jew, whose study is being supervised by an atheist or a pagan?" said Rubaish, a former Guantanamo prisoner who fled to Yemen after being repatriated to Saudi Arabia.

In a direct attack on the Saudi monarchy, Rubaish blamed King Abdullah, saying he is moving the country toward "secularism".

"If he is not able to distinguish between good and evil and what is good and harmful, then how can he be put as the ruler over millions of people?"

"I call upon every Muslim to (distance themselves) from this agent apostate government, that has clearly demonstrated that it prefers infidelity to faith, and that all it wants from Islam is the the parts that do not affect its secularist method," Rubaish said.

Rubaish's statement came in a 17 minute audio message posted to internet jihadist forums on November 1, SITE added.

On September 23 Abdullah presided over the launch of the new research-focused science university on the Red Sea coast north of Jeddah, whose student and faculty body mixes men and women from all over the world.

While Saudi officials played down the issue, they admitted the new seven billion dollar campus aims to break through the Saudi religious establishment's prohibition against the mixing of unrelated men and women in public.