Sharia alert from [1] AFP, with thanks to Fjordman:

RIYADH -- Some 20 years after public screenings of films were banned, the first cinema will open next month in ultraconservative Saudi Arabia, but showing only cartoons, a source from the firm handling the project said on Sunday.

The cinema will open for women and children at a Riyadh hotel at the Eid Al Fitr feast at the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan on November 2 or 3, said the source who requested anonymity....

Cinema was once shown in private clubs in Saudi Arabia until all public screenings were banned because they were considered against Islamic law in the early 1980s.

Saudi Arabia is the only country to have banned cinema houses in the Muslim conservative Arab Gulf region.