It’s called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, and this feared Saudi Arabian religious police force has used heavy measures in the past to keep Saudi women in line.

The YouTube clip that caught the shouting match between a Saudi woman wearing nail polish in a mall with several members of the commission, who were telling her to go home, garnered well over a million hits. Saudi women must be cloaked head-to-toe in black, and cannot drive or wear accessories, much less paint their fingernails.

But what helped embolden the woman to stand up to police was a new head appointed to the commission by the Saudi king, in efforts to tone it down. That and new restrictions that forbid it from harassing people and threatening draconian punishments for minor infractions.

Read the whole article on AFP here. To see the YouTube video, click here. It is in Arabic, as are the comments. Apparently, she is saying that they have no right to come after her and harass her, and that she has already posted the video to YouTube.