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A girls' school in Saudi Arabia has set up basketball hoops and let girls play during break time, an act in defiance of a religious ban that forbids females from playing sports. The school in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province has now become the first state-run girls school to openly encourage sports, the Daily Mail reports. Amina Bu Bsheit, a school supervisor, said that it would use girls' energy in a positive way by encouraging them to play. State-run girls' schools have been banned from offering sports classes, but private girls' schools are allowed to provide sports classes. Clerics in the country have for long opposed girls from playing sports. One senior cleric in 2009 had said that women could lose their virginity by tearing their hymens if they played. Last month Saudi Arabia set up a ministerial committee to consider allowing women's sports clubs. In recent months Saudi Arabia has faced criticism for having never fielded a woman athlete at the Olympics, with Human Rights Watchdogs calling to bar the country from this year's London games unless it fields a woman athlete.

Saudi Arabian girls' school defies religious ban on female sports with basketball hoops