This work sets out a series of rules meant as guidelines to live by and behave properly among Saudis and/or to understand their culture. Most of these rules have long been unwritten and only verbally communicated among Saudis. As a result, visitors to Saudi Arabia have been unable to follow these rules appropriately. Those interested in Saudis or their civilisation have reported neither understanding nor recognising these rules. For such reasons, these rules need to be spelled out in bold print. This publication has been written to respond to this need, as well as to inform a broad audience on the nature of gender roles and relations in this country. Every culture is governed by an internal code of conduct, and this work offers the first written code of Saudi society. It is the product of close observations of daily activities and more than 2,000 interviews with nationals and residents, over the past four years. This code shows 666 (often previously unrecorded) rules on how the human body should act inside Saudi Arabia. It covers everything from top to bottom; the face, eyes, ears, mouth, extremities and genitals. These rules must be carefully considered if one wishes to stay within the circle of Saudis.

This is the first English-language piece to talk about Saudi culture in a purely descriptive (and thus non-judgemental and unbiased) manner and to deliver the voices of working-class and lower-middle-class Saudi men and women who are normally disregarded by the global media (which have a bias towards the opinions of Saudi activists and elites). It is the first English-language piece to be written by a qualitative and therefore detail-oriented researcher, providing both in-depth and broad views into the various elements of Saudi culture, covering small details within Saudis' public and private lives. It is the first English-language piece to be written by a Saudi who was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, who is still based in this country, who is a former formally-recognised imam and who comes from a working-class family—yet has travelled the world, is married to a non-Muslim European, studied in Oxford, published with the largest international academic publishers and hence has the ability to communicate with foreign mentalities. It is the first English-language piece to present Saudi values and norms in the form of a bullet-pointed list, and to analyse and set out the internal code of conduct that governs those living in Saudi society (considering that every culture is governed by an internal code of conduct). It is the first English-language piece to have both academic and non-academic elements, in the sense that, although it is based on academic research and follows academic conventions, its findings are presented in a simplified way and in plain language.