"When will we finish with the damn mosques?" a British engineer living in Abu Dhabi reportedly said during a meeting with co-workers. Now he's defending himself in an Abu Dhabi court.

The National, a local English-language daily, said the engineer is leading a project to plant a garden around a local mosque. The newspaper says the project was moving slowly, so the defendant lost his temper:

The judge asked him: "So your keenness on completion drove you to curse?"

The conservative UAE has a history of cracking down on the many foreigners who live there for indecent or "un-Islamic" behavior.

In 2010, a British woman was arrested in Dubai after reporting a rape, the Guardian reports. Later that same year, another British woman was arrested for wearing a bikini at a Dubai mall, according to the Telegraph.

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