Yesterday Riyadh Newspaper carried a story about a couple. Their relationship ended horribly when the guy blackmailed the girl into meeting him on a secluded roof. Only she came with a bottle of acid. She agreed that he would be there first waiting for her and when she got there he had already gotten down to his undies in anticipation but what he got was acid poured on his pelvic area. Unfortunately she was unable to get away before he had wrestled the acid from her and attacked her with it. They both started screaming in pain but no one came so they somehow managed to get down and run into the street where some civilians took them to the hospital. They were found to have 40% third degree burns and put in ICU.
What the guy was using to blackmail the girl was not mentioned in the article. However I’m betting that it was something relatively trivial like a photo with her face uncovered all dressed up to go to a party or maybe it was a tape recording of an illicit phone conversation, something that would not really be substantial enough to blackmail a single Muslim girl into sex anywhere else in the world except Saudi Arabia. What with so much being forbidden and our culture of shame one, shame the whole family, the stakes are so high. A girl who lets her guard down for a second sometimes will have to spend her whole life paying for it. I remember a friend of mine who was really smart and graduated from high school with a 98% and got accepted into the computer science department at King Saud University. Only she had the bad habit of making phone boyfriends during her years in high school, so her parents forced her the summer she graduated high school to marry a distant cousin who also happens to be a school drop out just so ‘yistir aliyha’, an Arabic term that means to cover her or to shield her from people’s talk. I visited her after she settled down and she told me that she had saved the bedsheet she lost her virginity to her husband on. I asked her why? She said it was like a keepsake but I believe it’s more than that. It’s her proof. Within a year she had a baby and we lost touch but I heard that she had many more babies and I don’t know if she ever got the chance to go to college. All because she liked to talk to guys over the phone. Granted that is a problem on a religious level but if it was only religion, her parents would have not taken such extremes to cure her of it. If this daughter got a reputation that she talks to guys, she would not only ruin her prospects of marriage, but that of her sisters. Hence her parents were sacrificing her for the sake of the family. It’s complicated with centuries and layers of tradition and culture and I’m not sure I personally want it to change but it would be nice if they would ease up a little on the girls so that they wouldn’t have to tote bottles of acid every time an innocent photo gets out.
Al Naqa Charity association has started a campaign to encourage Saudi citizens to quit smoking. Posters are hung on all the major streets stating in Arabic “You quit and we’ll give you a wedding”. Of course, anyone who knows anything about Saudi Arabia, knows that getting married is a costly affair for the groom. And what the charity is paying for is the wedding and dowry, they aren’t going to find a bride or mediate, just pay the bills. So far so good. Last Sunday a writer in al Watan newspaper Maha Al Jahilan slammed the charity comparing what the charity is offering to selling sex. I especially enjoyed her melodramatic conclusion which I translated:
Isn’t presenting a woman as a prize to a person who quits smoking comparable to what primitive societies did when they sacrificed women to gods by throwing them into rivers, or wild animals? Wouldn’t it be better if the charity offered to find jobs for the quitters to raise their income, or offered to help them in housing, or continue their education, or self-improvement courses instead of finding a solution that would create worse and uglier problem?
Come on?! Is she serious? I consider myself a Saudi feminist if there ever was one and I saw those posters long before I read about them. It never occurred to me that they were demeaning to women. Her suggestions are fine and so is paying for a quitter’s marriage costs. But probably the charity’s idea might be a stronger motivator for the younger love-stricken smokers. But if people who are calling for more women rights in Saudi raise arms at every silly thing then that will undermine what they stand for and the conservatives won’t take then as seriously.
I’ve been neglecting this blog recently because I’m really busy keeping up with my schoolwork. I’m taking a few courses and let me tell you it’s kind of funny being back in a student’s chair after teaching a few years. Makes me appreciate what my students go through and I think every teacher should have a similar experience every now and then just as a reminder of how tough and stressful it is.
Well I have final exams and a bunch of papers to hand in so until then I don’t believe I’ll be adding anything here. Meanwhile, please check out this new online paper in which I am a staff writer. It has a truly enlightening global perspective and shows a lot of promise.
Katie Couric from CBS News stops a Saudi man on the street and asks him if he is a muttawa. I found that really funny. You don’t ask a religious fanatic if he is a religious fanatic. The way that she stood there and with a matter of fact attitude claimed that women are not allowed to go to the open market unescorted. Couldn’t she have asked a Saudi? I’m speculating here but she probably asked some non-Saudi Arab translator (Lebanese or Egyptian), someone who probably doesn’t even live in Riyadh.
To set the record straight, I could right now go alone to that very same market and shop until I drop and no one would say a thing. It just happens that she was probably filming on a weekday night and hence there weren’t that many people of either sex. And the term muttawa is a colloquial term that should not be used by a reporter and especially not to ask someone who might be a muttawa. It comes from the Arabic word mutatwa and it basically means volunteer because men are not paid that much to monitor morality in society. Now in Saudi slang it has negative connotations and is used to refer to someone (man or woman) who is a self-righteous Islamic fundamentalist that goes around correcting people regardless of whether or not they are employed by the PVPV. A true muttawa would call himself a member of Al Hisba which means ‘those who hold people accountable’. And their over the top religious life style is called Eltizam and so the person would refer to himself as multizim.
On April 23rd newspapers reported that 100,000 applicants applied within one week of first announcing vacancies in women government jobs. While a month before it took three weeks to get 50,000 applicants for men government jobs. And the report quietly disappeared without much fuss about its implications and the hopelessness that Saudi women are going through. Yes it’s true that education is free and the majority of these women never had to pay tuition fees on school or university, actually they were given a monthly allowance (stipend) for studying after high school. Saudis have been paid to study since higher education first opened in the country as a way to get more people literate faster. And it worked because just three generations ago literacy was less than 50%.
It worked so well that most people younger than forty have a college degree. And even though women studied and graduated in larger numbers than men, yet it seems like they are expected to think of the whole educational experience as a past-time or just something to make them more desirable as marriage material. Now that all the segregated fields (mostly education) are bursting at the seams with all that human resources, the rest of these women have nowhere to go and little money to spend.
To have a hundred thousand applicants in one week in a part of society with which mobility is an issue should be a matter of great concern, especially considering that there are over 5 million migrant workers taking up jobs like selling lingerie, waiters and chefs and even our hotel industry is mostly run by non Saudis. All the while, Saudi women wilt at home waiting for the government to employ them in jobs that are proper for them to take. Because if they don’t take up something proper they are very likely to have our society drag their reputation and that of their families in the mud. Society does this in its own quiet way without much word getting back to the women concerned. The only apparent sign is a dry up in the number of suitors to all the daughters of that family. Just this week a Saudi news website gave this cultural punishment to a group of Saudi women journalists in a much louder form. The website reported that these lady reporters slept with their editors, smoked pot, drank and had so-called red nights at vacation houses on the outskirts of the city. And I’m glad to say that these women are fighting back with a lawsuit against the website. A lawsuit that the ladies are highly likely to win because our courts tend to bring the hammer down hard when it comes to making outright false allegations that tarnish family honor.
Financial gain in the form of student stipends and later employment salaries has gotten women over the mountain of family consent to study and then teach. Even the most conservative daddies and hubbies just can’t resist that boost to the family income. With the economy slowing down and the rise in living costs, financial gain might again come to the rescue of women in the form of larger numbers of families no longer being able to afford drivers and in expanding society’s definition of proper jobs for women.
I’m a blogger. This is what was written in Arab News today, the leading Saudi English paper in an article about women’s sports clubs here. Another thing that I’m not is a social worker. I’m a lecturer. I teach English as a foreign language and for specific academic purposes. But what I was really disappointed in was that the writer got my viewpoint all wrong. She asked me what I thought about religious people using the government to close down sports clubs. The issue being that these clubs are increasingly becoming popular with Saudi women. Women only sports clubs have been popping up everywhere and their fees are now within reach of the average woman. They offer aerobic classes, self-defense and even salsa dancing. However they have no legal licensing umbrella because according to the government all forms of exercise are for men only. So the owners of these clubs get a license for a salon or a child activity center and then expand from there. Ultra conservatives are dead against these establishments because they believe that they lead Saudi women to sin through the influence of and interaction with unsavory feminist and sometimes they go as far as lesbian women who work there and frequent the clubs (according to the muttawa sexually repressed wild imagination). Moreover they believe that exercise goes against femininity and that it is an exclusively manly domain.
In the eighties and nineties there weren’t many of these sports clubs around and if one does open, the muttawas would camp outside its doors and harass the owner and workers until it closes down out of frustration. Then these muttawas would preach about the sins that they uncovered and led to their victory in closing the club.
Now that they are all over the place and extremely high in demand the muttawas logistically cannot take the same approach. So what they are doing is taking a top down approach through bureaucratic nonsense. And that is what I meant by their reaction being natural. I do not support the government in closing them down but I do believe that licensing should be done properly. What the ultra conservatives are doing is futile because its too little, too late. It’s the same thing over and over again with satellite TV, camera cell phones, music stores …etc. The general public demands them too much for these conservatives to be able to stop their spread. And now they are taking on womens sports clubs which will only lead them to be legalized and taken off the black market into the light, just like their other “sinful” predecessors.
The boycott and walk out on Ahmadinejad’s speech at Durban II smacks of hypocrisy. Tariq Al Maeena has a an excellent piece today for those of us not wearing western ideologies horse blinkers. He concludes his article with a quote:
Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store stated it best during a news conference. “If we start walking out every time we feel uncomfortable dealing with our ideological rivals, the world would be the one to lose,” he said.
Muhanid is a 23 year old Saudi physics prodigy. He has 22 inventions under his belt, nine of which are patented, and he’s written three books. He first started inventing when he was in sixth grade. His most known invention is a submarine that can submerge itself underwater to depths lower than any other submarine in the world. Before Muhanid’s invention the Japanese held the record. Another invention of his is a pen for the blind. He is originally from the south-western region of Jezan and grew up in Jeddah. His father is a presenter on the Saudi broadcast channels.
In April of last year Muhanid was involved in a car accident on Al Ouraba street in Riyadh. At the time, he was a newlywed, he had just gotten married five days earlier. Unfortunately he lost his sight, hearing in one ear and a leg in the accident. And witnesses say that the loss of his leg was due to the slow response of the paramedics and later bureaucratic procedures at the hospital he was taken to.
As he was recovering, his wife would sit next to his hospital bed crying and he turned to her and told her that everything was going to be alright. Psychologists that saw him after his accident remarked that they rarely come across patients who were able to deal so well with what he had gone through.
Now Muhanid has beaten the dirt off and gotten right back up. He is currently sponsored by the Saudi Telecom Company and back to pursuing his dreams. He also speaks at local schools, urging students to go after their ambitions. My nephew attended one of Muhanid’s talks and he couldn’t stop raving about him. He says meeting him was inspirational and that Muhanid gave the students his Email and told them that they could contact him if they ever needed support.
This story has drawn a lot of press. The girl is from Onaiza which is a part of Qaseem, a central region north of Riyadh. It’s the same place that produced Sheikh Bin Othaimeen and it’s most known for how fanatic and social the people there are about religion. And how the women of families there dress and live is the expression of the whole family’s piousness and honour. Just to give you a flavor of how people think of women over there, I’ll tell you a couple of incidents that I’ve come across when visiting. A relative of mine has a daughter who when she was around ten became quite good with rollerblading and would skate in their tiled big yard all day. Once my relative while watching her daughter skating, it occurred to her that the daughter might fall and seriously injure herself. So out of concern for her daughter’s wellbeing, she deprived the girl of her favourite activity. That sounds bad but what was truly crazy was the injury the mother was worried about was not broken bones but rather that the girl might have a freakish accident and lose her hymen.
Another incident was one time when I was visiting for a holiday, an occasion came up for which I had nothing to wear. So I thought I might pick up something from the local stores. My sister in law came with me and we dressed appropriately with the tent style abayas and covered faces. Unfortunately when we got to the mall, a muttawa found fault in that I had neglected to wear thick black socks over my ankles and would not let us shop. He followed us from shop to shop yelling how we should fear God until we went home empty-handed.
So to say that that part of Saudi Arabia is not the norm is a very happy conclusion. To get back to the girl, her case is not uncommon when parents divorce and the father takes custody. Many financially strapped fathers in this case neglect their daughters’ schooling or even pull them out of school and marry then off as soon as they can. But usually that’s around when the girls are 15. All just to spite the ex-wife. But what makes this girl stand out is her brave mother who would not take it. I am not sad that this happened to this particular girl because I know with all the publicity and support behind the mother it is highly unlikely that the 50ish groom will ever get to lay a hand on the girl. All across the Saudi media, there has been an outcry condemning him. I’ve read many calls by average Saudis for his name and photo to be published so they can shame him. Others suggest that the man’s own daughters should be forcefully married off at eight and see how he likes it.
The judge presiding over the case is not all that popular either. In court he stated that it is in the interest of the girl’s welfare that he would not annul the marriage and everyone is wondering what that means. In what way would it be in the interest of the child to stay married to her father’s friend? Just like in the Qatif girl’s case when the judge said that there are particulars concerning the rape victim that only the court knew about, the judge in the child bride case is hiding behind vague statements. Average Saudis have started to question this ambiguity in courts and demand more transparency.
This whole case will through example affect many mothers who will be able to gain strength in speaking out against this happening to their daughters.
Clarification:
For those of you who have not bothered to read the news article linked at the beginning of this post, the girl is NOT with her 50 year old husband and the judge has ordered that she remain with her family until puberty. Then she will be granted the right to choose between remaining married and moving in with her husband or asking for a divorce. The mother and uncle are currently appealing this verdict because they want an immediate anullment.
No matter how many reports you read about the rise in numbers of divorce cases in Saudi Arabia, it still remains a dirty word that Saudis are taught not to even contemplate. For my generation and those younger, there is a growing number who rebel. But for older couples it is still very true. No matter how much they hate each other, divorce is not an option. “Real” men and women never divorce. We are taught in schools that it is the most abhorred by God of all things Islamically permitted. Couples have separate bedrooms on different floors and lead chiefly separate lives and yet are still married. A man might take on a second wife and not see his first except twice a month to pay the bills and buy groceries. He does it because he thinks its manly and the woman stays on and is patient because that’s what a good woman does.
This like all other things is changing. After reading a report on this in Arab News, I thought I would write a bit about it. In Saudi Arabia there are two ways to obtain a divorce depending on who initiates it, the first is easy and can be done by the husband and the second is extremely hard and is reserved for the wife. The first can be done by the husband simply by deciding in his heart to divorce his wife and in effect this becomes valid immediately. Then in his own time he can go to the courts and obtain a document of his decision and send a copy to the ex-wife. Alimony and child custody is not a big deal either and definitely not mandated. Several women I personally know have never gotten any financial support from their ex-husbands. And in the case they are allowed child custody, its only because the father is not interested in caring for the kids. So in essence he is allowing the mother to have them. This and most other issues related to family law is only loosely based on Islam and what really goes on is the absolute vilification of the wife in court while the husband is always taken at his word. I know you might be thinking that I’m exaggerating but seriously I’m not.
When it comes to the wife initiating a divorce it is a whole different issue. It’s not even called divorce, it’s called khula which literally means taking off as in taking off clothes or jewelry. What the woman has to do is prove that the husband did something. Abuse whether physical or verbal does not get a woman far in court even with a medical report because the Saudi judges tend to believe that she probably did something to provoke it. The only proof that will absolve the woman and get her treated favorably is one of three; proof that the husband is a drug addict, has AIDS or being a daughter of a VIP. Otherwise the process is stressful, expensive and might lead to her never seeing her children again. In one case the judge and his assistants demanded from the wife that she detail her husband’s performance in bed. Another woman had to pay her dowry back in full after more than a decade of marriage and four children. Some of those years she financially supported her then husband and yet she still had to give back the money he spent on her as a young bride and give up child custody completely. To rub salt into injury, she was hushed in court while listening to the guy tell everyone there including her father and brothers how horny she was and that she wouldn’t be doing this unless she had someone else in mind to marry.
However after everything settles down, within society it is much better for a woman to obtain a khula rather than be divorced. Divorced women are usually viewed as having done something wrong but a woman who obtains a khula is a victim. It’s as if society understands that the difficulty of the process shows in some way that women do not go through with it except as a last resort after being tremendously wronged.
