The Muslim Woman

Riyadh car dealership has opened a showroom that would completely be looked after by the native women. Now the women would help the prospective buyers in choosing their car, they’ll be talking at length about the horsepower, carburetors and related automotive features. However, neither the saleswomen nor the female buyers are allowed to sit behind the wheels since, women are banned from driving in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, half of the nation’s autos are under their patronage. Although the driving issue was picked up in Saudi Arabia but was silenced by a wave of condemnation from conservatives. The seven female saleswomen are pulsating the showroom and says they are in no way promoting women driving instead they would be providing a comfort zone for the women folk in buying a car for their own self. Widad Merdad, one of the saleswomen asserts, ‘I don’t support women driving even if a permission is given for them to do so, because the society is not prepared for such a step’. Read

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Saudi Arabia is in dire need of laws that would safeguard native women’s rights especially in the present scenario where they are being deserted by their ‘shauhar’ who generally escape the legal charges. Women of Saudi Arabia, who are married to either Saudis or foreigners, are having a tough time in their married lives. Their husbands are leaving them all unexpectedly and for no apparently valid reason. Azza Al Mihdar, a sociologist at King Abdulaziz University says, ‘Losing their husbands and their homes puts them under mental and social pressure as their families consider them a trouble’. Some face financial difficulties and/or are ostracized by their families. Al Mihdar added, ‘The social solution is that both families and relatives should put pressure on the husband either to live with his family normally or divorce his wife.’ Mohammed Al Ghamdi, head of public relations department at the Ministry of Social Affairs, revealed that generally the ministry receives a large number of cases of abandoned housewives every year. Image Read

A statement by the Saudi Interior Ministry revealed that authorities beheaded an Ethiopian woman for killing an Egyptian over an argument. Khadija Bint Ibrahim Moussa was found guilty of fatally stabbing Mohammad Kamal Shaheen and sentenced to death, becoming this year’s first woman to be executed since the execution of two women in 2005. Moussa had stabbed Shaheen in the neck while he was asleep and then beat his head with a glass bottle. She was executed in the Red Sea port city of Jiddah. Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam under which people convicted of murder, drug trafficking, rape and armed robbery can be executed. Beheadings are carried out with a sword in a public square. Wednesday’s executions brought to 57 the number of people beheaded in the kingdom this year. The kingdom beheaded 38 people last year and 83 people in 2005. Image Read

The West might rebuff it as preposterous while the East might defend it as its tradition, but arranged marriages nonetheless cannot be ruled out in the Asian culture. Marriages in these countries are more of a contract between two families and little of a choice between two individuals. With changing times and advent of technology, the Asian societies are becoming more liberal allowing more liberty in asserting one’s discretion in choosing one’s life partner. However, the Saudi society has not only maintained its centuries old belief of separation of sexes but any intermingling of the two genders outside marriage is interpreted as blasphemy. Even after engagement, couples are not allowed to meet each other. If a man is caught talking to an unrelated woman, he will be arrested and flogged for his audacity. Family honor is what the Saudi society stands for. If people in the West feel that the Saudi youths are extremely unhappy with the strict social norms then they are wrong. Despite of flash of rebellions now and then, Saudis by large accept their religious and cultural obligations. Like youthful indulgence, Saudi men and women try to contact each other through mobile phones and taking a cue from the West even plan their honeymoons. However, one question that remains to be answered is, are these strict social norms bringing real happiness to Saudi households. Divorces are rising at an alarming rate in Saudi Arabia. It has the second highest rate of divorces in the world. The marriage court registers 40 marriages and 20 divorces a day. According to a study conducted by Dr. Ebtisam Halawani at King Abdul Aziz University, main reasons for women, leaving their spouses was ill-treatment and violence. Polygamy was responsible for up to 55% of divorces while involvement of husbands in illicit affairs accounted for 38% of divorces. It shows that not allowing one to know the person who one is going to marry does not guarantee conjugal bliss. Source: Times Online Image

Despite graduating from universities at a faster rate than men, Saudi women faces an array of challenges in this conservative Arab country. Women’s life in Saudi Arabia is not easy, they have to face innumerable restrictions sometimes from their father, brother, husband and in-laws. The women who caught walking unaccompanied, or are in the company of a man who is neither their husband nor a close relative are at risk of arrest on suspicion of prostitution or other “moral” offences.

But problems for them don’t stop here. From a very long time Saudi women are fighting to get the right to drive. Saudi Arab is only country in the world that prohibits female drivers. Wajeha al-Huwaider, 45, an education analyst has formed a group few years before and collected more than 1,100 signatures online and at shopping malls for a petition that advocates for women’s right to drive. Right now this petition is under consideration of King Abdullah.

Why Saudi women are not allowed to drive?

The thoughts of the powerful clerics in Saudi Arabia think that allowing women to drive would lead to Western-style freedoms and an erosion of traditional values. In 1990 during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, some women who dared to drive on Saudi roads got jailed for one day and their passports got confiscated and they lost their jobs. Senior clerics say women at the wheel will unduly expose their eyes while driving and interact with male strangers, such as traffic police and mechanics. Islam prohibits women to drive: Every time when woman in Saudi Arab need to drive to work, school, shopping or to the doctor’s, they will have to urge the male members of the family to drop them to their destination.

However, supporters of female drivers say the prohibition exists neither in law nor Islam. Driving is not a luxury, but it’s a necessity here. The women, who are supporting their entire families, can’t afford paying half of their salary to a driver. In a nut shell, at least with the efforts of few Saudi women, the right to women’s driving has recently become the subject of public debate. I hope the day will come soon when they will be going for a lone drive. Via Image

In Islam, there is no such concept of free will, especially with respect to women folk. They are treated as mere commodities in the hands of men. They are battered, molested, killed when they ask for freedom. To make the situation worse, women have given no say in their own marriage. Girls less than ten years are given away to men over fifty years! Do you expect women in Islamic countries to breathe? There are no such laws in Saudi Arabia that define the minimum age for marriage. Although a woman’s permission is legally required, but that’s a different story that some marriage officials do not think it’s necessary to ask them. Running on the similar lines, recently a case has come up from Saudi Arabia where the court has discarded a divorce plea from eight-year-old girl married to 58-year-old man. The girl’s mother filed a divorce plea on her behalf but the judge dismissed it saying that she (the mother) has no right to file such a case. And that the girl can only file the plea when she reaches puberty. This is just a single case but the province is saturated with instances where young girls – who themselves don’t know the meaning of marriage – are actually being given away as wives to old men. The so called educated men in Islamic nation are likely to nourish the disgusting practice of marrying off prepubescent girls. Fathers and guardians tend to sell their daughters into marriage just for few bucks, further abetting rape. Instead of feeling guilty about it, poor families find this a profitable bargain, as they receive high bridal fees from the old groom; after all, religious hardliners acts as pillars to support the inhuman regime. What a miserable life for these little girls. (Sigh)!

The strict Islamic laws restricting movement of women, takes preposterous dimension in Saudi Arabia where men and women are treated in a manner as if they are two different species. Shrouded in dark colored abayas or traditional Saudi attires for women covering the head and extending to the tow, Saudi women move about the street like living ghosts. Forbidden to move outside their girls’ only circle, interacting with a non-relative male is blasphemous in Saudi Arabia. Even while interacting with male relatives, women do not have the liberty to talk even to their male first cousins without covering their faces. Marriages in the country are arranged by the male members of the family and the girl is allowed to see her fiancé only on the engagement day under the strict supervision of her family members. While women are not allowed to drive cars, they can move only in cars with tinted windows. They attend girls-only schools, colleges and university departments. There are woman-only gyms, boutiques, travel agencies and even shopping malls. Women can eat only in family sections of restaurants and cafeteria covered in their abayas. Despite of strict social norms, rebellious behaviors are rising in the Saudi society where women fed up with centuries old restriction are trying in what ever little way it is possible to break away from social stranglehold. Not only are clandestine love affairs between young girls and boys proliferating but also it is also not difficult to come across lesbian relations in the Saudi society. Internet and mobile phones are aiding in relations that are considered taboo. Whether new technology could help in evolving more practicality in the Saudi Arabian society remains to be seen. Via:IHT

What can be called a travesty of judiciary, the Saudi Arabia’s Higher Judicial Council has actually sentenced a rape victim to receive 200 lashes and prison while the perpetrators of humanity’s most heinous crime were allowed to walk free. The 19-year-old Shiite woman who was raped by six armed men was originally sentenced to receive 90 lashes for traveling in the car of an ‘unrelated male’ at the time of the rape. However after the woman had the temerity of not unquestioningly submitting herself to be tortured as punishment of being raped, the judges on Saudi Arabia’s Higher Judicial Council more than doubled her punishment for attempting to influence the judiciary through the media. Her lawyer, human right activist Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, has been banned from carrying her case further. His license has been revoked and he has been called to appear before a disciplinary committee for challenging the judgment, which only punished the victim of the crime and not its perpetrators. The Sunni rapists were given a paltry sentence of one to five years of imprisonment. This is the horrendous state of a country that keeps its women forcefully behind veils only to extenuate and encourage heinous crimes against them in the name of maintaining social discipline. Image: Saudigazette Source: Whyorganic