Saudi Arabia’s workweek runs Saturday through Wednesday, with Friday, the day of worship, and Saturday considered the weekend, when most workplaces close. This works perfectly well in an isolated environment. But Saudi Arabia does not exist in an isolated environment: it is completely plugged into global markets and finance.
In trying to mesh itself with the rest of the world, the result is a bit of a mess. On Thursday and Friday, Saudis are not doing business with most of the world; on Saturday and Sunday, when the Saudis are at work, most of the world is on holiday. This means that the effective overlap is only three days. Four days per week are out of sync.
This Arab News article reports on the heated debate going on in the Shoura Council over a proposed change to the Saudi workweek that would make the weekend Friday and Saturday. This would bring it into accord with the other Gulf States and Egypt, though not with Europe, the US, Latin America, Africa, or the bulk of Asia. Still, it would mean that the country would be out of sync only three days per week.
As noted in a post on this issue from last year, the five-day workweek in Saudi Arabia only dates from the 1980s. Thus, the arguments from ‘religious principle’ seem ill-informed at best.
If one’s work involves other countries and if one takes one’s work seriously, it means that you work a seven-day week. That becomes tiring pretty quickly. A one-day shift would only marginally improve things, but it’s a significant margin.
Shoura Debate on Weekend Change Divides Citizens
Raid Qusti, Arab NewsRIYADH, 2 May 2007 — A healthy debate on whether to change the Kingdom’s official Thursday-Friday weekend to Friday and Saturday took place at the Shoura Council recently.
The proposal had been presented for discussion to the Shoura Council’s Management and Human Resource Committee by the Civil Service Ministry. It will subsequently be voted on and if passed would then be sent to the Council of Ministers for approval.
Currently, the Kingdom is officially off on Thursdays and Fridays, which are working days in most parts of the world. The proposal was strongly criticized by several members of the Shoura Council, including Deputy President of the Shoura Mahmoud Taiba, who cited Islamic reasons. “The proposal for changing the weekend is unacceptable in a country that rules by the Qur’an and Sunnah and takes them as its constitution,†he said, adding that economic reasons cited for the change “are baselessâ€.
…
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
June:05:2007 - 13:56
Al-Jeraisy argued that if the weekend was changed to Friday and Saturday, future generations would ask for it to be changed to Saturday and Sunday. “If that happens then we will be copying the Jews and Christians,†he said.
Al-Jeraisy has that backwards: the old rule for Jews was to not deal with businessmen from other religions on the day before or the day of their weekly holy day. So in the Middle Ages Thursday through Sunday was off-limits for many Jewish businessmen. It seems that Saudis now essentially follow what had been an exclusively Jewish practice.
June:05:2007 - 14:42
I get a kick out of the “copying Christians and Jews” idea. They use Air Conditioning, are they going to stop using that? Air Planes, cars, bullets, guns and explosives for that matter?
June:05:2007 - 15:06
The Internet seems to be widely accepted by certain groups, too, as I note in one of the posts I put up today:
War on Terror: June 5, 2007
June:05:2007 - 15:14
They use Air Conditioning, are they going to stop using that?
abusinan, what would Arabs become if they started applying logic consistently?
June:06:2007 - 10:27
Solomon: “abusinan, what would Arabs become if they started applying logic consistently?”
Are you a racist? That most certainly is a racist comment. Not all Arabs are Muslim, not all Muslims are Arabs, and Arabs certainly dont have a corner on religious or even Islamic extremism.
When you come back with a question that isnt racist we can have a dialogue. Your racism is no better than the extremists fanatacism. I condemn both.