Anne Appelbaum, a columnist I truly like (and one I met in London when I was working as Press Attaché at the US Embassy), has a good piece in today’s issue of The Washington Post. She looks at the case of ‘Qatif Girl’ as a failure of American (and Western) feminists to stand up for one of their own and calls for an Elizabeth Cady Stanton to rise from the ranks of Saudi women.
As a critique of the Western feminist movement’s apparently being caught up in moral and cultural relativities, her comments are spot-on. But that’s not the only way to look at the case, as noted below.
A Stanton For the Saudis
Anne Applebaum“A court in country X sentenced a black man who had been severely beaten by white men to six months in jail and 200 lashes.”
How would you react if you read that in a newspaper? Shock, horror, anger at the regime in country X, no doubt. And once you learned that punishing blacks for associating with whites is routine in country X, you might even get angrier. You might call for sanctions, you might insist that country X not participate in the Olympics. You might demand that country X be treated like apartheid-era South Africa.
In fact the sentence is real — almost. When originally published on the CBS News Web site last month, the story concerned a woman, not a black man, and country X was Saudi Arabia.
Here is the real quote:
“A Saudi court sentenced a woman who had been gang raped to six months in jail and 200 lashes.”
True, this extraordinary case, in which a rape victim was condemned for associating with a man not her relative, did create a small international echo. Hillary Clinton led a chorus of Democrats condemning the ruling, and a few editorials condemned it, too. It wasn’t much, but it mattered: Thanks to international pressure, the Saudi king has pardoned the woman. And now? In Saudi Arabia women still can’t vote, can’t drive, can’t leave the house without a male relative. No campaign of the kind once directed at South Africa has ever been mounted in their defense.
…
In his piece at Foreign Policy blog, Blake Hounshell points out that Saudi Arabia is a relatively young nation. It has not yet had the time to develop movements and social organizations that produce the likes of Stanton. Give the Saudis time, he says, and the liberals will help shift the country and society to a modern outlook on civil rights and women’s rights. I think he makes his point well.
The real story of Saudi Arabia’s ruling class
Blake HounshellAnne Applebaum rightly condemns Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women, but I think she misunderstands the political dynamics in the kingdom.
… If you meet Saudi officials, you soon realize that many of them are actually Western-educated liberals. The oil minister, for instance, went to Lehigh and Stanford. the ambassador to the United States attended Texas and Georgetown. Before 9/11, more than 60,000 Saudis came to the United States each year. That number is now down to around 25,000. Still, in 2006, more than 11,000 visas were issued to incoming Saudi students. Think most of those kids don’t absorb American culture and values while they’re in college? Many of them go back and become high-ranking officials in Saudi Aramco or the government. They will tell you that widespread, systematic discrimination against women in their country is a tribal issue and has nothing to due with Islam.
Some top leaders, such as Interior Minister Prince Naif bin AbdulAziz, are basically religious fundamentalists. But in general, the “Saudi ruling class” is a relatively liberal group sitting on top of a deeply conservative population. It’s an elite that constantly jockeys with the religious establishment for power; sometimes the liberals win, and sometimes they lose. Certainly, Saudi Arabia’s move reformers more cautiously than we in the West might like. But they know far better than we do what the traffic will bear. Remember: Before oil was discovered in 1938, Saudi Arabia was largely a land of tribal nomads and subsistence farmers. Just 70 years later, the country is a modernizing state and one of the linchpins of the global economy. This is a lot for any country to absorb. Give the Saudis time. They’ll get there.
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December:18:2007 - 17:18
Just found your site. It’s very interesting! It’s nice to find someone discussing a subject instead of bashing it or apologizing about it.
December:18:2007 - 17:50
John:
I am sorry to say the Real Story of Saudi Arabia’s Ruling Class fails to impress me. Yes, I recognize it is a relatively young nation. But the liberal ruling class seems to have done mighty little to help it grow up. They have built mega-malls, skyscrapers, and media hubs. They could not nurture the beginnings of a free press and basic rights?
December:18:2007 - 17:58
They could all do more, always and of course. Can’t we all?
It has not been until relatively recently, though, that the merchant class saw the possibility of any benefit to themselves to do so. Now that there is the scent of change in the air in Saudi Arabia, I expect to see more coming from this group. As they become more and more entwined with the Saudi economy, they will have real concerns that the country succeed on all counts. Up until now, most Saudi money was invested outside the KSA.
December:18:2007 - 18:19
Well, in that case it will be the merchant class which will save KSA and not its ruling elite….
What you say rings true though. With more of a financial stake in the country, it is likely that the middle class will demand more clout than what they are getting from their unelected leaders (religious or otherwise).
December:18:2007 - 18:51
The merchant class is part of the ruling elite. They just don’t have quite as much power as members of a certain family. Rule in the KSA is established through balancing the different centers of power. The Al-Saud are pre-eminent, but not dominantly so. If sufficient other power centers cooperated, they could bring them down. But those groups are at such odds with each other, cooperation is unlikely.
The trick is to get reform-minded groups working together in such a way as to be able to ignore those working to move the country backward to the 7th C.
December:19:2007 - 02:54
The problem with Anne Appelbaum and similar columnists who want to address Saudi women’s rights is they don’t talk to any Saudis. If they do, their comments are absent from the column. As Laura Hughes discovered on her visit to Jeddah a couple of years ago on behalf of the Bush administration, Saudi women resent having Western women speak for them or being told how they feel. Danielle Crittenden from Huffington Post wrote a 4-part series based on her wearing the abaya and niqab, then wrote an additional two stories linking the veil to the dangers of the veil to Western values. Yet in her 8,000-word diatribe she never once asked a Saudi woman how she felt about the abaya, niqab or her oppression at the hands of men in Saudi society. There are female Saudi voices out there and can be easily found if Appelbaum and Crittenden can be bothered to find the time to talk to them.
December:19:2007 - 06:11
Applebaum writes: “Mona Eltahawy argued that while oil is a factor, the real reason Saudi teams aren’t kicked out of the Olympics is that the “Saudis have succeeded in pulling a fast one on the world by claiming their religion is the reason they treat women so badly.” Islam, she points out, does take other forms in Turkey, Morocco, Indonesia and elsewhere. But Saudi propaganda, plus our own timidity about foreign customs, has blinded us to the fact that the systematic, wholesale Saudi oppression of women isn’t dictated by religion at all but rather by the culture of the Saudi ruling class.â€
Blake Hounshell comments in “The real story of Saudi Arabia’s ruling class†: “Certainly, Saudi Arabia’s reformers move more cautiously than we in the West might like. But they know far better than we do what the traffic will bear. Remember: Before oil was discovered in 1938, Saudi Arabia was largely a land of tribal nomads and subsistence farmers. Just 70 years later, the country is a modernizing state and one of the linchpins of the global economy. This is a lot for any country to absorb. Give the Saudis time. They’ll get there.â€
Suhaila Hammad, a writer who supports women’s rights, agrees with the above points, but she observes quite to the point: “Unfortunately, tradition and customs control many people here (in Saudi Arabia) and they confuse them with Islamic law. As for the argument that we should introduce women’s rights gradually, I say Islam came 1,428 years ago. Are all these centuries not enough to understand it?â€
December:19:2007 - 06:36
There is one sure way Saudi women will get their rights and that is when they believe that they deserve them. That simple! That belief will lead to action.
Concerning the Ministry of Interior….if you have ever seen it you would swear that is an alien spacecraft. Hmmm people just laugh at me when I make such comments but seriously take a closer look.
Happy Holidays!
December:19:2007 - 08:18
Some writers–particularly those who end up bashing the Saudis–do talk to a certain kind of Saudi. That kind is the one who is either exiled from Saudi Arabia or is carrying a large chip on his/her shoulder. Talking with Saudis outside the KSA needs to be carefully assessed to make sure the writer isn’t inadvertently getting involved in someone else’s agenda that has little to do with the matter at hand.
December:19:2007 - 14:21
I think that all saudi women one day will gather round together and make the man as weak as he is he can make life happen but not with ou the women so therefore I say the women are more powerful than men. And when they realize it they could all gather round and not fuck with the saudis and stop the lifecycle just like that but they still have to figure that out themselves.