There was apparently a flap in Saudi religious circles—and among those who look to those circles for guidance—over a statement by the Grand Mufti that appeared to condemn ‘temporary marriages’. Hanbali-based Shariah law permits certain types of marriage that are less than the ordinary marriage. The fact that they are allowed bothers many Saudis, notably women, as the wives in these marriages contract away certain rights and spousal responsibilities.
The Grand Mufti, as reported in this Arab News article, was condemning the ‘travelers marriage’, misfar, in which a man traveling (or studying) abroad enters into a marriage for the duration of his stay, fully intending to divorce when it’s time to go home.
Some, however, heard him to condemn misyar marriages. These, usually of longer duration, are still problematic, still draw the wrath of women’s rights activists. But, according to the Grand Mufti, are supported in Shariah law.
No to temporary marriages
Walaa Hawari I Arab NewsRIYADH: Temporary marriages are forbidden in Islam, declared Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh, grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, while answering a viewer’s question on Channel One of Saudi TV.
Thinking the mufti was delivering a verdict on “misyar” marriages, many newspapers and websites were quick to point out that the mufti’s ruling was contrary to a fatwa delivered by 60 Islamic scholars at a Muslim World League meeting sanctioning misyar marriages.
Misyar is a form of marriage that fulfills all legal requisites of a normal union, but spouses are not committed to living together in the same house and the woman can give up some of her rights, such as monetary support.
The misunderstanding was perhaps caused by the channel running a banner on the screen saying that the grand mufti forbids misyar marriage, whereas he was only discussing temporary “misfar” marriages, in which men marry while staying abroad with the intention of divorcing their wives when they return home.
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I’ve written frequently at Crossroads Arabia about the problem of the abuse of domestic servants in Saudi Arabia. There is no question that it is a serious problem that speaks ill of Saudis who do it and those who permit it to continue.
As readers, and here, Saudi Gazette/Okaz, remind me though, runaway maids aren’t always fleeing abuse. Sometimes, they’re criminally active in jumping their work contracts and the terms of their visas.
Authorities in Jeddah arrested Monday an Indonesian man who acted as a broker helping Indonesian maids to run away from their sponsors and seek more lucrative and illegal work elsewhere. The man was reportedly charging over SR1,000 for acting as an agent and finding them work. – By Ibrahim Alawi/Okaz-SG
The Saudi judge who, it was reported, said it was okay to slap your wife for overspending, is now complaining against the journalist. Complaining in civil court, actually. He is suing, through the Ministry of Culture & Information, on his claim that the report was erroneous.
Of course, I’ve no way to assess the validity of his claim–or the original report, for that matter. What is interesting is that stating approval for corporal punishment is now seen as something shameful in itself. To me, that suggests that support for the ‘custom’ has slipped significantly.
Hearing in ‘wife beating judge’ case set for July 7
Adnan ShabrawiJEDDAH – The Khamis Mushayt District Court has set July 7 as the date to hear a complaint brought by a judge against a Saudi female freelance journalist for “publishing erroneous information against the Saudi judiciary.”
Mohammed Bin Ahmed Al-Zamil, lawyer for Judge Hamad Al-Razin, said the offending article, which was written under the title “Judge permits hitting overspending wives on face” and reported across the media and international legal organizations, was “an affront and a misrepresentation of the judge’s words.”
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This Arab News story is worth pointing out not so much for the news it carries, but for the fact that it is newsworthy: Killing a Jew is treated as murder in a Yemeni court. Murder, no matter the religion of its victim, should be treated as murder. To do anything else is rank bigotry.
The story also contains details about the now-tiny Jewish population of Yemen.
Yemeni to die for killing Jew
Khaled Al-Mahdi | Arab NewsSANAA: A court of appeals yesterday sentenced a former air force pilot to death for the murder of a Jewish man last year. The court in the northwestern province of Amran convicted Abdel Aziz Yehia Hamoud Al-Abdi, 40, of premeditated murder of Jewish teacher Moshe Yaish Nahari in December. The Amran court yesterday threw out a lower court verdict that had convicted Al-Abdi of murder but said he was “mentally unstable” when he committed the crime and ordered him to pay $27,000 in blood money to the relatives of Nahari.
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This article from the Arabic daily Okaz, translated by Arab News, reminds how utterly dangerous Saudi roads can be.
Road to death
Saad A. Al-Ghamdi | OkazIf you want to travel on any of our roads, don’t forget to write your last will and testament. This is because death may be waiting for you. You might find death in those companies carrying out maintenance and construction who leave their equipment and construction debris strewn across roads. Often, drivers are surprised to see these traps and wake up in hospitals or even die.
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The Saudi government offers a widespread safety net for its citizens, at least in theory. According to this Arab News article, the net has serious holes that allow people to fall into terrible situations. Assuming the facts to be as stated in this piece, it appears that a cultural preference toward leaving family issues within the family led to a disastrous outcome for one woman, sexually abused by her father for 19 years without hope of recourse from governmental systems.
I’m puzzled by the article’s assertion that what the father was doing ‘was not rape’. That may be because the article is using a narrow definition of the term. Perhaps it was everything short of penetration. It is, nevertheless, troubling that wherever she turned, this woman found no help.
Victim of incestuous father cries out
Walaa Hawari | Arab NewsRIYADH: A Saudi woman who was sexually abused by her father for 19 years has accused society and the country’s legal system of collaborating with the perpetrator of the crime.
“I always thought that my father was the one who was doing me wrong, but I discovered that society and the legal system were collaborating with him,” said 32-year-old Amal, speaking at a forum entitled “Drugs and Smoking: Two Sides of One Coin, Avoid Them” at the Armed Forces Hospital in Riyadh on Tuesday.
Amal’s drug-addict father began abusing her when she turned 13. However, with little knowledge of who to turn to and fearing what her family and society would say, Amal was left without help for years on end.
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I came across an extremely interesting study of the Arabic blogging universe. The study, from Harvard University’s Berkman Center Internet & Democracy Project, looks at the demographics of Arab bloggers, the makeup of the Arabic online media ‘ecosystem’, and perceptions of the US.
The study, “Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent,” is reported in a 62-page PDF document retrievable at this link. An executive summary in the form of a press release is here.
Of note, Saudi bloggers represent the second largest group, following Egypt.
A larger version of the above image can be found here.
Internet & Democracy project release study
of the Arabic blogosphereIt is with great pleasure that the Berkman Center announces a major research release from the Internet & Democracy project: “Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent.”
“Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere” utilizes a unique methodology that blends link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs to investigate the online discussions taking place across the Middle East and North Africa. Internet & Democracy project director Bruce Etling and his team, with Morningside Analytics founder and Berkman affiliate John Kelly, and co-authors Robert Faris and John Palfrey, identified a base network of approximately 35,000 active blogs (about half as many as found in their previous study of the Persian blogosphere), created a network map of the 6,000 most connected blogs, and with a group of Arabic speakers hand coded 4,000 blogs. Congratulations and thanks to all who collaborated on this significant work!
The goal for the study was to produce a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arab Middle East, and its relationship to a range of emergent issues, including politics, media, religion, culture, and international affairs. Whereas the previous study of the Persian blogosphere revealed a network organized primarily around political ideologies and topical issues, such as reformist and conservative politics, religion, and poetry, the Arabic blogosphere is organized primarily around countries. Moreover, personal life and local issues are the most important topics of discussion: most bloggers write mainly personal, diary-style observations, but when writing about politics, bloggers tend to focus on issues within their own country. Bloggers link to Web 2.0 sites like YouTube and Wikipedia (English and Arabic versions) more than other sources of information and news available on the Internet. The overall picture is one of country-based groupings of blogs focused on domestic issues.
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Coincidentally, three of the study’s four authors have an op-ed in today’s Washington Post. The piece is about what’s happening in Iran right now. While the unrest is being broadly reported through social networking media like Twitter and Facebook, one should not anticipate that those media will actually make much of a difference when it comes down to the streets of Tehran. Worse, by acting as an outlet for political frustration, their use may even work against reformers who need people on the streets. Definitely worth reading!
This year’s cultural festival in Abha will have to do without concerts, Arab News reports. The article blames ‘extremists’ for pressuring the organizers to abandon musical performances, at least in a concert venue. There will be an ‘operetta’ based on traditional music however.
No concerts at Abha festival: Prince Faisal ibn Khaled
Hayat Al-Ghamdi | Arab NewsABHA: Asir Gov. Prince Faisal ibn Khaled announced yesterday that no musical concerts would be held as part of this year’s Abha Tourism Festival or those in the coming years. Addressing a news conference here, he denied suggestions that concerts would be one of the festival’s important events. However, he said an operetta composed of national songs and traditional dances would be held during the festival that draws a number of tourists from different parts of the Kingdom and neighboring Gulf countries.
The ban on concerts comes as a result of strong opposition from extremists. Concerts held as part of the Abha Festival in the past attracted a large number of people. Prominent Saudi and Gulf singers such as Muhammad Abdu, Khaled Abdul Rahman, Hussein Al-Jasmi, Rashid Al-Majed, Rashid Al-Faris and Nabeel Shuail have taken part in the concerts.
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Here’s a nice piece from Saudi Gazette/Okaz on Saudi culture and the way Saudis appreciate ful, the Jasmine flower. The favored variety, grown from Morocco through Bangladesh, is Jasminum sambac or Arabian jasmine. The heady scent of the flower is truly intoxicating—and as with alcohol, too much is not a good thing as it becomes cloying, at least to Western senses. It is, however, a staple of Arab weddings and summer evenings, when vendors sell garlands, necklaces, bracelets, and even single flowers.
As the article point out, though, raising jasmine for the market is a risky business. The flowers much be picked before the sun rises or after it sets and rushed to market lest its scent fade away. Problems come from heat and malfunctioning computer systems at the airlines!
Source: Wikipedia
Arabian jasmine: A fragrant trade fraught with risk
Hussein Al-HazzaziJEDDAH – Although their business flourishes on happy occasions like weddings, Arabian jasmine (Ful) merchants are always on edge, hearts pounding with concern that their fragile, highly perishable goods may be destroyed and all their capital, and any chance of profit, lost. As a result, they have to act fast and are always in a race against time. Any foot dragging or even a delay of two or three hours and the delicate flowers will be past their prime and no one will buy them.
Apart from time, heat is another enemy lying in wait for those selling Ful. The hot climate in the summer poses a great challenge and precautions must be taken if the aromatic white blossoms are not to wilt and wither in the heat.
The story of those dealing in Arabian jasmine is one of long tradition and of people with a deep love of the profession and of the fragrant Ful flowers.
Ahmad Muhammad Sadqin, 59, was eager to talk about his profession which he inherited from his forefathers and which he started when he was seven years old.
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UPDATE: Saudi Jeans has the latest: Kashoggi was not fired and AFP got it wrong…
Agence France Presse (AFP) is running this story about the firing (for the second time) of Jamal Khashoggi as editor of the Arabic daily Al-Watan. Again, the stated reason behind the firing is annoying the religious conservatives.
I’m leery of writing with only AFP as a source; the agency often gets things wrong. Can anyone confirm this?
If true, the story indicates the need for greater press freedom and independence from government control in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi editor sacked after writer angers interior minister
The editor of leading Saudi newspaper Al-Watan has been fired after a columnist angered the interior minister in an exchange over the country’s religious police, journalists said on Saturday.
Jamal Khashoggi, one of the country’s most prominent journalists, was sacked from his position late Friday, Al-Watan writer Khalid al-Ghannami confirmed.
The firing came after a columnist for the newspaper upset powerful Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz on Tuesday by questioning the power of the country’s religious police, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
It was the second time that Khashoggi has been fired from the job. In 2003 he was forced out for a lengthy period after the paper ran an article critical of an ancient cleric important to Wahhabism, the ultra-conservative school of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.
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Thanks to reader ‘DW’ for the heads-up!
Earlier this month, Arab News ran a special supplement on women in business. Below are links to five articles telling the stories of Saudi women as they try to create and sustain credible businesses. The pieces are worth reading in full as they explore the possibilities and problems the women confront.
Hiba Dialdin: Advancing technology to improve the world
Amina Al-Jassim: Passion for fashion
The women interviewed here by Arab News journalist Siraj Wahab are all in the Eastern Province. Several of them are related to or work directly for Saudi ARAMCO, an enabling institution if there ever was one. The women relate that family support is critical to success, but traditional mindsets can prove problematic. The women who design clothing note that problems in getting visas for workers is a serious problem and has led to their setting up manufacturing outside the country. Training programs within Saudi Arabia are not adequate to the needs of the businesses, they say. Improved training—as well as realistic expectations of Saudi youths looking for jobs—could certainly lead to the hiring of Saudis.
Arab News reports on the visit of a group of 10th and 11th grade American students to Saudi Arabia. The trip, under the auspices of the New York City-based Institute for Civic Leadership, is designed to give the students an immersion experience in the Middle East. The students pay a substantial fee to take part, but I suspect the Saudi government is helping with the bills as well.
US students on goodwill visit
Mohammed Rasooldeen | Arab NewsRIYADH: A group of US students arrived here to begin a 16-day goodwill mission to the Kingdom.
During the visit, the youths will visit schools, places of cultural interest and visit media organizations to get to know the social and cultural environment in the Kingdom.
On their arrival, the delegates were met by Prince Khalid ibn Bandar ibn Sultan who warmly welcomed them to the Kingdom.
“They have arrived here as our honored guests and we hope they will leave as our good friends,” the prince remarked.
Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan, who hosted the visiting team, said the group of young American men and women would take tour of the capital, the southwestern city of Abha and Jeddah.
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