I do appreciate that Saudi society is unique in many ways. There is strong religio-social pressure to keep the sexes apart in many (most) instances. While I think that a decision that is detrimental to society—both men and women—for many, many reasons, the latest move to create sex-specific hospitals strikes me as singularly wrong-headed.
Now, Saudis seem to believe that ‘separate but equal’ is an achievable goal. Based on the history of similar sentiments (and laws) in the past, this is erroneous. But, for the sake of argument, we will assume that it can be done. That is, it can be done if all resources are equal and if all the producers and consumers are equal.
The provision of medical care is not an equal resource, however. The best doctor for a particular procedure could be male or could be female. If I’m in need of medical care, I want the best medical care available to me. A law telling me that I can only be seen by a male doctor in an all-male hospital limits my choices. What if the best heart surgeon is a woman? The immediate effect is that I get second-best treatment. If I’m in a hospital, rutting is likely the least urgent of my concerns—I doubt that many hospital patients feel randy while they’re laying in a bed contemplating their mortality.
Doctors are not a limitless resource. Even assuming that there are equal numbers of equally qualified specialists (a huge assumption), having to have both male and female specialists doubles the cost of medicine for the state and society.
There may well be a rule for a few ‘women-only’ hospitals where specialists in women-only diseases or problems are dealt with. Such hospitals exist around the world uncritically. But having to have two, sex-defined hospitals where one mixed-sex hospital is all that is practically needed adds a ridiculous expense to already expensive medicine.
Saudi Arabia is a wealthy country, but no country is wealthy enough to afford this sort of nonsense.
Debate on gender mixing in hospitals moves
from Facebook to Shoura
FATIMA SIDIYA & MD AL-SULAMI | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: More than 100 doctors and religious scholars have submitted a report to both the Shoura Council and the Ministry of Health calling for the establishment of women-only hospitals in all Saudi cities.
The report has been produced following a Facebook petition calling for women-only hospitals that recently gained momentum. The report also includes a suggested plan to implement the project.
Signatories include religious scholars and tribal chiefs, in addition to 40 male and 30 female doctors employed at various government hospitals.
To support the demand, the report quoted from fatwas of two former grand muftis, Sheikh Muhammad bin Ibrahim and Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz, in addition to a previous circular from the Council of Ministers.
“Among the main calls of scholars in our beloved country is the establishment of hospitals for men and others for women so that men can be treated by male doctors and nurses and women can be treated by women so as to protect them and prevent the mixing of sexes,” says the report.
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Okay, this one puzzles me. Pr. Khaled Al-Faisal is noted as one of the clearer thinkers in Saudi Arabia. But his order to Arabize signage in the city of Mecca seems somewhat perverse. I understand about wanting to get rid of non-descriptive foreign names for shops, restaurants, and the like, but doing away with foreign language entirely? Mecca is the most international cities in Saudi Arabia. As the focal point of Haj, Muslims from all corners of the earth come for the annual pilgrimage and stay for at least some period of time to frequent local businesses. Why would they be faced with the trial of figuring out Arabic script in order to eat a meal? Does this mean that street signs would be in Arabic only? Even Saudi license plates are ‘bilingual’ in that they are are presented in both Arabic and Roman scripts and numbering.
Makkah moves to Arabize signboards
ARAB NEWSMAKKAH: Municipal officials in Makkah have started taking steps to ensure that all name boards of shops and businesses as well as street signboards are written in Arabic, replacing foreign names and scripts.
Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal had ordered the change as part of his efforts to make the names match the culture and heritage of Makkah.
Sahl Malaibari, spokesman of the services agencies at the Makkah municipality, said many commercial establishments including wedding halls have already changed their foreign names.
“A wedding hall that used to carry the name ‘Marbella’ on the Ring Road has now been changed to Al-Dhikra Al-Khaledah (Eternal Memory) after the prince suggested the change when he opened the third Makkah Literary Forum there,” he said.
“Another wedding hall’s name was changed from ‘Marseilles’ to ‘Mamlakati’ (My Kingdom).”
“We are in the holiest spot on earth, the place where the first revelation was given, beginning with Arabic word ‘iqra’ (read), and where the last Prophet, who is an Arab, was born,” the prince said before issuing his order.
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For what should be obvious reasons, Saudi Arabia is not among the most productive agricultural countries in the world. It is, however, a major exporter of dates. Dates have also been a traditional part of the Saudi diet for as long as history reports.
Those dates are now being threatened by the Red Palm Weevil, an insect whose grubs destroy trees. The government has established a national campaign to treat trees though the use of an injected pesticide that kills the weevils but does not affect the date fruit.
SR120 million campaign to combat Red Palm Weevil
RIYADH: The national campaign to save palm trees from Red Palm Weevil began Saturday with 1,500 Saudi specialists sent out to farms across the country.
The campaign, which is costing SR120 million and hopes to save approximately 6.5 million palm trees, is focusing on areas of dense palm tree presence, with Al-Ahsa the most prominent single region with its three million palms.
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It’s about time. Saudi religious scholars are getting around to telling imams to stop calling non-Muslims names and condemning them to the fires of Hell. We know—and have plenty of examples to support our knowledge—that the general Muslim public doesn’t take kindly to defamation. Whatever made some Muslims think that non-Muslims would respond differently when the calumny is headed their way?
One does not make friends with others by condemning them, by wishing for their destruction, by pointing out all the differences that lie between you.
More scholars join calls for stopping supplications
against non-Muslims
GALAL FAKKAR | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: The number of religious scholars calling for a stop in supplications against non-Muslims has increased with renowned Saudi scholar Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Fouzan Al-Fouzan joining them.
“These supplications are an aggression against non-Muslims,” said Al-Fouzan, who is also a member of the Saudi Human Rights Commission. “This is against the spirit of Islam. The imams should instead pray to Allah to guide them toward the path of righteousness,” said Al-Fouzan, while describing supplications against non-Muslims as unjust.
Supplications against non-Muslims are often made by some imams of mosques following the second Friday sermon. This is especially the case following developments in volatile regions across the world when passions run high.
The practice has, however, been deemed wrong by numerous scholars. Al-Fouzan said the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) used to pray to Allah to guide people and show them the road to monotheism and righteousness. “The Prophet used to say he was not sent to people (with the message of Islam) as a preacher of curse but as a man of mercy,” Al-Fouzan said.
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It seems that KAUST does not hold a monopoly on Red Sea marine scientific research. Saudi Gazette reports that King Abdul Aziz University is working with German researchers assessing the chemical, geological and physical resource of the sea.
KAU and German researchers to study Red Sea marine life
NAIF MASRAHIJEDDAH: The College of Marine Science at King Abdul Aziz University here will launch the first scientific trip to the Red Sea Tuesday in cooperation with the Leibniz Marine Institute of Germany’s Kiel University on the famous ship Poseidon. The researchers will collect data and samples for further study.
The joint scientific team will spend 22 days covering 120 kilometers of the Jeddah coast.
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Arab News has a sensationalistic headline coming from a scientific symposium on domestic violence. The forum reported that 45% of Saudi children are ‘victims of domestic violence’. I find this rather unbelievable, actually.
Yes, Saudis can, at times, be pretty brutal. But parents that I’ve seen tend, on the whole, to be loving toward their children. I suspect that what’s happening here is the application of a new definition of ‘domestic violence’, one so wide that nearly half of the population now finds itself categorized as ‘abuser’. That application, while certainly attracting attention, does little to help the situation. In fact, it works against it in that it will result in trivialization of the issue. If shouting at a child or mild corporal punishment (e.g., a spanking) is deemed abusive, then parents and society at large will generally disregard the matter. That allows the true abusers to get away with their own acts because no one will take the allegations seriously. It may be a matter of ‘crying wolf’.
45% of Saudi children face domestic violence: forum
ARAB NEWSMADINAH: A major forum on domestic violence urged the Saudi society to stand united in confronting this form of abuse. It was revealed in the forum that nearly 45 percent of children in the Kingdom are victims of domestic violence.
On behalf of Madinah Gov. Prince Abdul Aziz bin Majed, Suleiman Al-Joraish, undersecretary at the governorate, opened the first scientific forum here on Saturday morning. The forum entitled “Toward active societal participation in confronting domestic violence” concluded at the Meridian Hotel here on Sunday evening.
Prominent figures, including Dr. Abdullah Al-Tayifi, director general of health affairs in Madinah region, and Mansour Al-Nuzha, president of Taiba University, addressed the two-day event, organized by Taibah University in cooperation with the General Directorate of Health Affairs. An exhibition was also held on the sidelines of the forum.
Addressing the event, Fatima Dawood, chairperson of the organizing committee, underscored the need for joint efforts to confront domestic violence. In his speech, Al-Nuzha called the figures on domestic abuse “alarming.”
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Travelers are always annoyed by flight delays. Most airlines try to provide some sort of recompense, but the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority is taking it a bit further. Starting next week, passengers whose flight are delayed will be paid SR300 (US $80) per hour of delay. That’s well above the normally hourly wage paid to Saudis (or anyone else, for that matter). I somehow suspect that creative people will be finding ways to make a career out of booking flights noted for being delayed.
As this Arab News piece notes, this payment goes along with a requirement that airlines provide hotel accommodations for those who have their flights canceled.
Passengers to be compensated for flight delays
P.K. ABDUL GHAFOUR | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: Passengers traveling through Saudi airports will get a compensation of SR300 per hour if there is a delay in their flights, according to a new bylaw issued by the General Authority of Civil Aviation.
Article 19 of the new law, which comes into effect after 10 days.
Said airline companies have to provide hotel accommodation to passengers at a cost of up to SR3,000 daily if they cancel their flights and do not operate alternative flights.
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And this time, they’re enlisting the help of Interpol.
Arab News reports that a new list of 47 terrorism suspects is now out. It includes new names, such as Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser and Ahmed bin Muhammad Al-Suwaid, who were included, the Ministry of Interior says, only after extensive investigation. The Ministry also repeats its offer that those on the list who turn themselves in will received favorable treatment.
Kingdom seeks Interpol help to arrest 47 terror suspects
MUHAMMAD AL-SULAMI | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: Saudi Arabia on Sunday published a list of 47 wanted terror suspects abroad who are believed to be planning attacks in the country. The Kingdom has asked for Interpol’s help to track them down.
Spokesman for the Interior Ministry Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki said most of the 47 suspects, all Saudi nationals, left the country illegally.
“A number of them pose a big danger as they are involved in Al-Qaeda terrorist operations. We passed a list of them to Interpol last Wednesday,” Al-Turki told reporters.
He said the suspects are aged between 18 and 40. “We have got information that 16 of them are in Yemen, 27 in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and four in Iraq,” he added.
This is the fifth list of wanted terrorists issued by the ministry since Al-Qaeda militants carried out a series of attacks inside the Kingdom that began in 2003. The first list included 19, the second 26, the third 36 and the fourth 85.
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Saudi Gazette/Okaz run a couple of articles that amplify the story:
These latter two papers (English and Arabic sister papers) also run an article stating that terrorists will not find special treatment in the courts:
According to Saudi Gazette/Okaz, Saudi students paying for their own education in the US may be able to slip into the government-sponsored scholarship program. The article lists only one condition—passing an English competence test—but I suspect there are a few more.
Also interesting is that the Saudi education office is acquiring an 8-floor building in northern Virginia (across the river from Washington, DC and the Embassy) to handle Educational Affairs staff. That’s a lot of office space, but I assume it’s required to administer 32,000 students.
Saudis paying for studies in the US get easier path
to govt scholarships
AHMAD AL-ARYANIWASHINGTON: Saudi students studying at their own expense in the United States can now be enrolled in the King Abdullah Program for Scholarships Abroad once they pass an English-language course. Doing so will exempt them from the condition of completing a certain number of academic hours, Muhammad Bin Abdullah Al-Isa, Saudi cultural attaché, said.
The government has sent more than 32,000 Saudi students to study in the United States, including students in the Program’s sixth phase, said Al-Isa, who added that its extension for another five years reflects its success.
Attaché officials have established about 145 Saudi student clubs – headed by students – in US universities and they are all “showing a bright image of communication with American society and with Saudi students, and introducing services and advice to the latter,” Al-Isa said.
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While not directly related to Saudi Arabia, this story out of Egypt (via Al-Ahram‘s online presence) has a message that applies to Saudis and other Muslims. Religions are not automatically at war with each other, even if they disagree on fundamental aspects of religious doctrine. Islam would not exist without the prior existence of Judaism and Christianity. Muslims see their religion as a fulfillment of the promises of those earlier religions, but that does not make those earlier ones enemies, nor does it provide a rationale for seeing followers of those faiths as discardable, worthless beings suitable only as targets of wrath.
Egypt for All
Egypt’s Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass,
serving as “human shields”
Muslims turned up in droves for the Coptic Christmas mass Thursday night, offering their bodies, and lives, as “shields” to Egypt’s threatened Christian community
Yasmine El-RashidiEgypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.
From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.
“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.
Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole.
… Millions of Egyptians changed their Facebook profile pictures to the image of a cross within a crescent – the symbol of an “Egypt for All”. Around the city, banners went up calling for unity, and depicting mosques and churches, crosses and crescents, together as one.
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Here’s a Washington Post take on the story.
And here, from The Los Angeles Times
If many Saudi women are finding the institution of marriage unattractive [see post below], women who try it and then leave it find the going tough as well.
This Arab News report focuses on the social discrimination Saudi divorcées face, whether from society at large or from their own parents. The article notes that many divorced Saudi women find it preferable to be a second, third, or even a ‘temporary’ wife as that provides them with an ID that is better received than mere ‘divorcée’.
Divorced women in Kingdom struggle to find social acceptance
RIMA AL-MUKHTAR | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: To be a divorcee in Saudi society is like having a scarlet letter burned on the chest. Many women who happen to leave marriages are forced into a life of shame; for some this is so much that they remain perpetually hidden behind closed doors.
One thing that is for sure is that society fails to give these women a chance to breathe; they are spoken about and made to feel awkward wherever they go. “Nobody educated me about the next step after getting married and I blame my parents for that,” said Nadia Al-Otaiby, a 38-year-old divorcee. “I asked for a divorce only one month after I got married because I found out that the man I married was impossible to live with. There were also some other reasons which I prefer keeping to myself,” she said.
“Imagine what people said about me when I got divorced just 30 days after getting married. Now I’m forced to walk shamefully whenever I leave the house as if I did something wrong,” she added.
Every woman dreams to have a wedding day in which she is the center of attention among hundreds of women. However, when she gets divorced she turns into the center of attention of not just those who were invited to her wedding but the entire society.
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For a variety of reasons, Saudi women are not finding the institution of marriage a compelling one. Arab News reports that in four years’ time, there will be four million ‘spinsters’. Assuming the usual definition of the term, that’s women who have never been married, with a subtext of never really wanting to be married. A factor not mentioned in the article, though often offered to me by Saudi women, is that many Saudi men don’t meet the women’s expectations. Low levels of education, too tied to traditions, unwillingness to allow their wives to work or even study. Marriage, even Islamic marriage, is seen as the merging of two individuals into one couple (well, in the case of polygamy, several couples, but polygamy is falling out of favor for its own variety of reasons). If there is no sense of equality between partners, then marriage seems to lack a basic necessity. Keeping parents happy by producing grandchildren isn’t sufficient incentive.
‘Four million single women in Kingdom by 2015′
GALAL FAKKAR | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: Abdul Aziz Al-Fouzan, a member of the government’s Human Rights Commission (HRC), said the number of single Saudi women over the age of 32 is expected to grow to four million by 2015.
The HRC estimates the number of spinsters (defined, says Al-Fouzan, as single women over the age of 32) to be at least 1.4 million.
“This means that there is an unmarried woman among every 16 Saudi women,” he said in a recent lecture. “There are a variety of reasons behind this phenomenon including unemployment, a housing shortage and obsolete social traditions.”
The number of single women in this age category is higher in the cities than in the countryside, he added. He, however, cautioned against assuming marrying girls is the cure for the problem.
Currently being debated in the Kingdom is the issue of limiting marriages of minors — defined as anyone under the age of 18 — to address the issue of girls being married off to old men, in some cases so that fathers can settle debts or lay claim to dowries.
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