The antipathy Saudi society feels toward gay men is pretty well known and documented. Now, reports Arab News, the discomfort is extending toward gay women. This story about the expulsion of a Saudi woman from King Abdulaziz University because of her relationship with her dorm supervisor. Fairly typically, new media and outsider values are blamed for the growth of this ‘deviancy’. I’m sure that packing thousands of women into single-sex facilities, inside the strictures of a sexually repressed society had nothing to do with it.
The article notes that the issue at hand is the severity of the punishment alloted the student and the lack of same toward the supervisor, who denies that any relationship existed. The piece also points out that by ‘solving’ one problem, the action creates another: yet another under-educated person in society and on the job market.
Student appeals expulsion over deviant relationship
MUHAMMAD HUMAIDAN | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: A Saudi woman expelled from her college for having a lesbian relationship with her hostel supervisor has urged authorities to review the decision and allow her to continue her education.
Speaking on a radio program recently, the girl who introduced herself as Sarah from Turaif who was in the final year of her course, said it was the hostel supervisor who started the relationship.
“Unfortunately, the investigating committee did not take any action against the supervisor, who sent more than 1,000 love texts to my mobile in addition to written letters,” she told the program.
She admitted the relationship to the investigating committee while swearing by the Qur’an, but the supervisor denied it.
“They rusticated me while I was in the final year of my studies. It is a harsh punishment. They should have imposed a softer punishment so that I could continue my studies,” Sarah said.
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Arab News reports that the Saudi Shoura Council is recommending the recruitment of more religious police—members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice—in order to keep up with the needs created by a growing population. Well, I suppose that proportionally, there are fewer mutawwa relative to the population these days. I’m not at all sure that they’re needed, other than to provide numerous jobs to the otherwise unemployable. I’m sure, too, that a fancy new headquarters will improve their functioning. Frankly, I think the money would be better spent by sending all members, including new recruits, to live in another Muslim country for a year. Experiencing the fact that billions of Muslims lead morally good and productive lives without the strictures imposed by Saudi culture, and often confused with religious obligation, would do more to enhance their ability to do their work.
Haia expansion recommended
MD RASOOLDEEN | ARAB NEWSRIYADH: The Shoura Council recommended Sunday that the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Haia) should open more offices to cater to the needs of an increasing population.
Sunday’s session of the council, presided over by Chairman Abdullah Al-Asheikh, also unanimously decided to recommend the capital of the Saudi Fund For Industrial Development (SFID) be increased to SR30 billion with an allocation of SR10 billion from the Ministry of Finance. Shoura Council Secretary-General Muhammad Al-Ghamdi told reporters on Sunday that the committee on Islamic affairs and judiciary’s decision to recommend more Haia offices was based on the commission’s annual report for the fiscal year 1428/1429 AH.
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Unfortunately, they’re competing and winning on US campuses, not in Saudi Arabia, Arab News pointed tells us. When they return to Saudi Arabia, they’re going to have different experiences and expectations than their sisters who stayed at home, some of whom seem to think women and politics don’t mix. They will be proof positive that that isn’t true.
Elected: In America, not at home
ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: In stark contrast to their inability to participate in limited elections, much less run for office, Saudi women on scholarship to the US can do both.
A local newspaper reported Friday that five student organizations in US universities elected Saudi women as their presidents.
The newly elected president of Saudi Student Club at the University of North Carolina, Najla Baraseen, told the paper she was inspired to run for the club’s presidency during a recent event on campus.
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Meanwhile, back in Saudi Arabia, some women aren’t taking their exclusion from Municipal Council elections lying down. Instead, they’re showing up to register to vote—which they are not going to be allowed to do.
The clown pastor of a small Florida church, who burnt a Quran last month, has moved his circus to Dearborn, Michigan, the largest agglomeration of Arabs in the US. He planned to repeat his exercise in free speech in front of Dearborn’s largest mosque yesterday. But things got in the way.
Friday just happened to mark the sole annual coincidence of religious calendars: Friday, as the day of communal worship for Muslims, but also Good Friday, recognized as the day on which Jesus was crucified and the most sombre and solemn day of the Christian churches’ liturgical year.
The government of the municipality of Dearborn refused the pastor a demonstration permit, then relented, but demanded that he pay a peace bond of $45,000 to ensure that he would not breach the peace and, if he did so, would forfeit his bond to pay for enhanced police activity. Peace bonds serve a purpose similar to a restraining order, but are not available in all states (as best I can tell, Michigan, Texas, and Louisiana are the only US states using them; they are, however, common in Canada). As we shall see, peace bonds also represent some very gray areas of the law, which is why they are not universally available.
The problem is that peace bonds seek to limit unlawful behavior, that is, behavior which is forbidden by other laws. What the pastor intended is not illegal, just really stupid. Not only is it not illegal, it is constitutionally protected activity: the exercise of free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
The judge hearing the peace bond action seems to have recognized that there were problems: he reduced the amount of bond from $45,000 to $1.00, a notional amount. But the pastor refused to pay that, on principle. And so, he and his companion were jailed. [They later relented and paid the $1 each and were released from jail.]
Being jailed, however briefly, opened up a new can of worms. Had he not been jailed, the pastor would have had to appeal the demand for a bond through the state courts. Once jailed, however, he could—and did—claim harm through the loss of his constitutional rights and thus triggered action in federal courts. While he represented himself before the court in Dearborn, he is now being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in his federal claim.
To me, it is clear that the court in Michigan did violate the pastor’s constitutional rights. It sought to impose prior restraint on his right to speak freely—and an expressive act, such as burning a Quran, is very much considered ‘speech’. Prior restraint is a big no-no in the US. It is viewed as a form of censorship and censorship in the US is seen as a particularly odious form of government abuse of power.
I think the likely outcome of all this is that:
1. A federal court will overturn the Michigan court’s demand for a peace bond on the grounds that it is improper prior restraint of his constitution right to speak;
2. The court will order the city of Dearborn to pay the pastor’s legal fees as well as damages;
3. The pastor will go ahead and do what he wants to do;
4. The reaction of Dearborn Muslims is going to be up to them; they are adults and responsible for their own actions and reactions.
Needless to say, the pastor’s proposed action and the city’s reaction are creating a firestorm. The Islamophobes see the city and court as injecting Shariah law into the US legal process, or at least showing a preference for Islam over Christianity. These people don’t seem to have a very clear grasp of what the US Constitution allows, or even demands of government actors, including courts.
It is more than ironic that the pastor, as a result of the city’s misstep, will end up with more money than he likely takes in over a year of preaching. But firebrands do tend to attract attention. Here, he also—most likely unwittingly—also sheds light on the values and difficulties of free speech.
For more reporting on the issue, you might to look at the following pieces. Again, I do not recommend the comments to these pieces unless you think you need to push your blood pressure up… many of them are both hateful and ignorant.
The Arab-American, a newspaper out of Dearborn, whose audience should be self-apparent:
The Detroit News, which also informs us that the pastor is legally carrying a weapon, which went off when he was leaving a TV interview:
Pastor released from jail after being held on $1 ‘peace bond’
The Volokh Conspiracy law blog. Eugene Volokh is an expert on First Amendment law and teaches at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA):
[UPDATED TITLE:] Terry Jones Jailed,
Apparently for Refusing to Promise
Not to Demonstrate in Front of a Mosque
[STILL FURTHER UPDATE: Released From Jail, Ordered to Stay Away from Mosque]
Interestingly, in another state, a municipal employee who had been fired for burning pages of the Quran (he was protesting the planned mosque near the site of the World Trade Center) had his day in court. Not only did he get his job back and his legal fees paid, but was also awarded $25,000 for the pain and suffering imposed on him by the improper actions of the city. First Amendment freedoms are taken seriously in the US.
Koran-Burning New Jersey Transit Employee Gets Job Back
+ Back Pay + $25,000 Settlement
[As a matter of editorial policy, I've decided not to name the pastor involved in the Quran burning. His name is easily found, but I would rather not give him additional publicity by naming him. It's a small thing, I recognize, but it's my way of showing that I disapprove of his actions, legal as they may be.]
Here’s a rarity: a Saudi imam is being disciplined for attacking journalists. It seems that the opposite is generally the rule in the Kingdom. But, as Arab News reports, the imam, Muhammad Al-Eraifi, has been reprimanded for the contents of his Friday sermons and is now open to being sued in the Saudi courts, presumably for defamation. I do think it important that the Ministry of Islamic Affairs is the one doing the reprimanding. In the past, they’ve shown a tendency to support imams, however immoderate they might be, in the face of journalistic criticism.
Whether any journalist will take up the invitation to sue, though, is a different matter, as the case would likely be heard in a Shariah court, notorious for idiosyncratic judgments based solely on the judge’s sense of propriety and interpretation of the Sunnah.
Imam reprimanded for using sermon to attack journalists
ARAB NEWSRIYADH: The Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Dawa and Guidance has reprimanded an imam for attacking Saudi journalists during his Friday sermon.
Muhammad Al-Eraifi described them as “traitors and puppets of foreign powers,” Asharq Al-Awsat reported Thursday quoting an official source from the ministry.
The newspaper said the ministry disciplined the scholar after an investigation, which lasted for a week.
The nature of the ministry’s disciplinary punishment means writers and reporters are free to take legal action against Al-Eraifi.
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OMG! Politician lie!! Who knew?
Arab News translates a piece from the Arabic economics daily Al-Eqtisadiah lamenting that politicians don’t keep their promises. Hardly news in most places, but an important lesson for those just entering the political process. And yes, not voting for politicians who don’t keep their promises is exactly the right response.
Do not give them your vote
ABDULLAH BAJUBAIR | AL-EQTISADIAH“VOTE for me and you will find whatever makes you happy.”
This was the slogan of the candidates running for the Jeddah municipal council six years ago. The ones who voted for them, however, did not find anything to be happy about.
A local newspaper recently reported that the Court of Grievances had received complaints from a number of citizens wishing to file lawsuits against the members of the municipal council in Jeddah who did not fulfill the promises they made during their election campaigns.
It is the first time that citizens take council members to justice. It is the duty of the council members to represent the citizens, and their word should be accepted by the authorities. Why did these citizens turn their backs on them and decide to sue the council’s members? The answer is simple. The citizens are sick of the false promises made by them. They lost their voices by asking the members to take care of their needs and look after their interests. Nothing of this happened, so the citizens decided to go to court.
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There is a variety of papers recently published that address different aspects of the intersection of Western law and religion, including Islam and attempts to insert Shariah law, in some aspect, into the body and practice of Western law. Below are links to several of these essays, all in PDF format. They are, I think, worth reading and worth considering.
Faith-Based Family Laws in Western Democracies?
John Witte Jr. and Joel A. NicholsAnglican Archbishop Rowan Williams set off an international firestorm on February 7, 2008 by suggesting that some “accommodation” of Muslim family law was “unavoidable” in England. His critics charged that England will be beset by “licensed polygamy,” barbaric procedures, and brutal violence against women if official sanction is given to shari’a courts. Case closed.
This case won’t stay closed for long, however. The Archbishop was not calling for the establishment of a parallel system of independent Muslim courts in England, and certainly not the direct enforcement of shari’a by English civil courts. He was, instead, raising a whole series of hard but “unavoidable” questions about marital, cultural, and religious identity and practice in Western democratic societies committed to human rights for all.
This Essay discusses those hard questions, with a particular emphasis on Muslim communities and family law. It briefly reviews the history of the law of marriage and religion in the West, including many changes in the last half century. The Essay details responses to such recent changes, especially responses that call for some recognition or enforcement of religious law. The last section of the Essay suggests ways forward by comparing claims for accommodation for Muslim family law to earlier accommodation claims by Jewish communities, and by drawing analogies to compromises between the civil state and religion regarding education. [14 pages]
The following is the introductory chapter of a book, Shari’a In the West, from Oxford University Press, which collects a number of essays on the subject of Shariah law within Western societies. This chapter is worth reading for its analysis as well as definitions of concepts.
The Topography of Shari’a in the Western Political Landscape
Nicholas Aroney and Rex AhdarIn February 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, delivered a public lecture in which he stated that it ‘seem[ed] unavoidable’ that certain aspects of Islamic law (Shari’a) would be recognized and incorporated into British law. The comments provoked outrage from sections of the public who viewed any recognition of Shari’a law in Britain with alarm. In July 2008 Lord Phillips, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, weighed into the fray. He praised the Archbishop’s speech and gave qualified support for Shari’a principles to govern certain family and civil disputes.
This chapter is the introduction to a collection of essays written by distinguished and prominent scholars addressing the question of the accommodation of Shari’a within the legal systems of the liberal-democratic West. The matters raised in the two 2008 lectures provide a springboard for discussion, criticism, and debate on both the specific question of religious/cultural accommodation by the law and the wider issues of multiculturalism, equality before the law, and the desirability of parallel jurisdictions for particular faith communities.
Leading scholars from a range of countries and academic disciplines, and representing different political viewpoints and faith traditions, explore the complex issues surrounding the legal recognition of religious faith in a multicultural society.
The volume aims to stimulate further thought on a complex issue, and to open up new pathways for policymakers and civil society institutions grappling with the relationship between Shari’a and Western legal institutions. [31 pages]
This, too, is a chapter from a forthcoming book. It looks at how governments use their powers seeking to limit the free flow of information, often using religious law to do so.
YouTube from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe: Tyrannize Locally, Censor Globally
Hannibal TravisThis chapter in a forthcoming book attempts to map global patterns by which local tyrannies become sources of potentially global infringements on freedom of expression, particularly but not exclusively on the YouTube Web site. It illustrates certain parallels between the efforts to force copyright filters on YouTube and the Web in the West, and to harden the Great Firewalls of China, Arabia, and Persia in the East. The parallels include preemptive filtering, deep packet inspection, overbroad restrictions, and harms to user privacy.
Generally speaking, blasphemy and seditious libel are the dominant forms of censorship in the impoverished and/or dictatorial societies of Africa and central and southern Asia, with insulting the great leader similarly controversial at the fringes of Asia including China, Thailand, and Turkey, and in the South Atlantic including Colombia, Honduras, and Zimbabwe. By contrast, intellectual property is prompting many of the Web site takedowns for political and cultural speech in the North Atlantic including Europe and the United States. Resistance to censorship around the world employs both legal and extra-legal tactics. Internet freedom has worked its way into our constitutional and statutory law in the North Atlantic and Europe, and parts of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Therefore, a judicial consensus is emerging that freedom of expression must rein in the enforcement of corporate catalogs of intellectual property rights.
In large swaths of Africa and Asia, however, constitutions often do not mandate robust judicial protection of freedom of expression, so public intolerance of censorship presents a more direct battle of forces. In these societies, self-help, surreptitious defense of new public spheres, trans-border cooperation, and voting with one’s feet are more likely to succeed than filing lawsuits or asserting constitutional rights. There, YouTube bans and shutdowns of the entire Internet vie with proxy servers and aid from foreign Web firms, sometimes enjoying explicit diplomatic support. [34 pages]
The above links go to the SSRN documents database. There, you will find abstracts of the essays and a link to download the papers in their entirety.
Saudi Arabia has a lot of challenges before it—a growing population with few job prospects; escalating demand for energy; next to no political participation by its citizens; a patent inequality between men and women. It’s not really necessary to take up the Sisyphean task of ‘protecting’ Arabic. But lo, there is indeed a growing demand that it do just that.
Rather than the perpetual evolution all languages undergo, Arab News tells us, now it is the use of Arabizi or Arabish, the informal Arabic chat alphabet popularly used for text messaging, e-mail, and blog comments that uses Roman alphabet letters and numbers to transcribe their Arabic counterparts. This convention arose because the writing of Arabic characters was a late-comer to electronic communications, but also because Arabic keyboards on cell phones, pagers, and the like are far from universal. Existing transliteration systems aren’t much help because they, too, require characters not present on most keyboards, thus rendering transliteration either impossible or tedious.The choice was, and largely remains, stick with the Arabic alphabet but not be able to communicate, or use a different transliteration and talk. It doesn’t take a degree in Anthropology or Psychology to know which human beings will select, everywhere and every time.
But societies often seem paranoid on ‘preserving our language’. It happens formally in countries like France or Spain, with government institutions established to ‘protect’ the language from change. It happens informally when teachers, government officials, and ‘concerned citizens’ express their peeves about changing applications of grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. No language—not even ‘dead’ languages like Latin—are immune to change. Latin is constantly developing new vocabulary items to deal with new technology and social developments. Attempting to thwart something that is seen as useful by the masses, all in the name of language or cultural preservation is simply a fool’s errand and will be met with equal success.
Perhaps, at some future date when smart phones all have Arabic keyboards available to them, even if virtual, the need for Arabizi will disappear. Until then, the Arabic language is stuck with it.
‘Arabizi is destroying the Arabic language’
RENAD GHANEM | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: Arabizi, a term that describes a system of writing Arabic in English, is now more popular than ever, especially online.
Parents and teachers are becoming more concerned over the popularity of this new trend. Some see it as a threat to the Arabic language.
A non-English speaker does not need to speak the language to communicate with others in Arabizi. Numbers are also mixed in Arabizi to represent some letters in Arabic, such as 2, 5, 6, 7 and 9.
Most Arab Internet users find this way easier than typing in Arabic. Teachers fear that this will weaken their Arabic language ability or even replace the language in the future. Arabic professional professors from the Arab world consider it a war against the Arabic language to make it disappear in the long run.
Miral Dibawy, a 21-year-old university graduate, is using Arabizi because she finds it easier when typing on the Internet and sending text messages. She also admitted that it has weakened her Arabic language ability when it comes to writing.
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[NOTE: I distinguish between Arabizi, the transcription device, and Arabish, the introduction of English vocabulary items into Arabic. I think this is more in keeping with the similar constructs as Chinglish, Spanglish, and the like, but I won’t break out in a sweat if you disagree!
On Sunday, Saudi Arabia announced that it was reducing its oil production by 800K barrels per day. According to this Reuters report carried in Asharq Alawsat, the Saudis claim that there is an oversupply in the market and they don’t see demand growing over the next few months. (OPEC will be looking at production/pricing figures again in June.) According to the Saudis and many economists, the current high prices are all the result of market forces. The market forces aren’t exactly about oil, but about oil as a place to invest money. Currently, with the US dollar weak and not many new places to put investment money, investors are looking for sureties. Right now, that’s gold and oil. They aren’t investing in oil because they need it, but because sometime down the road, others will need it and will pay for it.
There’s a certain amount of amusement to be found in how various audiences are parsing the Saudi reduction. Most of what I’ve seen looks at it as a purely economic affair. Others see it as a way for Saudi Arabia to pay for the tens of billions of dollars it is dedicated to social programs within the Kingdom. Certain sectors of investors see it as proof that ‘peak oil’ has been reached. There is a paranoid fringe, though, that chooses to see this as an indirect attack by the Saudis on the American economy. With gasoline prices in the US nearing historic highs, they figure that somebody is out to hurt them and it might as well be the Saudis…
Saudi slashes oil output, says market oversupplied
KUWAIT (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s oil minister said on Sunday the kingdom had slashed output by 800,000 barrels per day in March due to oversupply, sending the strongest signal yet that OPEC will not act to quell soaring prices.
Consumers have urged the exporters’ group to pump more crude to put a cap on oil, which surged to more than $127 a barrel this month, its highest level in 2 1/2 years amid unrest in North Africa and the Middle East.
Oil Ministers from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates echoed Saudi Arabia’s Ali al-Naimi’s concerns about oversupply and said rocketing crude prices were out of the hands of OPEC, which next meets in June.
“The market is overbalanced … Our production in February was 9.125 million barrels per day (bpd), in March it was 8.292 million bpd. In April we don’t know yet, probably a little higher than March. The reason I gave you these numbers is to show you that the market is oversupplied,” Naimi told reporters.
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Matters of documented identity are a big issue everywhere, but perhaps no more importantly than in Saudi Arabia. Arab News, today, runs two articles about women in Saudi Arabia who, because of lack of proper documentation, are stuck. One is stuck in a country she’s been trying to leave for 457 days. The other is a woman, born in the Kingdom, but unable to adequately (for bureaucrats) prove that she is Saudi or even non-Saudi.
Trina Flowers, who frequently comments here under another name, was brought to Saudi Arabia on a contract to teach at King Saud University. Except that apparently she wasn’t. Instead, she was sent to a university in Najran, under conditions quite different from those contracted. When she chose to not fulfill an improper contract, she got stuck…
American teacher claims she’s detained against her will
MD RASOOLDEEN | ARAB NEWSRIYADH: An American woman who came to Riyadh on a teaching contract has alleged her sponsor detained her in the Kingdom against her will for at least 457 days as of Sunday.
“Today is the 457th day that I’ve been held against my will, 13 days longer than the Iranians held Americans between 1979 through to 1981,” Trina Flowers, a teacher from Dulles, told Arab News on Sunday.
“I arrived in Saudi Arabia on Oct. 22, 2009, to teach English to university students through a private company in a program undertaken on the initiative of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah mandated to the Ministry of Higher Education.
“However, almost immediately after my arrival, I realized that the company was in no way capable of dealing with Western people in a humane manner. I wanted to leave Saudi Arabia. Things went from bad to worse.”
She said when she received her visa from the Saudi Embassy in Washington, it stated her employer was King Saud University (KSU).
“When I came to Riyadh, I was sent to Najran University,” she added, pointing out that she had never even been to KSU. She strongly believes her sponsor deliberately deceived her since her arrival.
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The second instance is that of ‘Samiya’, born under unascertainable circumstances, to a woman who was either Saudi or not. She was raised in an orphanage as it appears her mother was deported immediately after delivering her. Because so many questions remain unanswered about her origins, ‘Samiya’ is stuck. She cannot prove she is a Saudi and thus eligible for benefits that flow from that status. But neither can she prove she’s non-Saudi, which would at least regularize her presence in the country. The fact is that she exists, in real, physical life. But her real existence, as that of Flowers, is made nebulous by bureaucratic process.
Young woman seeks high-level intervention
to end her ‘identity crisis’
BADEA ABU AL-NAJA | ARAB NEWSMAKKAH: A 25-year-old woman is between the devil and the deep blue sea without having the chance to prove her identity.
All through her life, Samiya has been in pursuit of verifying her identity to no avail. Even though there are some official documents that show she is a Saudi citizen, others show that her mother is a non-Saudi. As such, she has been treated as someone with an unknown identity. The young woman is in utter confusion — losing affection for her parents and also the opportunity to show her identity. She possesses neither an ID card of a Saudi citizen nor an iqama (residence permit) of a foreign national. Subsequently, she has been deprived of many benefits and legal rights.
Samiya says that she was brought up under special circumstances at a social care center managed by Al-Birr Charitable Society in Jeddah. The center takes care of abandoned children and orphans until the time of their marriage.
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A lesson for politicians, American as well as Saudis:
Leadership is not figuring out which way the winds of public opinion are blowing and then going in that direction.
Instead, it is figuring out which is the right direction and then going there, even if it sometimes means beating against the wind.
This is not a lesson being heeded in Saudi Arabia as it approaches its second cycle of Municipal Council elections. Saudi Gazette/Okaz report that a polling firm has determined that 59% of those polled think it improper for women to take part in political activity. The most ingenious of the excuses reasons stated is that it “impedes women’s fundamental tasks in the home and in raising children”.
While I’m generally easy going, this bit of thinking really torques me. I take it as a given that women are equal to men; obviously, that’s not the case with these critics of women’s voting. Or, perhaps, they just see women as single-dimensional, unable to do many things simultaneously in their lives. Are men incapable of voting if they’re busy with their lives’ work? Maybe the Saudi ‘spinster problem’ is acute because women have predicted excuses like this and so unburden themselves of the work of having children and taking care of a home in order that they be qualified for voting!
Truly, this is a time where Saudi leadership needs to get in front of social dead weights and actually lead. This is not the 7th C., it’s not the 14th C., it’s the 21st C., where respect for the rights of all humans—male and female—need to be given equal protection. Political rights are among human rights nowadays. No longer do we have slavery, no longer do governments own people as serfs, or permit them to exist as kulaks. Every single, mature Saudi owns and is owed by his/her government equal protection and equal opportunity. To allow those stuck in time or culture to block rights in the name of tradition is not leadership, not by any definition.
Poll says 59% against women voting
JAZA’ AL-MUTAIRIJEDDAH: A survey of public opinion on the municipal council elections has revealed that nearly 59 percent oppose women voting in the elections and 72.5 percent are opposed to female membership on the councils.
The study, conducted by Riyadh-based ASBAR Center for Studies, Research and Communications, showed that the largest section of support for women voting came from persons who registered to vote but did not use their vote, with 22.8 percent of them in favor. But 19.7 percent of persons who did use their votes were also supportive.
Overall 58.9 percent were opposed to women voting, represented in 60.4 percent of those asked who did vote in the previous elections, 54.7 percent of persons who registered but did not use their votes, and 58.7 percent of persons who did not register to vote.
The most common reason given for opposition to women voting in the elections was, according to the study, that it “violates customs and traditions”, a reason cited by 74.8 percent.
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Saudi women, however, aren’t all of an accord that they should bother their pretty little heads with politics. Saudi Gazette/Okaz also reports that women in Ar Ar, in the Northern Frontier Province, are asking why they’re being deprived of their rights:
The role of expatriates in Saudi Arabia, the simple status of expats, is a complicated issue. As retired RSNF Commodore Abdulateef Al-Mulhim makes clear in this Arab News column, the country owes an enormous debt to them. But it also depends on them too much. Saudization, the replacement of expat workers by Saudis, is essentially a program that will reduce the number of foreigners in the country, reduce the amount of money being remitted to other countries, and hopefully address the unemployment problems of Saudi nationals. That’s not going to happen, Al-Mulhim tells us, until there are marked changes in Saudi attitudes.
Expatriates and their loyalty to the Kingdom
ABDULATEEF AL-MULHIM | ARAB NEWSDURING my early years, I only saw very few expatriates — Americans working for Aramco, Germans working for Phillip-Hollzmann, Indians and Pakistanis working in hospitals and the Alhassa electric company.
But by the end of 1973, the Saudi demography changed forever. Oil prices rose sharply and the Kingdom had the biggest economic boom and the largest infrastructure projects in modern history. The mega projects during the 1970s required hundreds of thousands of skilled and non-skilled workers. The doors of Saudi Arabia were wide open.
Now, we have 8 million expatriates. Muslims, non-Muslims, Arabs and non-Arabs. Expatriates entered our closed doors and closed society. In the past some small towns never saw a foreign man/woman except in some magazines. Nowadays, every home, hospital, company and school has many expatriates.
But, how about the loyalty of the 8 million expatiates to the Kingdom? Should we be worried about them? During the past 20 years, the loyalty of the expatriates was put to the most stressful test. The first was in August 1990 during the invasion of Kuwait. Then there were sudden terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia a few years after the 9/11 attacks in the US.
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Working in Saudi Arabia as a foreigner isn’t only about money, though. It necessarily involves human beings, though that often seems to be forgotten. Another Arab News piece notes the dilemma of expats who have spent the majority of their lives in the Kingdom, if not their whole lives. They are not Saudis by birth—just about the only way one can be considered ‘Saudi’ in fact, if not in law—but neither are they citizens of their supposed ‘home’ countries. The Saudi government has announced programs to help some of them gain Saudi citizenship, but the reach of that program is both limited and complex. Even when obtained, it does not cover adult children, often born in the Kingdom, leaving those children utterly estranged from any meaningful nationality. Spending one’s entire life in Saudi Arabia does not prepare one to live as a Pakistani in Pakistan, a Palestinian in whatever form a Palestinian state takes, or a Westerner in a country whose values are seen on TV more often than actually lived in reality.
Saudi Arabia-born expats face an identity crisis
IBRAHIM NAFFEE | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: The children of first and second-generation expatriates born in Saudi Arabia face an identity crisis. They say they consider themselves part of the Kingdom yet they are treated as foreigners.
There are 8.4 million expatriates in Saudi Arabia. Of these, over two million are estimated to have been born in the country and spent all their lives here. According to Indian diplomats, 10 percent of the two million Indians living and working in the country were born here. When it comes to third-generation Indians, it is thought that there are around 30,000. If those figures were replicated across other expatriate communities, it would mean 820,000 Saudi-born expatriates living in the Kingdom. Of these, a quarter of a million would be third-generation expatriates. In fact, the number is probably higher. According to official figures, in 2009, over 14.4 percent of births in the Kingdom were registered to foreign parents.
More specifically, there are well over a million Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of them born in the Kingdom. There are groups such as the stateless Burmese, now into their fourth and fifth generations, of whom there are more than 300,000. In addition to the Saudi-born Indians, there are large numbers of Saudi-born Pakistanis. Although there are half a million fewer Pakistanis than Indians, it is claimed that the percentage born in the Kingdom is over 30 percent.
Despite not being given Saudi nationality, these Saudi-born foreigners strongly feel they belong here. In the case of third generations expatriates, they have inherited the Saudi culture from parents also born in the Kingdom and themselves with a strong sense of being Saudi.
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