Saudi Arabia’s discomfort with the idea of women taking part in sports is well known. The arguments against it are social, though cloaked in religious reasoning. James Dorsey, who writes The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, points out that not even all ‘Wahhabis’ are alike. Qatar, a state also dominated by the strict interpretation of Islam that prevails in Saudi Arabia, is sending women to the Olympics while the Saudi government has all but pulled back its permission for women to participate.
Qatari Olympic women athletes spotlight Wahhabi schism
James M DorseyThe question for Qatari sprinter Noor al-Malki is not whether she will be part of the first group of Qatari women to ever compete in a global sports tournament at the 2012 London Olympics but how she will handle the fact that the competition will take place during Ramadan.
The question whether Ms. Al-Malki would be able to compete was resolved when Qatar, alongside Saudi Arabia and Brunei the only nation never to have been represented by women in a global sporting event, decided last year to allow women to compete in the London Olympics.
The decision was the result of Qatar’s concerted effort to become a sports power and mounting international pressure on the International Olympic Committee (IOC), not to allow countries to compete that discriminate against athletes on the basis of gender.
It saved Qatar, already threatened with a global trade union campaign against its hosting of the 2022 World Cup because of the conditions under which it employs foreign labour, from becoming the target of yet another attack on its reputation, already dented by controversy over its successful campaign to win the right to host the World Cup. The bruising debate over the soccer tournament bid contributed to the International Olympic Committee’s decision to eliminate Qatar as a candidate for the 2020 Olympics.
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It’s not just on the Olympic front, though, that Muslim women face challenges. Al-Arabiya reports that FIFA, the international soccer/football federation, is expressing qualms about the intrinsic safety of the hijab worn in women’s competitions. There is concern that the zippers used to fasten the hijab so that it doesn’t dislodge during active play represents a danger of cutting the wearer if a ball or another player makes contact. There’s also a worry that a hijab, grabbed from behind by an opposing player, could lead to broken necks or even death. FIFA’s expression of concern has riled some:
Saudi Gazette reports on the YouTube video of a Saudi woman’s confrontation with religious police in a Riyadh mall. According to the report, the video has also been noticed by the Arabic daily Al-Hayat, which learned that the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice are looking into the matter.
Video of Hai’a staff arguing with girl goes viral
RIYADH – A video of a girl and a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice arguing over why she had manicured nails has gone viral and ignited a debate over the way commission members should deal with people in public places.
The video, shot by the girl, and uploaded on the popular video-sharing website Youtube, shows a commission member ordering the girl to leave the Hayat Mall in Riyadh on account of her manicured nails. The two become engaged in a heated argument with the girl telling the commission member he has no right to look at her nails.
“You don’t see a strand of hair from other girls while you are showing off your manicure in a public venue… this is my duty to tell you this,” said the commission member to which the girl replied, “Why are you chasing me? The government said no more chasing! Your duty is to advise people… why are you looking at my manicure? I will never leave the mall!”
At one point, the girl sought the help of two of the mall’s security guards.
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[Note: the video link above comes through the MEMRI channel and carries its translation of the exchange. I'm currently unable to find the woman's own YouTube submission. If anyone can point me to it, I'll swap out the link.]
UPDATE: Thanks to reader Saudi Jawa, I’ve replaced the link to now point YouTube. The link was at Ahmed Al-Omran’s Saudi Jeans blog.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has been on the throne for seven years now. Saudi media is pretty busy writing up encomiums for the changes and developments he has pushed. One, particularly noteworthy, has been the expansion of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Arab News reports that the most recent expansions are greater than all expansions before. Ever-increasing numbers of pilgrims seek to take part in the annual Haj, already the greatest annual religious gathering in the world.
Credit for biggest expansion of Haram goes to the king
Jeddah: Badr Al-QahtaniThe biggest expansion of the Grand Mosque in Makkah was carried out during the reign of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah.
In 2011, the Haram’s capacity was raised to accommodate 1.6 million worshippers, one-and-half times more than all the expansions put together in the mosque’s history. This latest expansion cost SR 80 billion and is part of Makkah’s many development projects, including work on the mosque’s central zone and surrounding areas.
Speaking on the seventh anniversary of King Abdullah’s accession to throne, Dr. Muhammad Bin Nasser, vice president of the Presidency of the Two Holy Mosques Affairs, said developing the mosque’s area is an ongoing project.
“Every year the Grand Mosque witnesses more development in the services provided to visitors. This year, the King Abdullah Expansion Project is being carried out.
It includes the latest and most sophisticated electrical and mechanical systems. The expansion is linked to the first Saudi expansion and to the masaa (running area between Safaa and Marwaa) via several bridges. A new system of elevators and escalators is being installed,” he said.
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In it’s “On Faith” section, The Washington Post runs a piece by Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director at the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. She questions the tactics used by Mona Eltahawy in addressing gender inequalities in the Arab Muslim world, finding that in addition to being too sharp, those tactics miss their target. Declaring intellectual war on Islam or Arab culture simply will not win adherents in the region and offer no useful advice to foreign governments concerned about women’s right.
Instead, Mogahed suggests, attention needs to be paid to overall development and overall respect for human rights. Only when there is a substantive change in people’s perceptions of justice and equality and respect for rights can special attention be carved out for women. It’s an interesting piece, worth reading.
Does Mona Eltahawy’s approach hurt women?
Dalia MogahedMona Eltahawy’s Foreign Policy cover story “Why Do They Hate Us” triggered an avalanche of passionate responses. But few have addressed how her arguments impact indigenous Arab women’s rights activists or the article’s primary audience– how American policy makers– can best support the cause of gender justice in the Middle East.
Eltahawy draws attention to crimes committed against women in the Middle East that should outrage us all. Unfortunately, rather than discuss the complex social, economic and political dimensions of these issues (see Max Fisher’s useful analysis), she offers the radically original notion that Arab men, and by extension Middle Eastern culture and even “moderate” interpretations of Islam, are backwards and barbaric.
Well-meaning fans of the piece applaud what they see as Eltahawy’s courage for raising public awareness of Arab women’s struggles.
Critics question not the crimes Eltahawy describes but the causes she assigns, namely Islam and Arab culture’s inherent “hate” for women, alleging that her analysis is not only pedestrian but panders to prejudice.
The real danger however is that Eltahawy’s narrative harms the very cause she claims to champion. Conflating women’s rights advocacy with Arab inferiority or Islam bashing doesn’t empower the champions of change, it aids their enemies.
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The BBC engages in a bit of plausible tea-leaf reading. It reports that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has relieved Sheikh Abdelmohsen al-Obeikan – one of the more conservative religious sheiks – of his position as adviser to the royal cabinet. The article suggests that this is because al-Obeikan was getting too loud with positions contrary to those of the King, particularly when it came to the proper role of women in Saudi society.
Al-Obeikan became notorious when, a few years ago, he suggested that a way to permit men and women to work in the same offices would be for the women to share breast milk with the males in the office. This would create a relationship under Islamic standards, by which the men became family members of the women and therefore be ‘safe’ to be in the same location. His suggestion drew cries of disgust and ridicule among both foreign audiences and Saudis alike.
Saudi King Abdullah sacks conservative adviser
Saudi King Abdullah has sacked one of his most hardline advisers, Sheikh Abdelmohsen al-Obeikan.
Sheikh Obeikan, who was an adviser to the royal cabinet, opposed moves to relax gender segregation.
The dismissal comes shortly after Sheikh Obeikan attacked plans by “influential people to corrupt Muslim society by trying to change the natural status of women”.
Saudi officials did not give a reason for Sheikh Obeikan’s departure.
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Saudi Gazette runs only a brief report from the Saudi Press Agency stating that al-Obeikan had been relieved of his duties. Arab News runs a somewhat longer, but no more informative article.
[Thanks to reader 'Dakota' for the lead.]
Saudi Arabia’s efforts to reform its legal system continue to progress, step by step. Arab News reports that the Shariah courts are likely to be the next target of codification. The issue has been a tendentious one, with some judges seeing it as an affront to their dignity and an attack on their powers. Nevertheless, the awkward fact of different courts imposing different sentences for identical behavior needs to be addressed. As the article notes, too, an important part of any justice system is permitting people who might end up before a judge to have some idea of what is criminal and what punishments they might expect. At present, there’s far too great a measure of randomness for actual justice to be found.
Court rulings to be codified
RIYADH: ARAB NEWSA draft project to codify court verdicts has been submitted to the higher authorities for approval, a local daily reported yesterday.
“The Council of Senior Religious Scholars has submitted a project to codify and document the verdicts issued by the Kingdom’s Shariah courts for the consideration of the higher authorities after completing studies on the project,” Dean of the Faculty of Distant Education at Imam Muhammad bin Saud University Abdul Rahman Al-Sanad, who is also professor of the Sheikh Saad Ghonaim Chair, told Al-Watan newspaper.
Documenting court verdicts has been a topic under study at the Council of Senior Religious Scholars for a long time.
Al-Sanad, who is also professor at the Department of Comparative Jurisprudence at the Higher Institute of Judiciary, said various Fiqh academies had also been studying the matter for the past several decades.
“The topic was studied again about one and a half years ago in detail and then a decision was made to permit documentation in view of its importance and codification to help judges to prepare verdicts on the basis of Shairah Laws,” he said.
He pointed out that the documentation would also help avoid instances of different judges making inconsistent judgments on identical cases.
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In Saudi Gazette, we find an example of the legal randomness. Domestic violence is pretty well understood around the world to be a crime. Different countries do impose different penalties. In a particular case, the miscreant was sentenced to a payment of SR70,000 (US $19,000) to his wife, but also to memorize the Quran and a number of hadith. Perhaps this is an excellent example of matching the punishment to the crime, but it’s peculiar.
Court sentences wife-beater to memorize Qur’an, Prophet’s sayings
Saudi Gazette runs a story, apparently from Agence France Presse, reporting that Qatar will allow the formation of trade unions. In addition, it will end the current system of sponsorship for foreign workers.
Saudi Arabia has already mooted about ideas of ending its own sponsorship program, taking the authority and responsibility of hiring and managing foreign workers out of the hands of individuals and companies and instead putting them under the control of a few, specialized companies. Workers’ unions, though, are another matter.
Saudi history in regard to the union movement has been harsh. Unionism first raised its head in the 1950s, at the oil facilities in the Eastern Province. Unionism smacked a bit too much of communism, the ultimate enemy of God on Earth according to Saudi clerics and rulers. It did not help matters that would-be union leaders appeared to have had connections with the USSR as well as the suspect Arab Nationalists running Egypt at the time. Discredited on both political and religious grounds, unionism became a major taboo as well as a readily prosecuted crime.
This attitude has not noticeably softened over time, though there have been calls to reexamine the issue. In 2001, the government authorized the formation of ‘labor committees’ in companies employing more than 100 Saudi nationals, but did not extend membership to foreign workers. International organizations have condemned the ban considering the ability of workers to organize a basic right.
Now, Qatar, a sister member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, is authorize unions. This will put additional pressure on the Saudi government – and it will be harder to ignore because it’s a bordering country.
Qatar to allow trade union, scrap sponsorship
DOHA — Qatar is to allow the establishment of a trade union to protect labor rights and scrap the “sponsor” system for foreign workers, a top official said in local dailies Tuesday.
The union, independent from the labor ministry, “will have the right to receive the complaints of workers and protect their rights,” the ministry’s undersecretary Hussein Al-Mulla told Alarab daily.
The union “will be run by Qataris but as a foreigner you will have the right to vote but not run in the board of directors elections,” he said, adding that the project awaited the emir’s approval.
The Gulf state will also scrap the much-criticized sponsor system for foreign labor, as it aims to gradually recruit one million workers for the 2022 World Cup tournament it is to host, said Mulla. “There is an intention to cancel the sponsor system and replace it with a contract between the worker and the employer,” he told the daily.
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Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice got a new President back in January. He promised then to insure that the members of the organization would ‘prevent vice without committing vice’ and that mistakes would not go unpunished. He’s living up to his word.
Asharq Alawsat reports that Sheikh Abdullatif Al Al-Sheikh has suspended two members, at half-pay, for being overly assertive in their quest to quell wrong-doing.
Saudi religious police clamp down on rogue members
Faisal al-DakheelRiyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat – Well-informed sources have revealed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the President of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice [CPVPV], Sheikh Abdullatif Al Al-Sheikh, has taken the decision to suspend two CPVPV agents and deduct half their salary, while they will also no longer be permitted to participate in any field operations, after they were accused of physically assaulting a member of the public.
Al-Sheikh took this decision after a Saudi citizen issued complaints against the two unnamed CPVPV agents. The Saudi citizen, who was held by the two CPVPV agents in Riyadh more than one month ago, accused them of physically assaulting him and being responsible for his wife collapsing in public. This complaint was brought before a Riyadh police station, which transferred the case to the relevant authorities.
The CPVPV president’s decision to suspend the two agents comes after he issued a memo in early April to all CPVPV branches across Saudi Arabia stressing the importance that no CPVPV agents take any action to pursue suspects or offenders, due to the inherent negative consequences that such action would have on the general public and public property. He affirmed that such pursuits could lead to those being chased – not to mention innocent civilians – being injured.
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Saudi weekly magazine Majalla runs a story on the Salafist war against arts and culture in Egypt. Not only are actors and directors being arrested for supposed ‘crimes against Islam’, but the hard-line conservatives are also calling for bans on the books of Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz and the covering of statues of the pharaohs in wax. At least they’re not calling for them to be destroyed or the Pyramids torn down.
Egyptian artists note that these are actions and ideas proposed by Salafists, but also note that the ‘more modern, more moderate’ Muslim Brotherhood says nothing about them, only claiming to ‘support culture’. Today’s Egypt is a far cry from the expansive cultural environments of its past, even as recently as the 1960s.
Islamists on Art
Ati MetwalyWhen Asran Mansour, a Salafi lawyer, filed a case against Adel Imam, renowned Egyptian actor, for “defaming Islam” in his films, no one expected that the verdict issued on 24 April 2012, by Judge Mohamed Abdel Aty would sentence Imam to three-months hard labor and a fine. Though the case was dropped on 26 April afternoon, the news outraged Egypt’s artists and equally angered international supporters of freedom of expression and creativity.
Adel Imam’s case is one of the many indications that Islamists are implementing limits on culture and freedom of expression. Also on trial with Imam were directors Nader Galal, Sherif Arafa, and Mohamed Fadel, and writers Wahid Hamed and Lenin El-Ramly, who faced the same charges of “defaming Islam.” Their cases were also dropped on 26 April.
The arts and culture scene will not be silent regarding Imam’s sentence—just as it will not remain passive when challenged by many other limitations posed on culture. The fight against such religious-based censorship is expected to be a long and painful one for all of Egypt’s creative minds.
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Is there really any question about why people believe that women in Saudi Arabia have little in the way of protection? Even in a society that claims to see the protection of its women as one of its foremost obligations? From Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya:
Saudi man divorces wife during live radio talk with religious scholar
Al Arabiya — DUBAIA Saudi man accepted the advice of a prominent religious scholar on Saturday and divorced his wife during a live radio program tackling marital issues.
The man phoned the program to complain to Sheikh Ghazi al-Shammari that his wife disobeyed him by travelling without his approval from the Saudi port city of Jeddah to the capital Riyadh for a business conference.
The unnamed man said his wife “offended his manhood.”
He told Shammari that before his marriage he had accepted his wife’s demands to work on condition that work would not interfere with their marital life.
Shammari advised the man to divorce his wife as a punitive measure for “committing such a mistake against her home and husband.”
The husband immediately heeded the advice and divorced her during the live program although Shammari advised him to remarry her if she repents.
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Women and sports is a volatile combination in Saudi Arabia. Many see sports or athletics of any kind as incompatible with society’s ideal of womanhood. As a result, government tends to pussyfoot around the issue. It says it’s not against women’s taking part in athletics, but doesn’t do much of anything to encourage it, even while noting that active lifestyles are important to the nation’s health. Now, Saudi Gazette reports, the earth groans and starts to deliver. A state school in the Eastern Province city of Al-Khobar has installed basketball hoops and is encouraging girls to get active. Too, the government is ‘forming a committee’ (yes, yet another ‘committee’) to study the issue of formal sports clubs for women.
The Saudi Olympic Committee make itself a laughing stock when it said it would permit Saudi women to take part in this year’s Summer Olympics in London, but then said that it wouldn’t support them at all. Whatever women wanted to participate would have to pay their own way and would get no support once in London.
Arguments against women’s participation in sports are vague and chaotic. Even in the face of issues of fairness or health or national economy, society just doesn’t see that women are equal to men. They instead seek ways to define women as categorically different and insist on putting them on a pedestal of social construction. Perhaps something will come of the new committee, perhaps not. That a public school is finally getting around to encouraging activity is likely the better indication that change is coming to Saudi Arabia, even if it moves at a snail’s pace.
Committee studying sports clubs for women
RIYADH — The government has set up a ministerial committee to consider allowing and regulating women’s sports clubs, a senior official has said.
Abdullah Al-Zamil from the General Presidency of Youth Welfare, the top Saudi sporting body, was quoted by local media as saying that the committee was formed to end the “chaos” surrounding women’s sports clubs which are unregulated.
“The mission of the committee is focused on building a system for these clubs,” Al-Zamil was reported as saying.
Last week, a public girls’ school in the Eastern Province introduced physical education to its students by installing basketball hoops for them to use at break time.
The school in Al-Khobar thus became the first public school to openly encourage sports for girls.
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London’s The Independent reports on a Wikileaks release from 2009 in which US Secretary of State Clinton says that Saudi Arabia was still a problem when it came to terrorist financing. The Saudis, she noted, lacked sufficient control over the flow of money out of the Kingdom and that the money was ending up in terrorist demands. Both Saudi nationals and foreigners in Saudi Arabia were channeling funds toward improper ends. The fact that Saudi Arabia has difficulty in monitoring the millions of people who come in for Haj was highlighted in several cables, including one from the late Richard Holbrooke, then Special Advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This matter seems to have been the target of the recently-announced anti-money laundering program. While that program will greatly reduce slippage among financial institutions, there still remains the problem of cash. The country does have laws that require the documentation of large amounts of cash moving in or out of the country, but enforcement of those laws is difficult. They are particularly difficult when it comes to pilgrims who, indeed, bring large amounts with them to pay for their keep while in Mecca and Medina. Too, many pilgrims still look to Haj as an opportunity to sell goods in order to defray their costs, often resulting in a profit. I’m not sure how the government could address these issues beyond requiring that all expenses be pre-paid and banning pilgrims from any sort of trade. That’s more easily said than done.
Saudi Arabia is ‘biggest funder of terrorists’
Rob HastingsSaudi Arabia is the single biggest contributor to the funding of Islamic extremism and is unwilling to cut off the money supply, according to a leaked note from Hillary Clinton.
The US Secretary of State says in a secret memorandum that donors in the kingdom still “constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide” and that “it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority”.
In a separate diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks last night, the militant group which carried out the Mumbai bombings in 2008, Lashkar-e-Toiba, is reported to have secured money in Saudi Arabia via one of its charity offshoots which raises money for schools.
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