Women and the Muslim World
Saudi Arabia, is the land where Wahabbism reigns supreme, where holy Mecca has for centuries been the place every Muslim must journey to at least once during his lifetime. You would expect that in such a country women would be protected, they would have no fears of being preyed on by men, especially since they usually must travel accompanied by a male… Yes, you would definitely expect that, but you would be woefully wrong!
TMQ2 has a very interesting post on Ed Hussain and how the time spent as a teacher in Saudia Arabia made him turn against extremism. I won’t repost the whole article here, but I will quote a few paragraphs on the Saudi Arabian male’s attitude towards women:
My first clash with Saudi culture came when, being driven around in a bulletproof jeep, I saw African women in black abayas tending to the rubbish bins outside restaurants, residences and other busy places.
“Why are there so many black cleaners on the streets?” I asked the driver. The driver laughed. “They’re not cleaners. They are scavengers; women who collect cardboard from all across Jeddah and then sell it. They also collect bottles, drink cans, bags.”
“You don’t find it objectionable that poor immigrant women work in such undignified and unhygienic conditions on the streets?”
“Believe me, there are worse jobs women can do.”
Though it grieves me to admit it, the driver was right. In Saudi Arabia women indeed did do worse jobs. Many of the African women lived in an area of Jeddah known as Karantina, a slum full of poverty, prostitution and disease.
A visit to Karantina, a perversion of the term “quarantine”, was one of the worst of my life. Thousands of people who had been living in Saudi Arabia for decades, but without passports, had been deemed “illegal” by the government and, quite literally, abandoned under a flyover.
A non-Saudi black student I had met at the British Council accompanied me. “Last week a woman gave birth here,” he said, pointing to a ramshackle cardboard shanty. Disturbed, I now realised that the materials I had seen those women carrying were not always for sale but for shelter.
I had never expected to see such naked poverty in Saudi Arabia.
At that moment it dawned on me that Britain, my home, had given refuge to thousands of black Africans from Somalia and Sudan: I had seen them in their droves in Whitechapel. They prayed, had their own mosques, were free and were given government housing.
Many Muslims enjoyed a better lifestyle in non-Muslim Britain than they did in Muslim Saudi Arabia. At that moment I longed to be home again.
Infidel Britain, Ed Hussain’s home country, treated so many of his coreligionists much better than the country that was home to Islam’s holiest site… but, let’s continue…
Racism was an integral part of Saudi society. My students often used the word “nigger” to describe black people. Even dark-skinned Arabs were considered inferior to their lighter-skinned cousins. I was living in the world’s most avowedly Muslim country, yet I found it anything but. I was appalled by the imposition of Wahhabism in the public realm, something I had implicitly sought as an Islamist.
Frankly, there are still to this day black slaves in Saudi Arabia. You’d think Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be picketing the Saudi Embassy, right? Naaaahhh, it will never happen. They know they’d be ignored until they got bored to death… the media would soon loose interest… or an "accident" would befall them…
Part of this local culture consisted of public institutions being segregated and women banned from driving on the grounds that it would give rise to “licentiousness”. I was repeatedly astounded at the stares Faye got from Saudi men and I from Saudi women.
Faye was not immodest in her dress. Out of respect for local custom, she wore the long black abaya and covered her hair in a black scarf. In all the years I had known my wife, never had I seen her appear so dull. Yet on two occasions she was accosted by passing Saudi youths from their cars. On another occasion a man pulled up beside our car and offered her his phone number.
In supermarkets I only had to be away from Faye for five minutes and Saudi men would hiss or whisper obscenities as they walked past. When Faye discussed her experiences with local women at the British Council they said: “Welcome to Saudi Arabia.”
And yet in Denmark, Mostafa Chendid - the new top Imam - declared in a newspaper article that all women, including non-Muslim should wear the head veil. Why? Because of the 5% to 10% of men who can’t help themselves and may commit acts of violence or at least indecency against women on account of… them being women. While Westerners also perpetrate acts of rape, the Western world
does punish the perpetrator not the victim
. Let’s not forget the recent trial in Saudi Arabia where a woman managed to fight back four would be rapists, killing one of them, but nevertheless received 90 lashes as a punishment for having been accompanied by a male she was not married to. Let us, also, not forget that before an act is accepted as rape, Sharia law, insists on four witnesses to the act..After a month in Jeddah I heard from an Asian taxi driver about a Filipino worker who had brought his new bride to live with him in Jeddah. After visiting the Balad shopping district the couple caught a taxi home. Some way through their journey the Saudi driver complained that the car was not working properly and perhaps the man could help push it. The passenger obliged. Within seconds the Saudi driver had sped off with the man’s wife in his car and, months later, there was still no clue as to her whereabouts.We had heard stories of the abduction of women from taxis by sex-deprived Saudi youths. At a Saudi friend’s wedding at a luxurious hotel in Jeddah, women dared not step out of their hotel rooms and walk to the banqueting hall for fear of abduction by the bodyguards of a Saudi prince who also happened to be staying there.
Why had the veil and segregation not prevented such behaviour? My Saudi acquaintances, many of them university graduates, argued strongly that, on the contrary, it was the veil and other social norms that were responsible for such widespread sexual frustration among Saudi youth.
At work the British Council introduced free internet access for educational purposes. Within days the students had downloaded the most obscene pornography from sites banned in Saudi Arabia, but easily accessed via the British Council’s satellite connection. Segregation of the sexes, made worse by the veil, had spawned a culture of pent-up sexual frustration that expressed itself in the unhealthiest ways.
Using Bluetooth technology on mobile phones, strangers sent pornographic clips to one another. Many of the clips were recordings of homosexual acts between Saudis and many featured young Saudis in orgies in Lebanon and Egypt. The obsession with sex in Saudi Arabia had reached worrying levels: rape and abuse of both sexes occurred frequently, some cases even reaching the usually censored national press.
Isn’t it interesting that the very culture that was meant to foster morality, that was meant to protect women against the animal instincts of certain males, has instead fostered the exact opposite? Could it be that the religion does in fact mean to foster morality, but IslamoFascist interpretations have instead resulted in creating the immorality and disregard for human life it was meant to suppress?
Psychologists have long told us that extreme repression of any natural urge will prompt the individual to find another outlet for relief, could that explain the propensity for violence among certain elements who claim Islam as their religion?
My students told me about the day in March 2002 when the Muttawa [the religious police] had forbidden firefighters in Mecca from entering a blazing school building because the girls inside were not wearing veils. Consequently 15 young women burnt to death, but Wahhabism held its head high, claiming that God’s law had been maintained.
God’s law had been maintained. When human life is meaningless, what do fifteen young girl’s lives amount to?!?
As a young Islamist, I organised events at college and in the local community that were strictly segregated and I believed in it. Living in Saudi Arabia, I could see the logical outcome of such segregation.
In my Islamist days we relished stating that Aids and other sexually transmitted diseases were the result of the moral degeneracy of the West. Large numbers of Islamists in Britain hounded prostitutes in Brick Lane and flippantly quoted divorce and abortion rates in Britain. The implication was that Muslim morality was superior. Now, more than ever, I was convinced that this too was Islamist propaganda, designed to undermine the West and inject false confidence in Muslim minds.
I worried whether my observations were idiosyncratic, the musings of a wandering mind. I discussed my troubles with other British Muslims working at the British Council. Jamal, who was of a Wahhabi bent, fully agreed with what I observed and went further. “Ed, my wife wore the veil back home in Britain and even there she did not get as many stares as she gets when we go out here.” Another British Muslim had gone as far as tinting his car windows black in order to prevent young Saudis gaping at his wife.
There is more than ample evidence of the propensity of Muslims to excuse their crimes against women as something caused by the women themselves, the victims, because of the provocative way they dress or act. Frankly, the overwhelming majority of Western men see those same women dress and act in the exact same way and yet they are hardly a threat to the women around them.
Is Islamist morality truly superior to Western morality? After living in Saudi Arabia, Islamist Ed Hussain says it’s not. “The implication was that Muslim morality was superior. Now, more than ever, I was convinced that this too was Islamist propaganda, designed to undermine the West and inject false confidence in Muslim minds.” The spate of rapes perpetrated by Islamics throughout Europe or even in the Muslim world, further prove that the opposite is the truth.
This is not meant, in any way, as an indictment of every Muslim male! My Palestinian next door neighbors (with whom I am very close) are devout Muslim professionals, both. I’ve hardly ever seen a more loving couple, I’ve seldom seen such devotion and respect for one another. I have no doubt there are thousands of couples like them here, in Europe and even in Muslim countries. Nevertheless, there is something within the Islamic culture, as practiced today, that seems to foster violence, specifically against women. Is it not time for reform, time for reinterpretation?
Chaim
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Cross Posted at: Freedom's Cost
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