A battle is brewing among Saudi women over the touchy issue of male guardianship. Pressure from outside Saudi Arabia has been building to abolish guardianship laws, and a number of women who fashion themselves as activists have led the charge.
Perhaps the most visible is Wajeha Al-Huwaider, a Saudi who does a little showboating by being driven in a taxi to the border checkpoint to enter Bahrain without permission from a male guardian. She's always turned away by Saudi authorities and told to go home. She is the darling of Western conservatives who think this public demonstration will further the cause of Saudi women.
It's silly. Public acts of defiance are unseemly in Saudi society and few women want to give up their dignity when letter-writing and petition campaigns are more effective.
Additionally, advocating to completely abolish guardianship rules is not a productive means to deal with abuses in the system. The problem with some Saudi activists is that they want to make wholesale changes that are contrary to Islam, which requires a mahram for traveling women. If one wonders why great numbers of Saudi women don't join Al-Huwaider it's because they are asked to defy Islam. Al-Huwaider's all or nothing position undercuts her credibility.
Of course, there are a great many women who are abused and they are seeking to change the guardianship system. And these efforts have sparked a counter-campaign by women who want the system to remain the same.
Recently a campaign called "My Guardian Knows the Best for Me" was initiated in direct response to the anti-guardianship movement. I have mixed feelings about both movements, but I must say the guardianship supporters have me more worried.
The system currently in place is seriously flawed. Saudi authorities have abdicated their responsibility to see that laws are enforced in a fair and equitable manner. It has ceased being a religious issue and is more about patriarchal control.
Many families treat their wives, daughters and sisters with great respect and don't follow their every move. Permission to travel or to conduct business abroad is often granted carte blanche with a signed piece of paper from a mahram. Many women travel freely with this document and consult little with the men in their families about their movements.
But since there are no codified laws, most Saudi women traveling alone don't know from one day to the next whether their documents will pass scrutiny at the airport. And for every family that follows guardianship rules, there is another family that wields the law like a club. It's not a system ripe for abuse. It's already a system abused with regularity.
Guardianship opponents are waging a losing battle if they believe that Saudi authorities will abolish the law. The reality is that there is little incentive for the government to consider anything but maintaining the status quo.
More worrisome is the women's pro-guardianship camp that is perfectly happy for men to control their lives. That's fine for them. They undoubtedly live in households of unquestioned male authority and are pleased with the arrangement. But what about the women abused by the guardian system?
It was reported recently that a Saudi woman protested that her father rejected several potential husbands because they did not belong to the family's tribe. The father confined her to the house as punishment and denied her outside employment. He even sent her to a mental institution when she continued her protests. She sued her father in court, but found herself at the wrong end of a tongue-lashing from the judge who said she did not respect her father. She now lives in a women's shelter.
Here is a clear instance of the Saudi judicial system failing to protect the woman and tacitly endorsing abuse of the guardianship system.
If men follow the spirit of guardianship as outlined in the Qur'an and recognize at the same time there is no place for tribal customs within the system, then a happy medium can be found. But if the Saudi courts fail to implement checks and balances to punish guardianship abusers and to protect the victims, then the laws are pointless.
Tribal customs should not usurp Sharia. Yet, to listen to the pro-guardianship camp, Saudi customs and traditions should indeed be a central part of the system. In effect, they are placing customs and traditions above Islam.
By waging a campaign fully supporting existing guardianship rules dooms thousands of Saudi women to being housebound servants to male family members.
A campaign to encourage guardianship, but also to demand that codified laws protect the abused, makes more sense. Such a system respects an independent woman's right to move about, attend university and marry whomever she pleases. It allows the family to determine a comfort level, but also imposes consequences on guardians who manipulate the laws to their own advantage.
The argument that women are not competent to handle their own affairs is not valid and never has been. More Saudi women than men attend universities in Saudi Arabia and abroad. Most of the money held in banks belongs to women.
How guardianship laws are followed must be a joint decision involving the family. But Saudi judges also need to summon the courage to cast aside customs and traditions when faced with abuse cases and make the right call to protect victims.
At the invitation of the Egyptian media, I attended President Obama's June 4th speech in Cairo and witnessed first-hand its impact on the audience. President...
Author argues for codified religious law(Sharia) as protection for abused women?! Huh?
Let us review some of the factual applications of Sharia law in Saudi Arabia respect ( pardon the pun) to treatment of women.
Sharia Application In Saudi Arabia:
"In Saudi Arabia, a women's testimony in court is worth half that of a man's testimony, according to a Human Rights Watch report in 2002."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/ihavearightto/four_b/casestudy_art07.shtml
Whoever commits the offence of zina ( adultry) shall be punished: (a) with caning of one hundred lashes if unmarried and shall also be liable to imprisonment for a term of one year; or if married, with stoning to death (rajm)."
"In 2008, the religious authority in Mecca, Mohammad Habadan called on women to wear veils that reveal only one eye, so that women would not be encouraged to use eye make-up."
reglion [IF] your a [man] ? LAWS written by men for men ! to be fair their is enough abuse in all walks of life towards women. ! Islam it seem to suffocate women 's choice's in life in some places ?
I see her point, but her idea that Islam requires this is not actually true; it is the patriarchal interpretations of Islam that requires it, and the culture upon which that patriarchy is based.
Indonesia has the world's largest population of Muslims, also almost entirely Sunni, and yet they do not have a theocratic, Shari'a-based state, and they allow the open practice of other religions, which Saudi Arabia does not. Women are free to move about without male escorts, and hold major positions of power in both the public and private sector. Though far from perfect, they are an example that what is "contrary to Islam" is actually quite flexible.
So the author is apparently speaking from her own cultural subtext and understanding of Islam, which seems to be the minority view in the rest of the Muslim world. Although Western views of women's rights are the only correct ones, neither are the misinterpretations of the Qur'an perpetuated by patriarchal interpretations which depart from the Prophet's (HNBP) actual, quite liberal, teachings.
The author is arguing for these male-authored, misogynistic interpretations, rather than for the true essence of Islam. But this is also true of Christian and Jewish teachings; there is much of our individual cultures getting in the way of the truth of what we profess to believe, and how we view ourselves in society.
This is the great take-away and most informative point of this authors post for WESTERN women. Arab women are not oppressed. Arab women like and endorse the system they perpetuate and support fully. They do NOT want western ideas and values applied to their culture.
The shortcut explanation simplified for dummies is this: If you love and live with women, who runs your home? Who's in charge? Not you buddy, and you know it.
for it is of GOD ! And say anything is of [LESS] Worth is saying to GOD IT A BLEMISH . ISLAMIC THEROCRATIC in the abuse of all their women is shaming GOD good works in this Creation's =
humanity-life !
I have to force my self to say this for the simple fact that I find so much about the treatment of others-women, children, the disrespect they show others of other sects of the same religion, and a host of other issues but they do have the right to live, worship, and if it comes down to it, experience the abuse they inflict upon one another.
It is a tough line dealing with this and exercising much patience or understanding as the region of the world and culture has opened up, become more expossed since the events of 9-11.
If anything, the region of the world needs to understand that they can treat one another as they like, inflict violence upon one another, do the things the feel is right but when they believe they can spread their behavior towards other who do not want it, that is where the tollerance ends and the push begins.
For countries such as the US, France, GB, and others who do not want to accept the influence of said religious laws and customs upon our societies, we have that right and have the right to prevent it as deemed fit.
[power] -voice of God ! [not ] just MAN'S OWN WILL to play -god !
Yet in the West we fought against fundamentalist Christian oppression and won. Study up on basic historical facts: Renaissance, Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution.
Hence, the unparalleled burst of scientific and cultural progress
Still waiting to Muslim civilization to go through at least some of the same.
Certainly, little progress will emerge from people like the fundamentalist author of this article.
No.
Islam's oriented "all or nothing" is the problem.
I have never understood how any woman in the world would allow an organized religion run by males to define their sex.
Women - we really need to get over this enabling addiction
Organized along male needs = lousy planning
There is often a conflation between folkways and the teachings of a religion.
Sometimes it is outward trappings - 25 December as Jesus' birthday, Xmas trees, Easter eggs.
Sometimes it is more sinister stuff.
But just because someone claims to be following the teaching of this or that religion, doesn't make it so.
After all we have the 666 Club on the TV in our own land.