TIMESONLINE: Beauty may well be in the eye of the beholder but in a country where a woman’s eyes are the only feature on public display, judging a beauty pageant could prove awkward.
For that reason the future Miss Saudi Arabia will not win on the merits of her figure in a bikini or her perfect skin, but will instead secure the coveted crown by dint of her devotion to her parents and Islamic values.
As of tomorrow 200 veiled hopefuls will start a ten-week process to find the winner of “Miss Beautiful Morals”, including a workshop entitled “Mum, paradise is at your feet”, a reference to the Prophet Muhammad’s dictum that respect for one’s parents is a foundation of the faith. “The idea of the pageant is to measure the contestants’ commitment to Islamic morals . . . It’s an alternative to the calls for decadence in the other beauty contests that only take into account a woman’s body and looks,” Khadra al-Mubarak, the event’s founder, said.
Unlike other competitions abroad, there will be no men involved at any stage in Saudi Arabia’s only contest for young women and it will not be televised, allowing the competitors to take off the veils and black abayas that cover Saudi women from head to toe. “The winner won’t necessarily be pretty,” Ms al-Mubarak said. “We care about the beauty of the soul and the morals.” >>> James Hider, Middle East Correspondent | Friday, May 8, 2009
