Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Minister Has Dared to Tell the Truth about Saudi Arabia. What Happens Now Concerns Us All

THE SPECTATOR: Margot Wallström’s principled stand deserves wide support. Betrayal seems more likely

If the cries of ‘Je suis Charlie’ were sincere, the western world would be convulsed with worry and anger about the Wallström affair. It has all the ingredients for a clash-of-civilisations confrontation.

A few weeks ago Margot Wallström, the Swedish foreign minister, denounced the subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia. As the theocratic kingdom prevents women from travelling, conducting official business or marrying without the permission of male guardians, and as girls can be forced into child marriages where they are effectively raped by old men, she was telling no more than the truth. Wallström went on to condemn the Saudi courts for ordering that Raif Badawi receive ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for setting up a website that championed secularism and free speech. These were ‘mediaeval methods’, she said, and a ‘cruel attempt to silence modern forms of expression’. And once again, who can argue with that?

The backlash followed the pattern set by Rushdie, the Danish cartoons and Hebdo. Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador and stopped issuing visas to Swedish businessmen. The United Arab Emirates joined it. The Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, which represents 56 Muslim-majority states, accused Sweden of failing to respect the world’s ‘rich and varied ethical standards’ — standards so rich and varied, apparently, they include the flogging of bloggers and encouragement of paedophiles. Meanwhile, the Gulf Co-operation Council condemned her ‘unaccept-able [?] interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’, and I wouldn’t bet against anti-Swedish riots following soon.

Yet there is no ‘Wallström affair’. Outside Sweden, the western media has barely covered the story, and Sweden’s EU allies have shown no inclination whatsoever to support her. A small Scandinavian nation faces sanctions, accusations of Islamophobia and maybe worse to come, and everyone stays silent. As so often, the scandal is that there isn’t a scandal. » | Nick Cohen | Saturday, March 28, 2015

Talk to Al Jazeera: Why Arab Women Still ‘Have No Voice’ (April 2012)

Amal al-Malki, a Qatari author, says the Arab Spring has failed women in their struggle for equality.

Saudi Head of Religious Police Criticises Agents for Handling of 'Nail Polish' Row
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The head of the Saudi religious police has criticised agents for clamping down on a woman who was wearing nail polish, after the video went viral, attracting more than a million hits on YouTube.

The three minute video posted on May 23 shows members of the religious police telling the woman to "get out" of a shopping mall. But she refuses to comply, saying "I'm staying and I want to know what you're going to do about."

In an interview with the daily newspaper al-Watan, Sheikh Abdullatiff Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh, said: "The world is manufacturing airplanes and we are still telling a woman 'leave the mall because you've got nail polish on your fingers'."

“I was very disappointed by what I have seen. The matter has been exaggerated and negatively exploited,” Sheikh Abdullatiff, head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, later told the AFP news agency.

“The way the member of the commission behaved was not right, even if the girl had gone too far. He should have offered her advice and left instead of arguing with her and escalating [the matter]."

The video has been viewed more than one million times, but her behaviour attracted scores of negative comments online.

One posting said she had "no shame" and accused her of "prostituting" herself. Another called her a "slut" and a "whore." » | Thursday, June 07, 2012


Related »

Saudi Woman Makes a Stand against Feared Religious Police

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A YouTube video of a Saudi woman defying orders by the notorious religious police to leave a shopping centre because she is wearing nail polish has gone viral, attracting more than a million hits in just five days but thousands of negative comments.

The three and a half minute video posted on May 23 shows members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice telling the women to "get out of here"[.]

But she refuses to comply, saying: "I'm staying and I want to know what you're going to do about."

"It's none of your business if I wear nail polish," the unidentified woman, who is not seen on tape, is heard shouting at bearded men from the feared religious force.

"You are not in charge of me," she defiantly shouts back, referring to new constraints imposed earlier this year on the religious police banning them from harassing Saudi women over their behaviour and attire.

"The government has banned you from coming after us," she told the men, adding "you are only supposed to provide advice, and nothing more". » | Monday, May 28, 2012

Why Arab Women Still 'Have No Voice'
Amal al-Malki, a Qatari author, says the Arab Spring has failed women in their struggle for equality.

Saudi Arabia: Women Look at the Bigger Picture

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The future of Saudi Arabia will be determined in part by growing numbers of educated women – but not because they have been given the sop of a meaningless vote.

Barely three months ago, the world’s attention was drawn to the unprecedented public campaign led by Saudi women activists to be allowed to drive in their own country. This weekend, the octogenarian King Abdullah instead made a concession to women in a different area: they are now to acquire the right to vote, as well as being allowed (by 2015) to stand as candidates in municipal elections.

This still means that the nationwide local elections to be held this week will not see the involvement of women candidates or voters. But at least Thursday’s male-only elections, which have been delayed since 2009, appear to be going ahead – this will be only the second time anyone has voted since local elections were introduced in 2005.

Things may move slowly in Saudi Arabia, but support for managed change and transition appears to be an issue close to many Saudi hearts. Not for them the street protests seen across the rest of the Arab world this year; instead, they have delivered an accelerated series of online petitions addressed respectfully to the King, punctuated by the occasional arrest of a cleric, blogger or intellectual deemed to have overstepped the mark.

Even the campaign to promote the issuing of driving licences to women – which constitutes the main impediment to their legal right to drive – has, with a few notable exceptions, been conducted within certain norms. Most of the women to have taken charge of the steering wheel this year have been veiled and accompanied by a male guardian, as required by culturally enforced tradition, if not the full force of law.

In principle, women’s rights in Saudi Arabia are governed by the Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam and Islamic law (sharia), named after its 18th-century founder, Ibn Abdul Al-Wahhab. For over two centuries, he and his followers supported the ascendancy of the Ibn Saud dynasty as the temporal rulers of what eventually, through conquest, became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Read on and comment » | Claire Spencer | Monday, September 26, 2011

Claire Spencer is head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House

The Saudi Women Taking Small Steps for Change
BBC – NEWSNIGHT: Before I flew to the Saudi capital Riyadh to make a film about the position of women in the kingdom, I met a Saudi woman studying in the UK who told me, "Saudi Arabia is the biggest women's prison in the world".

Can I quote you? I asked. "You can quote me," she said, "but you can't name me."

I heard that same sentiment and request to remain anonymous repeated during my 10-day stay in the kingdom.

Few dare criticise the 
country openly, though the restrictions on women are scarcely believable in the 21st Century. A woman can't drive and she is not allowed to work or travel without the permission of her male guardian, father or husband.

Customs such as arranged marriages, under-age marriage and polygamy still prevail.

Workplace revolution

The on-going battles to bring about change tend to be small ones.

Twenty-year-old Dina, with her heavily kohl-rimmed eyes and diamante cuffs on her abaya (the burka of Saudi Arabia), is a revolutionary in the workplace. She sits in the Jeddah studio at Radio Mix FM with a man.

Up until a few years ago, men and women were not allowed to work in the same room and broadcast journalism has so far proved one of the very few exceptions.

But, beyond that, Dina's message is hardly revolutionary. She acts as a kind of agony aunt for the station's young audience.

A 17-year-old girl sends in an e-mail complaining of boredom. Dina tells her to take up a hobby like painting or photography which, because an unaccompanied girl is not allowed to leave the house, she will have to do at home.

If an 18-year-old wrote in asking how to meet a member of the opposite sex, Dina says she would respond by saying, "It is not possible and [you] must accept it - it is our culture".

At the end of her shift, her boss accompanies her down on to the street and waits until her brother's car pulls up to collect her.

"You present your own radio show and yet you can't drive?" I asked. "It's normal," she said, and closed the car door.

She has to watch what she says. The radio station receives angry calls from the country's religious conservatives who are appalled that women like her are allowed to sit in the same room as an unrelated man.

Any false step or unguarded remark could see the station closed. (+ video) » | Sue Lloyd-Roberts, BBC Newsnight | Monday, March 28, 2011

New Rights, and Challenges, for Saudi Women
TIME: Like those of its competitors in New York or London, the sleek glass and steel offices of media company Rotana are filled with preening attitude and fashion-conscious staffers: assistants teeter in shoes that might have absorbed much of their monthly paycheck; executives parade the halls in power suits and pencil skirts. But Rotana isn't in New York or London; it's in Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, a country in which women normally adhere to a strict dress code in public — a black cloak called an abaya, a headscarf and a veil, the niqab, which covers everything but their eyes.

There's another reason many Saudis would find Rotana shocking: men and women working side by side. The sight unnerves enough men who come looking for a job that human-resources manager Sultana al-Rowaili has developed a trick to see if a male applicant can handle working in a mixed-gender office. She arranges for a female colleague to interrupt the initial interview, and watches to see if the man loses concentration or stares too much. Sometimes even that isn't necessary. Many men are undone by the very idea of being interviewed by a woman. "They are in a state of shock to see a woman in a position of authority and to have to ask her for a job," al-Rowaili says.

Saudi men may have to start getting used to such situations. True, Rotana remains an anomaly protected by the position and progressive ideals of its owner — global investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. And Saudi women still can't drive and legally can't even leave the house to shop, let alone get a job, without a male family member's permission. Yet under the guidance of a few members of the Saudi royal family — in particular the current King, Abdullah — the kingdom is slowly changing. Mixed-gender workplaces are becoming more common, especially in banks and good hospitals, where female doctors are not unusual. "People used to say, 'Why is she working? Why does she need the money?' Now they say, 'It takes a woman to solve a problem,'" says Norah al-Malhooq, an administrator at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh.

The government is expanding educational opportunities for women by building women's universities (as opposed to segregated campuses at male-dominated universities); last month it even launched the kingdom's first coeducational university. The state is trying to encourage women's entry into the workforce, and is sponsoring initiatives to protect women and children from domestic abuse. And it is pushing Saudis to discuss the notion of empowerment, formerly such a taboo subject that even the word was off-limits in newspapers. "The message is that women are coming," says Dr. Maha Almuneef, one of six women named earlier this year to the Shura council, a 156-person advisory body appointed by the King. "It's a good first step. The King and the political system are saying that the time has come. There are small steps now. There are giant steps coming. But most Saudis have been taught the traditional ways. You can't just change the social order all at once." >>> Andrew Lee Butters, Riyadh | Monday, October 19, 2009

TIME – Picture Gallery: Saudi Women in Focus: The changing role of women in Saudi Arabia >>>

Save Pervez! Global Protests to Save Afghan Student from Death Sentence
THE INDEPENDENT: Worldwide outrage over Afghan sentenced to death for reading article on women's rights. Join the Independent campaign now

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has been inundated with appeals to save the life of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student journalist sentenced to death after being accused of downloading an internet report on women's rights.

While international protests mounted over the affair, with the British Government saying it had already raised its concerns, hundreds of people marched through the capital, Kabul, demanding Mr Kambaksh's release.

A petition launched yesterday by The Independent to secure justice for Mr Kambaksh had attracted more than 13,500 signatories by last night, and a number of support groups have been set up on the social networking site Facebook with more than 400 joining one group alone.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, was arrested, tried and convicted by a religious court, in what his friends and family say was a secret session without being allowed legal representation.

The United Nations, human rights groups, journalists' organisations and diplomats urged Mr Karzai's government to quash the death sentence and release him.

Instead, on Wednesday, the Afghan senate passed a motion confirming the death sentence. The MP who proposed the ruling condemning Mr Kambaksh was Sibghatullah Mojadedi, a key ally of Mr Karzai. Save Pervez! Global protests to save Afghan student from death sentence >>> By Kim Sengupta, Jerome Starkey in Kabul, Anne Penketh and Ben Russell

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

Rumblings of Discontent in the Kingdom: Saudi Women Start Agitating for More Rights

Photocourtesy of the BBC

KUWAIT TIMES: More and more Saudi women are speaking out against preachers in their country. Fatma Al-Faqih, a columnist at the daily Saudi Al-Watan accuses preachers (April 17) of "denigrating women" and "inciting discrimination against women." "Day in day out, our preachers flood us with accusations against women and beg men to defend the virtues of society that women corrupt," Al-Faqih writes. This "anti-woman culture", Al-Faqih continues, causes women to feel mentally and psychologically inferior, "like a quarrelsome child who must be constantly supervised, intimidated, and punished into performing her duties." Anti-woman culture (more) By Dr Sami Alrabaa

Mark Alexander