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Home > Islamic Monitor > Islamic Monitor 2 > Violation of Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia

Violations of Women’S

  Rights in Saudi Arabia

“Paradise is under the feet of moth­ers,” says one hadith (tradition) of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Notice that he did not say “under the feet of fathers.” “The best of you (according to God) is one who treats his wife best, and Jam the best in treating mine,” says another hadith that goes on to emphasize the importance of treating women well by adding: “None is kind to them except one blessed with generosity, and none insults them except a mean, lowly wretch.” Such statements, along with many verses in the Holy Qur’an, enjoin the faithful to respect and honor women. An entire Qur’anic Chapter, Al Nisaa (Women) is dedicated to women and in defense of women. No other scrip­ture in the history of the world has called for such honoring of women. It begins with, “0 mankind! Reverence your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person (Adam), created of like nature his mate (Eve), (and) from them scattered numerous men and women. Fear Allah through Whom you demand your mutual rights, and reverence the wombs (that bore you), for Allah ever watches over you (Qur’an, 4:1).” In the preceding chapter appears the following: “Never will I ever waste the doing of a doer (of good) among you, whether male or fe­male: each one of you being from the other (3:195).” To quote all Qur’anic verses calling for honorable and equitable treat­ment of women will turn this article into a voluminous book. However, a brief ex­amination of the Islamic code is needed to combat trends in Western writing which portray Islam as demeaning and oppres­sive toward women. Such propaganda is, unfortunately, easily accepted by those ignorant of the basics of Islam. Slander­ous, prejudiced, biased and ignorant writ­ers should compare their scriptures (if they have any) to the Qur’ an regarding the portrayal of women. Unfortunately, those whose hearts bear animosity towards Is­lam and Muslims will never be able to perceive the truth; they prefer to see what they want to see, through their own tinted glasses, reveling bias and misinformation presented to them by an equally prejudiced and anti-Islamic information and news media.

Gone are the days of the Arabian Peninsula, where Islam was born, when a poetess such as Tamadur al-Khansa, whose poetry was cherished by the Prophet of Islam (pbuh) and who used to extol her brethren to fight in defense of the creed, urging all other women to do likewise. Even during the darkest periods of Arabia’s Jahiliyya, the days of ignorance, there were women like Khawlah daughter of al­Azwar who took to the sword to redress the downtrodden and effect justice and equity on behalf of the weak and helpless, defending the poor, assaulting the tyrants and oppressors, returning what was looted to their rightful owners, bringing hope to the hearts filled with dark despair. And gone are the days of renown women like Rabi’a al-Adawiyya or Shajarat al-Durr, the first a philosopher and the second an ambitious woman who as pired to be queen of the Muslims. Gone are those days of the heartland of Islam; instead, women in Najd and Hijaz receive the worst of treatment with the encouragement of paid clergy who are more loyal to their monarch than to their religion.

Islam’ ‘s call for equality between men and women is inarguable. There is no doubt about it except in the minds of the ignorant, be they non-Muslims or Muslims with superficial knowledge of Islam.

A host of Western writers antagonistic toward Islam and Muslims have written extensively on the subject of the status of women in Islam, accusing it of being sexist and of dealing with women unfairly. The movie industry has promoted this stereotype worldwide. The ignorant should be advised that more than fourteen centuries ago Islam elevated the status of women to its highest peak, prohibiting their exploitation and guaranteeing basic human rights still lacking for women in Western society: equality in pay, fair representation, and an end to sexual harassment and exploitation.

Consider the following shameful regressive chronology of events and developments:

It was only until 1964 that female students were granted equality of rights by the Cambridge and Oxford universities. Before 1850, women were not counted as citizens in England, and British women had no personal rights till the year 1882. In France in 587, a meeting was held to determine whether women had souls hence, whether they could be regarded as human beings. Henry VIII of England forbade women from reading the Bible. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church treated women as second class citizens...

Considering the commandments of the Qur’an, we cannot help deploring the treatment of women in Saudi Araibia, for example, where the call of La ilaha i/Ia-Allah Muhammadun Rasool-Allah was heard for the first time. We cannot say anything positive about the status of women under the oppressive reign of Al Saud: few are aware of the oppression of Saudi women besides the women themselves. Saudi citizen Khawla al-Zoar sums up the extent of violations of human rights in Saudi Arabia in a single word:

“incomprehensible.” Investigating this assessment, we interviewed an exiled female Saudi onJuly7,1993, who providedus with disturbing details about the inhumane treatment of women there. The International Committee for Human Rights in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula (ICHR-GAP), enabled us to interview Sr. Faiza Ahmed who provided us with a wealth of knowledge in hopes that the plight of Saudi women might receive some attention among those in the Saudi political hierarchy. We urge all human rights organizations and news media to give this topic the attention and exposure it deserves.

It was only in 1960, explained Sr. Eaiza Ahmed, that public education for women received attention from Saudi government officials who finally opened the door to women. For years, Saudi Arabia has hired teachers from other Arab countries, a dependence which has taxed the country’s budget. Unfortunately, public education is not available for every Saudi woman. To register at schools or colleges or pursue a higher degree, women must obtain the permission of a male described as wa/i al amr (guardian or custodian) who may be a father, a brother, a cousin, a husband, or a close relative. Such permission is not only required for schooling, but also for emergency medical surgery. Hospitals, Faiza told Islamic Monitor, are explicitly instructed not to perform any emergency operations without the written and signed agreement of the woman’s wa/i.

 

Almost all women in Saudi Arabia suffer, including non-Saudis. An eyewitness to atrocities against women in Saudi Arabia related the following incident to Islamic Monitor:

     “I was in Saudi Arabia in 197 1-72 when I saw something I never expected to see in the cradle of Islam’s message. We were three in number: a female teacher, whom I shall call Zahra, her young brother, and myself, in a taxi we hired to take us from Dhahran’s International Airport to Huffoof, city capital of Al-Ahsa. According to our contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Education, Zahra andl were expected to teach at Huffof.  

         All three of us entered the build­ing housing the Al Ahsa’s Admin­istration of Education in order to receive our transmittal letters ad­dressed to the directors of the schools where we were assigned to teach. I went in one direction, and she went in another. Suddenly I heard a woman screaming, so I rushed in that direction and saw a member of the Saudi religious au­thorities called mutawwa ‘een wielding his heavy stick on poor Zahra. As she fell on the ground, her brother, though a young lad, thrust himself between her and the stick whereby the rnutawwa was beating her, receiving his share of the severe beating. Other teachers then yelled to the mutawwa’ telling him that that woman was  not Saudi that she did not know that she was not sup­posed to be there. We found out that in Saudi Arabia there were two Directorates of Education, one for males and one for fe­males. The mutawwa’ finally stopped beating Zahra and left the place without offering one single word of apology.”

  Under the Saudi regime, explains Sr. FaizaAhmed, all rights, be they men’s or women’s, are discarded. But women s rights are especially ignored. Women can­not travel alone. Islam certainly does not restrict female travel as long as honor and dignity are preserved. As for medical cases, women in Saudi Arabia need writ­ten permission from their wa/i before they a car or walking in a market can be rudely can travel, and even then, have to be escorted, especially if they travel abroad. A in a car or walking in a market place may be approached, even insulted, by religious authorities inquiring about her male escort. Unescorted women are taken to jail imme­diately, where they may be detained for weeks or even months, depending on their luck in contacting their families, and on their family’ s influence, if any, in the Saudi government. Inmost cases, families are not notified of their confinement.

When it comes to education, certain branches of knowledge, such as political science, exclude women altogether. Nor can women practice law: there are no Saudi female lawyers. There are no unions nor guilds for men or women, note even for teachers.

Saudi women are barred from driving. While Islam does not prohibit women from driving, the Saudi govern­ment has sought the endorsement of this form of hi jab from the religious authori­ties. On November 6, 1990, 47 Saudi women from prominent families drove in a 15-car convoy along the King Abdul-Asia highway in Riyadhto demand an end to the ban on female driving. They were de­tained and interrogated by the police for 11 hours, then forced along with their fathers and husbands to sign pledges not to repeat their actions and to accept subse­quent punishment if they did. Those women included university professors, journalists, writers, and public sector employees. Among them were: Dr. Fawziyya al-Bakr, Dr. ‘Ayesha al-Mani’,Dr. Aziza al-Mani’, Dr. Mowadda, Dr. Su’ad al-Mani’, and Dr. Nihal al-Ahmad. On November 14, Reuter news wire service reported that police were called to King Saud University in Riyadh to quell fighting that broke out between [Wahhabi] Islamic fundamental­ists and teachers who supported the dem­onstrators. All participants in the demon­stration were fired. Their passports were confiscated and returned to them nine months later.

Women, hence, still have to be chauf­feured to school or work, or even to hospi­tals or clinics for treatment. If the chauf­feured female happens to be young, she is always subject to molestation or rape; such incidents are rarely reported for fear of tarnishing the girl’s reputation and that of her family. Public transportation is rarely available throughout the Kingdom, and it is often unsafe when it is. This situation forces many women to dread the thought of leav­ing home. A woman in Saudi Arabia is liable to die for lack of finding a male escort to a nearby clinic or hospital during an emergency; she can be jailed for speaking to a male foreigner in public.

Working Saudi women are no more privileged than those staying at home. The fields in which they can work are very limited. Saudi officials deliberately assign women to work in education and health-related fields in areas located hundreds of miles away from their homes. A woman may have to travel eight hours to and from home, thus spending one third of the day commuting. Women who graduate from a college in Saudi Arabia may have to wait as long as four years to find a job, and are often under-employed, that is, they are often assigned jobs far below their qualifi­cations orunrelated to their fields.

When King Fahd announced the establishment of Majlis al-Shurain 1992, there was no reference to women despite the fact that they make up 52% of the Saudi society. Women are excluded from all careers other that teaching, nursing, or media-related positions, such as writing newspaper columns or magazines, or work­ing as radio or TV announcers. They do not occupy any position in the Saudi government; there are no female cabinet ministers, directors, or the like, in any ministry. There are no newspapers ormaga­zines published or edited by Saudi women.

There is discrimination even in the field of teaching. The Ministry of Education, for example, is divided into two sections: one for males and one for females. Curriculum is forced on every­one, promoting only the sect adhered to by the ruling dynasty of Al Saud (that is, the Wahhabi “sect"), despite the fact that there are many followers of other sects in Saudi Arabia such as the Shafi’ is (who are in the majority), Hanbalis, Malikis (who are all Sunnis), and the Isma’ili and Jthna­Ashen Shi’ as. They are all regarded by the Wahhabis as kafir (apostate), and gov­ernment-appointed supreme religious au­thorities have gone as far as issuing a fatwa saying that killing the Shi’as is ha/al, (Islamicly permissible...) In one of the new text-books introduced last year for second year high school (11th grade) students, an entire section deals with the Shi’ as and labels them as kafi’r. They are labelled as “Rafidis” (rejectionists) or, as they are called in Medina, as “Nakhlis,” (those who tend to date trees). Both are demean­ing slurs. Male students refused to attend the classes where such text-books were taught, forcing the Ministry of Education to alterthe context, but female Shi’ a students were powerless to force its change. They are still taught the same text-books.

Shias in Saudi Arabia receive the worst treatment, whether they are stu­dents, government officials, or ordinary citizens. In 1992, a 14-year old student named Tamadur Al Hmood, living in the Ummul-Hamam district of the Eastern Province, was forced to change her Shi’ a beliefs and embrace the Wahhabi “sect” in orderto placate Saudi authorities. She was then forced, despite her young age, to marry a Wahhabi man chosen for her by the same headmistress and without the consent of her wa/i a! amr. The whole ordeal was orchestrated in cooperation with the monarchy. On various univer­sity campuses, Wahhabis (who are also called Salafis) enjoy the freedom to propa­gate their religious beliefs through the circulation of printed material, video or audiotapes, ~vb lie tOIiO\\<’~ fotV~Q~ <x~s are strictly prohibited from doing the same. Non-Wahhabis students are peri­odically searched. These searches are con­ducted at all school levels up to the university. At Dammam’s Girls College, students’ bags are periodically searched by the college’s administration for any clues indicating non-Wahhabi religious be­liefs.

There is also discrimination in the health-care field. Saudi nurses are always prone to sexual harassment at the hands of male nurses, co-workers, or ad­ministrative staff. To report such harass­ment risks expulsion or a transfer to another location hundreds of miles away, in addition to public stigma.

Social restrictions on Saudi women have confined the latter to their homes, enforcing rigid and cumbersome forms of hzjab on them dictated more by society than by the religion and limiting their sphere of movement. Government paid religious authorities in Saudi Arabia are the main culprits as far as violations of women’s rights are concerned. They not only refuse to denounce them, they actu­ally condone and justify them.

Most Saudis are critics of the present autocratic authority of the Al Saud clan, especially Saudi women whose opin­ions are not sought in any matter related to the running or development of their country’s affairs. Women have taken an active part in both secular and religious opposition to the present government as proven by the imprisonment of a large number of dissident Saudi women. While there are no women’s prisons in Saudi Arabia, certain prison wings are specified for female prisoners. These areas are manned and managed by women. There is no separation in prison accommodations for women charged with drug trafficking or prostitution and those charged with dissent; all are housed together, and they receive the same harsh treatment. Inci­dents of beating , taunting, insulting, tortur­ing, and even raping female prisoners are documented by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International in its 1990 report titled “Saudi Arabia: Deten­tion Without Trial of Suspected Political Opponents” and by Middle East Watch:

One prisoner, Makkiyya Hamdan, was imprisoned in 1986 with her six-month old daughter Tuqa and charged with being a critic of the regime. Her daughter was kept with her in prison, where she suffered skin diseases because of the prison’s unsanitary conditions. Another case is that of Aliya Makki who was arrested in the same year and charged with a similar ~~crime”.She wrote Memoirs of a Woman Inside Saudi Prisons to describe her ordeal. In 1982, Dr. Fawziyya al-Bakr, a writer and a sociology professor at Riyadh University, was imprisoned for dissent. A native of Riyadh who wrote for the Al Jazeera newspaper, she was arrested again in 1990 for participating in the demonstra­tion against the ban of female driving. Zahra al-Nasir, 40, was arrested and imprisoned in 1989, and she died after spending only four days in jail. The news of her death surfaced only last January when Arabia Monitor, a publication of the Wash­ington-based International Committee for Human Rights in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula (ICHR-GAP) announced her death in its Vol.2, No. 1 issue. Her “crime” was possession of a book of prayers (sup­plications) and a photo of the late Imam Khomeini. Her death, according to con­cerned human rights organizations that re­ported the incident, resulted from torture. This incident is also documented in the report titled “Article 19, Silent Kingdom:

Freedom of Expression in Saudi Arabia,~~ edited by Carmel Bedford and published in October 1991 (ISBN 1-870798-56-2). One of the best sources on human rights viola­tions in Saudi Arabia is a book published by the Minnesota Lawyers’ International Hu­man Rights Committee (tel 512/341-3302), which contains an extensive bibliography of relevant references.

There have been numerous other cases of arrests and mistreatment of women; only a few cases became public. fri 1985, Fatima Kamil Ahmed Yousuf, a renown Saudi poet who is better known by her pseudonym “Neda Yousuf,” was ar­rested and tortured. As a result, she be­came paralyzed. Khayriyya Abdel-Hadi Abu Khamseen, a 28-year housewife, and Safiyya Abdel-Hadi Abu Khamseen, 26, were both arrested and detained for three days in al-Ahsa. Even students of theo­logical studies are subject to arrest despite the fact that the only religion taught in Saudi Arabia is Wahhabism: Ibtihaj Hus­sam Abu Khamseen, 21, was jailed for three months. A22-yearoldstudent named Salwa Abul-Sa’ ood was jailed in al-Qateef in 1980 for three months. Muna Salat, a 23-year old housewife, was arrested and imprisoned in al-Qateef for two months. Saudi women jailed during the period from 1969-1987 include: IftikharAbdullah al-Damin, Jbtisam Mansoor al-Jarrash, Fatima Mansoor al-Jarrash, Maryam Mu­hammad al-Yousuf (arrested in Bahrain then deported to Saudi Arabia to spend seven months in jail after being accused of belonging to an outlawed religious orga­nization), Muneera Saud al-Eisa, Nooriyya Saud al-Eisa, Najma al-Ghamidi, Khadra Abdullah al-Dawood, Muna Muhammad al-Yousuf, Badriyya al-Zamil, Haya al­Abboodi, Lateefa al-Soovan, Hooriyya Sayyid Saud, Muntaha Sa’eed Taqi al­Yousuf, Huda al-Zari, Sadeeqa al-Mustawi, Raja Sa’ eed Taqi al-Yousuf (a student of the American University), Bushra Habib Muhammad al-Yousuf, Aqeela Hassan al­Shaikh, Rabab al-Miskeen, FawziyyaHassan al-Aseef, Samiya Hassan al-Aseef, Aliya MakkiFarid,MaldciyyaAbdullahHamdan, Azhar Ahmed Marhoon al-Ma, Kubra Mu­hammad Shlati, Huda al-Bazroon, FakhriyyaAhmed Abdel-Rahman al-Nasir, and Fawziyya Hussain Jbrahim, to name only a few. All of these women were accused of dissent, andthere is no room to include all the others.

Politically active Saudi women, especially those belonging to non-Wahhabi sects, are on top of the list of those persecuted in Saudi Arabia. They and their families are subjected to numerous mea­sures aimed at humiliating, insulting, and subjecting them to slow death. All types of physical and psychological forms of torture are meted to these women and to their families. Such women are kept in solitary confinement. Male guards con­spire with female guards to have access to them for rape. As an additional form of psychological torture, their privacy may be invaded in the middle of the night by a raid from a group of male prison guards. Their passports, as well as those of their family members, are confiscated, and their telephones are tapped. They receive ob­scene phone calls. The current procedure followed by prison authorities is that no woman can be released from prison be­fore signing a statement promising not to reveal what she endured at prison. Fern ai~ prisoners are not eligible to regain their passports until seven years after the date of their release.

Saudi women have, for years , been active abroad wherever there is freedom of expression, struggling to expose the inhumane treatment meted to their fellow women at home. Among the organizations in which they have been active are: Hizb al Amal al Ishtiraki fil Jazeerah a! Arabi~ya (the Socialist Action Party in the Arabian Peninsula) and .~4!Harakah a! Jslahiyya a! Risaliyya (the Reformist Delegated Movement). These organiza­tions have sympathizers and supporters at home. Because of their involvement, many Saudi women dread the thought of return­ing to Saudi Arabia. Last February, a young Saudi woman, whose name was withheld for fear of government reprisals against her family, asserted her basic hu­man rights were threatened in Saudi Ara­bia merely because of her gender. She sought and was granted political asylum in Montreal, Canada, where she had re­mained in hiding for 21 months.

Religious institutions and places of worship frequented by non-Wahhabis have always been subject to closure. The Eastern Province’s Husainiyyat al-Zahra, for example, was closed down in 1982 and reopened only about two years ago. It is one of few female-organized and man­aged religious places for Saudi Shi’as. Women meet there to conduct religious services, celebrations, or commemorations.

Even in their own homes , women are not safe from the batons carried by Saudi religious authorities who frequently break into homes under the pretext of investigating alleged reports of male-fe­male social gatherings. It does not matter to these authorities whether those gath­ered are relatives. Baton or stick equipped religious authorities are licensed to arrest and/or beat anyone for mere suspicion.

I happened to befriend a young Saudi security officer who was a close friend of one of the students I tutored during my two-year stay in Saudi Arabia. He told me that he and his fellow officers had more fun than anyone else. “How so?,” Tasked him. He explained, “If any of us [other security officers or informers] wants to have sex, all he has to do is to go to the house or apartment of a non-Saudi teacher and tell her that he can have her deported the next day unless she agrees to go to bed with him.” Most of the women they harassed, he said, were Palestinian teachers who have no country to return to.

What do religious authorities do about all of these human rights violations?

Is there anyone among Saudi clergy who has the courage or the conscience to stand up and demand equality in the treatment of women, especially since Islam espouses equality and justice? Since the Al Saud clan took control of government in that part of the world, not one individual among the religious establishment has stood up to defend women and their basic human rights. Saudis in exile, including those with religious training, are the only excep­tion to the rule. Shaikh Hassan al-Saffar, a theology scholar was able to write his book A 1Mar~ Wa! Thawrah (Woman and Revo­lution) only after leaving his native country.

Some have used the analogy of Islam and Muslims as being like the pearl and the oyster: the first is shiny and pre­cious, the other is slimy andugly. Howtrue, especially in the case of Saudi Arabia and its religious dogma.