Worse Than Gitmo
Fascinating interview with Saudi women’s rights activist Wajiha Al-Huweidar, in which she states that the condition of women in Saudi Arabia is worse than that of the men imprisoned at the hated Crusader Gulag of Guantanamo. That and more on the malaise affecting her society … and, as a result, ours. MEMRI:
“This Saudi Patriarchal Culture Has Become Prevalent under Religious Guise”
Wajiha Al-Huweidar: “We have raised a generation - I think it began with my own generation - on the belief that we are a special people, that we are the cradle of Islam, that the truth is ours and ours alone, that we are the Saved Sect of Islam. People have begun to believe all these lies, and they use them as pretexts. When we demanded that women be employed in public workplaces, they say: ‘No, we are a special people.’ When we demand that women be allowed to drive, they say: ‘No, we are a special people.’ No, we are not. In what way are we special? There is nothing special about us. True, we have the two holy cities - Mecca and Al-Madina - but this does not mean that we have a monopoly on religion, and that we are the only Muslims in the world.
[...]
“This Saudi patriarchal culture has become prevalent under religious guise, but if you examine everything that goes on in this society, none of it has anything to do with religion. How can it be that people are stripped of their individual judgment, and the Commission [for the Prevention of Vice] is sent to spy on people in the streets, and to determine who errs and who acts properly? Who gave them the right to do this? People have the right to decide for themselves what they do and don’t want.”
“The Early Signs that a Wrong Ideology is Dying are Fanaticism and Extremism”
Interviewer: “Should women be allowed to decide this for themselves?”
Wajiha Al-Huweidar: “Of course. After all, they are like any…”
Interviewer: “Despite this commission?”
Wajiha Al-Huweidar: “This commission must be abolished, and the day will come when it will be. Look, the early signs that a wrong ideology is dying are fanaticism and extremism. This is obvious. Have you ever seen a dead body that is soft? When the person dies, the body becomes rigid. Similarly, this ideology will become increasingly rigid, and will reach the height of fanaticism, but it is constantly in the process of dying. Take a look at history. Let’s examine what happened to the Church in Europe. It becomes rigid and persecuted ideologies, killing and burning scientists, until people rebelled against it, and this led to its collapse. History tells us that this holds true for all ideologies. Communism…”
Interviewer: “Are you seeing signs of this collapse?”
Wajiha Al-Huweidar: “This will not happen in our generation. It will take time, but it will happen. [...]
Saudi Men “Draw Their Strength from the Weakness of Women”
“We, in the East - and I am talking about the East in a broad sense, including Pakistan, Turkey, and the Kurds… The way I see it, these are all wretched people, wretched men. This is obvious. He who has nothing cannot give anything to others. These men have lost what could have given them a real sense of masculinity. They draw their masculinity from Islam, if they are Muslims, of if they are non-Muslims, from the customs and tradition of the very harsh society that gives men more rights than women. Hence, they do not draw any strength from within. In the case of our Saudi society, they draw their strength from the weakness of women too. Most women choose to be weak, because it makes their lives easier. The weaker the wife is, the stronger the husband feels. How can you rely on a man who does not draw his strength from within?
[...]
“Do not forget that Eastern men are oppressed both by society and by the authorities. Men face the authorities more than women, and the authorities in Eastern countries are very harsh, to the point that a person can vanish, without anybody ever knowing what happened to him.
[...]
“Saudi men strut around like peacocks, as they say, because they were given more than they deserve, and they have authorities beyond what they are capable of bearing. The Saudi man believes he should be president. The moment he graduates from university, he wants to become president. I know that men will say that I am generalizing, but I am talking about the phenomenon, about the vast majority. How come you can hardly find any Saudi laborers? My father was a laborer, and so were many of his generation.
[...]
“I do not understand why there is no room for other religions in the vast land of Saudi Arabia. To this day, there is no church for the Christians, no synagogue for the Jews, and [no] temple for the Hindus, even though they constitute a large part of the foreign communities in Saudi Arabia. There are six to eight million of these people.”
Interviewer: “There is the notion that Saudi Arabia is the cradle of Islam, as you’ve said, and that it is the most conservative Islamic country. That is the response you usually get to such questions.”
“Why Do We Fear Other Religions?”
Wajiha Al-Huweidar: “Why do we fear other religions? What frightens us? We should have confidence in ourselves and in our religion. There is no religious text that prohibits the establishment of a church or a temple of any religion. If they want to oppose this in Mecca or Al-Madina - there could be a justification for this, but in the other cities, where there are many foreign workers… How can this be justified? It could be justified because these cities are holy to Muslims, even though Mecca… In my opinion, Mecca should be opened to all the Muslim and non-Muslim peoples of the world. How come the sheikh of the Haram Mosque, to this day, comes from the same family and from the same region - Najd?”
Interviewer: “What family?”
Wajiha Al-Huweidar: “It is passed down from father to son in the Subayyil family. Why only this family, and why must it be a family from Najd? How come Saudis have a monopoly on Islam? Are the Saudis the only Muslims? If we want to spread the notion of tolerance towards other religions and sects, the Haram Mosque should be given to the different sects.”
Interviewer: “Which sects?”
Wajiha Al-Huweidar: “All of them. Why must the sheikh of the Haram Mosque be of the Hanbali school? Why can’t there be a Hanbali sheikh one day, and on other days, sheikhs from the Shafe’i, Maliki, Hanafi, Ja’fari, and Isma’ili schools? Why can’t there be sheikhs of other nationalities? Why only Saudis?
[...]
“Saudi society is based on enslavement - the enslavement of women to men and of society to the state. People still do not make their own decisions, but it is the women of Saudi Arabia who have been denied everything. The Saudi woman still lives the life of a slave girl. So in what way are we different from Guantanamo? At least in the case of Guantanamo, many prisoners have been released, while we remain in this prison, and nobody ever hears of us. When will we be freed? I don’t know.”
That’s a mouthful, pilgrim. One thing: The men imprisoned at Guantanamo are there because they embarked on a terrorist enterprise. They are war criminals, or strongly suspected of being war criminals. Saudi women, on the other hand, are guilty of being born. One other thing: The international community of do-gooders is more concerned about the welfare of the terrorists and war criminals at Guantanamo than it is about Saudi women.
Topics: GWOT, Islam, saudi arabia
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:58 am on Saturday, January 19, 2008
9 Responses to “Worse Than Gitmo”
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January 19th, 2008 at 9:50 am
“Saudi women, on the other hand, are guilty of being born.”
Precisely, Infidel! For the first time, you speak Wisdom!
Even my camel knows that, and he is more foolish than One Thousand city editors from this so-called “Boston Herald”!. How dare this woman walk about in the sunlight instead of cowering in the shadows, as is Proper? How dare she presume to speak before she is spoken to?
Where is her husband, and why has he not beaten her on the soles of her feet for her insolence?
Bah!
January 19th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Wajiha has some very convoluted analogies there, and a few outright errors, but I get her drift.
January 19th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Yo, Mookie! When did you marry your camel?
January 19th, 2008 at 11:55 am
How can you rely on a man who does not draw his strength from within?
How indeed.
How come you can hardly find any Saudi laborers? My father was a laborer, and so were many of his generation.
For almost the entire span of oil development in Saudi Arabia, it has been up to “westerners” to sully their hands in the oil fields. Many Saudis considering themselves “above” manual labor.
“I do not understand why there is no room for other religions in the vast land of Saudi Arabia. ..”
Because the imposition of monolithic religion is one device through which “the royals” think they retain control and power (which they’re terrified of losing)
Because a deal was long ago struck between “royals” and Wahhabists.
January 19th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Do a bit of study on the actual development of the islamo ideology. It was created by the sword as a tool of conquest, not as a spiritual religion. It’s a political/legal system built upon the more easily understood concepts of cultural conquest and empire management.
Eliminating any and all forms of competition and forcing a homogeneous legal/language and social structure is all part of the program.
January 19th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Grimmy, do you take issue with the notion that one of the ways the (hugely extended) Saudi royal family employs to maintain control in “the kingdom” is exclusion of other religious (or ideological) belief systems ?
I agree that in many passages the Koran is as you’ve characterized it, a management guide for conquest and empire (as well as household !) management. However, direct knowledge of Allah’s thinking is the foundation on which Sura in the Koran base their credibility. So, while Islam has become an all encompassing social system over the centuries, its justification is God Himself or Itself.
When Mohammed was in Mecca, the earliest Sura (they’re not in order) were much more “spiritual” in content. The later Sura (from Medina) tend to have a more practical, less spiritual quality.
Marauding is hard work :) and it helps if Allah is in for the game.
Eliminating any and all forms of competition and forcing a homogeneous legal/language and social structure is all part of the program.
Whereas that is true today in terms of how Islam is or has been applied (or used), it doesn’t necessarily apply to the origins 14 centuries ago.
January 19th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
As long as the Saudis can live off their oil money, Saudi Arabia will never change: no diverse economy, no innovation, no cultural exchange, no freedom.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
tanstaafl:
Actually, it does apply to history. Not the revision of history created by multiple cleanings but the actual history.
Momad was a mad man and a sociopathic mass murderer. The whole religion theme was invented as a tool to pull the locals into line.
The whole “word of God” thing was created, layer by layer, long after he was dead and gone. Most of it was simply plagiarized from poorly translated and misquoted renditions of Jewish and Christian materials available at the time in that area.
Of course, with the current reasoning with the moral equivalence idiots and other forms of intellectual inbreeding popularized by the “elite” social utopianists, a man could pick up a turd, pop it in his mouth and have that declared Word of God and be given protection as a bonafide religion, as long as there was something condemning the West, or Christianity and/or Judism in the manifesto of the Holy Fecalphages.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:50 pm
The whole “word of God” thing was created, layer by layer, long after he was dead and gone. Most of it was simply plagiarized from poorly translated and misquoted renditions of Jewish and Christian materials available at the time in that area.
A couple of points I have come across in my meanderings.
Mo(mad) may actually have paid some Jewish scholars for some Old Testament tips.
(and what might that do the whole “apes and pigs” thing ?)
Also, Mo(mad) had been dead a good long time (100 ? 200? years ) when the Koran was committed to paper.