WAS MY GRANDMA MORE LIBERAL THAN
MY GRAND DAUGHTER?

When you see your dear aunt or sister after a long absence you expect her to run to you with overt joy and open arms to kiss you and hug you with her bare hands and uncovered head. Now, she meets you coolly with her head tightly wrapped in scarf and hands tucked in black gloves and she barely shakes hands with you. Funny jokes and joyful laughs have completely disappeared to be replaced by austere religious formulas and clichés, as if every minute of our lives should be used solely and exclusively preparing our souls for the grave and life after death. You no longer see women walking down the streets, only moving bodies completely draped in black. You call your friend on the phone and if one of his women folk answer you on the other end you no longer hear the polite niceties and sweat utterances used by ladies in the past, only harsh barking and rough answers because it is no longer permissible for women to be nice and polite with men.

What is happening to us? Why are we becoming so obsessively uptight about gender relations? Why are we getting so anxious to hide and conceal our women, as if we were trying to deny that they ever exist?

If we look at old travel books and ethnographies on the parts of Arabia constituting what is now called Saudi Arabia (from H. R. P. Dickson to Alois Musil to C Snouck Hurgrornje) we find that in most areas, especially in the desert and in the southern region of Saudi Arabia bordering Yemen, women only partly cover their faces or do not cover them at all, especially married women, and they rarely wear the black cloak. It used to be a common sight to see men and women mingle together in the village market and engage in haggling and joking. A woman with a suckling baby meets no objection whatsoever to baring her breast to feed her hungry baby in public and in the presence of other men. On weddings and festive occasions when young girls don their best, it was considered accepted practice for young boys on such occasions to flirt with young girls and to steal a look, or even a kiss. Young girls were encouraged to exhibit their feminine charms. Women were supposed to appear and look and behave like women in their apparel, gestures, body language, and the way they walk and talk.

Values of honor, decency and decorum have always been upheld very highly and observed very strictly in Arabia. But such observance has never reached the point of turning into almost complete denial of any contact between the two sexes. Until quite recently, it was common among the nomads for young boys and young girls to graze their flocks together in the empty desert and no one suspected any foul play. Among farmers, men and women worked together in the fields and no one raised a brow. Nowadays Dr. Ghazi al-Qusaybi, minister of Labor in Saudi Arabia and Iyad Amin Madani, minister of Culture and Information are turned into targets of slanderous attacks by the fundamentalists only because the two ministers are trying to find respectable work outlets for unemployed women. The ministers are keen on finding suitable employment opportunities for women that do not violate neither the religious dogma nor the cultural codes of Saudi Arabia, yet the very fact that they entertained the idea of finding jobs for women outside the home and other than the raising of children and gratifying their husbands sexually was considered a blasphemy and a good reason for the fundamentalists to tarnish the reputation of the two ministers and to subject them to a severe and unfair campaign of character assassination. The sin committed by al-Qusaybi was that he wanted women to work as sales ladies in women cloth shops to sell women garments to other women, instead of men doing the sale. As for Madani, he wanted to employ Saudi women in Saudi TV to present programs related to women, children and the family.

Of course, not all women accept this demeaning status to which they have been reduced. Now and then one hears voices raised and complaints lodged, and we are hearing more and more of such voices lately. But the majority of women seem to go along either out of real conviction or out of fear or as a defense mechanism and a form of denial of the other alternative. I mean by that, and here I am only surmising, may be when women look at TV and see movie stars and singers and real beautiful women with their makeup, they might get the wrong impression that what they are seeing really represent all the women of the outside world. They may not even be aware that what they are seeing is not real at all and that it is heavily manicured and synthesized. Many women in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Region are not aware of or familiar with physical fitness, body makeup, and all the gadgets used by women to look beautiful, even if they are not. Not to mention that certain skin colors and body shapes and hairstyles are pushed by the media and advertising agencies as the standard of feminine beauty. The best defense mechanism against such onslaught is to reject it altogether and instead of working on your body you deny it completely and cover every bit of it. The problem becomes acute when the woman is reduced to merely a body to be enjoyed and not a mind to be appreciated and a human being to be respected.

The irony of it all is that the fundamentalists keep insisting that the oppression they practice on women and their imprisonment in the home is takreem for them, i. e. difference and honor. This is actually not as far-fetched as it sounds, since in traditional Arab culture, and most nomadic cultures and cultures with aristocratic outlook, work, especially manual labor, is considered demeaning and degrading. This is in conformity with the conservative and reactionary thinking of the fundamentalists.

Lust occupies a central place in the thinking of the fundamentalists. The greatest reward they expect to get in the hereafter for the “good work” of persecuting others in this world is unabated sexual drive and unlimited gratification by unlimited number of huris in paradise. A woman for the fundamentalists is but a body in which resides only lust and the devil. Therefore, when a man and a woman come together the only thing that could happen between the two of them is sex, no intellectual exchange, no professional association, no friendship, no human comradery or any common interests, only sex. al-ikhtilat, i. e. the mixing or coming together of a man and woman (or men and women) is the catch word for the fundamentalists these days. No man is allowed to be seen sitting or talking with another woman, not even in a public place such as restaurants and cafes, unless she is his first-degree relative. The fundamentalists could easily stop your car on the highway to make sure that the woman riding next to you is really your wife. You have to show them the marriage certificate. This is exactly what was happening in the old days of al-ikhwan of ibn Saud. But on those days there were no marriage certificates, so, to prove that the lady with you is your wife they asked you to kiss her, under the premise that you would not dare do it unless she is really your wife. Many illicit kisses were exchanged gratis between unwed couples in this way just to avoid the harassment of those stern ikhwan.

The social havoc caused by those fundamentalists is unbelievably grotesque. It verges on the surrealistic. We are entering the twenty first century, yet they want us to go back and live according to the norms and standards of the sixth century, the time of the prophet and his companions. They seem to confuse religion with culture and social customs. Even if we grant that religion is eternal and timeless, cultures do change. But they have a very static view of the world and a very comprehensive view of religion, which covers all aspects of life. They believe neither in change nor in diversity. The only truth for them is the revealed truth, which only they have the right to understand and interpret to others. They keep saying that Islam is suitable for every time and place, but instead of adapting their concept of Islam to different times and different places they only want to straitjacket every time and place to their extremely narrow understanding of Islam.