Category Archives: Women 100

GCC, Human Right, Middle East Women, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Women 100

Gulf of Taliban: Lawlessness and Misogyny in the UAE and Other Wild Places …………

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“The case of a woman who is facing deportation for reporting an attempted rape while being intoxicated in the United Arab Emirates highlights the ongoing struggle for women to have justice when faced with sexual violence in the ultra-wealthy Gulf country. According to reports, when the 26-year-old Kyrgyz woman arrived at a local police station following a taxi driver attempting to rape her, police officers told her she would face charges of drinking alcohol. Instead of acquiescing to the officers threats, she insisted on filing charges against the taxi driver for attempted rape………. “In November last year, two Saudi Arabian men were sentenced to two months in prison for “having sex with a minor” during a New Year’s holiday in the United Arab Emirates. According to local reports, both men were convicted of having consensual sex with a minor, despite the 15-year-old girl’s claims that she was forced to have sex with them in a hotel room. She is to be deported as part of her crime, court officials said……… In early October, two Pakistani men were charged with raping a Filipina waitress. Activists say they are unlikely to face harsh sentences and that the woman will be the one who faces the worst penalty………”

There are many other such cases in the UAE. Rape is reported routinely in the local newspapers. As are the “strange” Taliban-style sentences that focus on the female victims as guilty.
The treatment of victims as suspects is a purely local thing, but it is also common in other ‘nominally’ Muslim countries, like Pakistan and Afghanistan. Remember the Qatif girl in Saudi Arabia who was initially punished while her male rapists were barely touched about two years ago? Then there are many cases in Pakistan where women who dare file rape complaints (a rarity) are sentenced to stoning or life in prison for adultery. The guilty males are usually left alone. There was a case once when the woman filed a rape case while the rapist denied it. She was considered to have confessed to adultery (by filing a complaint) and sentenced for adultery, but not the man who denied the charge.
By some twisted local logic in the UAE, a woman who files a rape complaint is sometimes seen by some as exposing her “dirty” laundry. Then there is the local costume in the region of identifying certain single foreign women as being of “easy virtue” or even hookers. Especially if these single foreign women are from certain foreign (Asian) or Arab countries, like those mentioned in this item.  Anyway, this phenomenon is becoming common in the United Arab Emirates, especially in Abu Dhabi and ‘cosmopolitan’ Dubai.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Pakistan, Women 100

An Epidemic of Rape: American Women, Congolese Women, Afpak Women………….

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“An exhaustive government survey of rape and domestic violence released on Wednesday affirmed that sexual violence against women remains endemic in the United States and in some instances may be far more common than previously thought. Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported being beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report. “That almost one in five women have been raped in their lifetime is very striking and, I think, will be surprising to a lot of people,” said Linda C. Degutis, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducted the survey. “I don’t think we’ve really known that it was this prevalent…………”

Shocking statistics. Who would have thunk it. Most people think the things happen in places like the Congo or Pakistan or maybe parts of Sweden
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Culture, Human Right, Saudi Arabia, Women 100

PR Nation: Women to Vote? But for What? About Driving………..

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Saudi king Abdullah announced that Saudi women will be able to vote in 2015. That is interesting because I am not sure the king will be around at that time to see it happen, IF it happens. Even if he is still “there”, he may not be “there” altogether, if you get my drift. Nevertheless, ‘tribal liberals’ on my Gulf are cautiously hailing this “bestowal” as a sure sign of reform and progress.
He was talking about the toothless municipal councils not about any true elections. What this tells me is that the Saudis have changed their PR strategy. They have decided to follow the old Arab oligarch policy of pretending they are holding elections so that there will be less pressure on them from the outside. Potentates like Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, Bin Ali, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Omar al-Bashir, among others have tried that, as have the potentates of Bahrain and even the UAE (to a more limited extent). Like I said before, even dog-catchers are appointed.
Of course, women will still not be able to drive cars in 2015.
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Salafi, Terrorism, Women 100, WTF

Al-Shamikha of Al-Qaeda: Salafi Women Discover Victoria’s Secret………

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“The 31-page glossy, Al-Shamikha, which translates loosely as “The Majestic Woman”, features a niqab-clad woman posing with a sub-machine gun on its cover. Much like Elle or Cosmopolitan, it includes advice on finding the right man (“marrying a mujahideen”), how to achieve a perfect complexion (stay inside with your face covered), and provides tips on first aid and etiquette. Alongside sisterly advice such as “not [to] go out except when necessary” and to always wear a niqab for protection from the sun, the magazine runs interviews with martyr’s wives and praises those who give their lives in the name of the editors’ interpretation of Islam. “From martyrdom, the believer will gain security, safety and happiness,” it says. For those readers not quite ready for such a drastic step, it argues the pros and cons of honey facemasks and lobbies against “towelling too forcibly”.……”

Don’t knock it. Women are women (just as men are men). They probably have everything that others do, under that black Salafi tent. Victoria’s Secret included. (No, I probably draw the line at things like leather and S & M and bondage). I liked the part about “not [to] go out except when necessary”, I thought it means “go out” as in “going out”, a.k.a “dating”. For a moment there I thought I had missed a Salafi fatwa allowing “going out on dates” when necessary. I thought of all the poor saps al-Qaeda that were sent to certain death and mayhem with a promise of all those delayed pleasures in Paradise, how these frustrated young men went partly because they could not see all the beauty around them, all the Victoria’s Secrets hidden under the dark attire. The least the master terrorists could have done was send them out to do “God’s work” in couples, couples with matching “belts”. That would have been an explosive date, the date of a lifetime, going with a bang, the puns intended.
Dommage….
(al-Shamikha also means dignified or proud, which apparently applies only to Salafi women who cater to Salafi men).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Politics, Arabian Peninsula, Culture, Saudi Arabia, Women 100

Is the Saudi Women Drive-in Protest DOA?……….

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“On Facebook and Twitter, activists had launched a campaign calling on women in Saudi Arabia who hold international drivers’ licenses to get behind the wheel on Friday, June 17, and drive their cars to protest the country’s ban on women driving. Their call is a daring initiative. Women who have defied the ban in the past have lost their jobs, been banned from travel and denounced by members of the country’s powerful extremist religious establishment. The women say their planned move is not a protest nor an attempt to break the law, but rather a bid to claim basic rights as human beings……….”

That is where these women are wrong, when they say they are not trying to protest (or even break an arbitrary rule). Protest is a God-given right. Every one of us, man or woman, was born protesting, along with the proverbial slap on the behind. They are protesting, they are asserting their right to protest, as they should. Rather than pull back and try to water down their demands, they should expand them. Arab despots, like all despots, only understand the language of firmness. They can smell fear and hesitation. Think of Egypt, think of Tunisia.
(Nevertheless, I now suspect that this Saudi drive-in may fizzle, as much as the men’s protest in Riyadh last March did. Opponents are gaining voices on twitter. That expected drive-in may be DOA: dead on arrival).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Culture, Saudi Arabia, Women 100

Saudi Women, Saudi men: the Drive-in…..

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“One woman’s effort to end the ban on her gender being able to drive in Saudi Arabia is catching attention around the world. And on Morning Edition today, the editor of Jeddah’s Saudi News said that Manal al-Sharif’s campaign is gaining some traction in Saudi Arabia…….” NPR News

A Saudi woman was arrested yesterday, for the second time, for driving a vehicle. Saudi Arabia is the only country that bans females, that is ‘human’ females, from driving cars (I suspect women in Qandahar can’t drive either: so you get the picture). That is not the news. The real Saudi news is that Saudi women are organizing a drive-in, and it has a chance of success. If many women join.
Success is always a matter of how many come out to defy authority. Last March there was a campaign for protests in Saudi cities to call for freedom and reform. Only one man reportedly showed up in the capital Riyadh to publicly protest and he has not been since his arrest that day. Khaled al-Jehany is unlikely to be in a mood to protest again, if he is released. Defying authority has always been a taboo in Saudi Arabia: religious fatwas and the usual instruments of a police state have been effective in keeping people from defying the authority of the princes and their Wahhabi ulema (clergy) allies under Shaikh Al Al Shaikh.

It is the numbers, stupid. The more who heed the call for protest, the more chance of success. At some point there is enough of the people out (men, women, or otherwise) that the authority has to give in: that was the lesson of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya (almost), and Bahrain (almost). The numbers defy age-old fears. On their coming drive-in day, Saudi women may come out in huge numbers and drive. They may be able to achieve what the men have failed to do: defy authority and win. That is what authority fears: that it will be forced to relent through public protests, that is why they sent tanks into Bahrain. They want any “reform” to be bestowed by the ruler, not a right taken, wrested, by the people as it should be.
I am always for anyone or group that defies any authority anywhere in the Middle East (except the Salafis who always side with repressive and corrupt authority): from Rabat through Riyadh and onto Tehran.
 
(Go for it ladies: you may be the ones who finally break that wall of fear).
Cheers
mhg


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