Saudiwoman's Weblog

This is the English original version I wrote and was translated to German and published in the new print edition of Stern magazine no41/2011, out today, Thursday, 6th of October, pages 54-57.

In Saudi Arabia my gender decides whether or not I can enter certain ministries, what I can major in college and if I can name my own child.
My gender mandates that I cannot drive my own car. No matter what age I am or how well I drive, I have to find a male to drive my car.
If I were divorced, a widow or simply had a husband that was out of the country at the time, my gender dictates that I have to find a male relative to obtain a birth certificate and document my child’s name at government circles.
My gender also mandates whether I can freely leave the country or not. As a woman, if I need to travel, I am at the mercy of my father and husband. At the airport I am stopped and required to show an official yellow card from the Saudi Interior Ministry that states that my husband has granted me permission to travel. If I fail to provide it, then I’m escorted out of the airport and told to go home and convince my husband.
My husband can legally divorce me without reason, without my presence and without my knowledge.
In public schools, from the age of twelve, girls are forced to cover their faces completely with not even a slit for their eyes as they enter and leave the strictly girls only schools.
All restaurants cannot allow women in unless they have a separate entrance and area for them to sit in.

All of these rules are not only socially or culturally enforced but legally as well. So that no matter how much our society may move forward and general awareness is raised, the laws pull us back. This legal and governmental factor makes it extremely difficult for forward thinking women to demand change. If I drive my car as a woman, I am not only breaking a social taboo but also entering into a discussion of whether or not I’m breaking the law and challenging the government. This is what has led to the nine-day imprisonment of Manal Al Sharif. One of the accusations presented against her by government officials is driving a car while female within a city and inciting other women to do the same. Just last week another Saudi woman was sentenced to ten lashes for driving a car in a city. The king soon pardoned her, but it remains a fact that a judge can do that.
A member of the highest Islamic council, Sheikh Al Manea, reasons that it is justified to sentence a woman to physical punishment or imprisonment for driving a car, not because she drove the car per se but because she broke the law. These types of arguments are what makes it particularly difficult for the women rights movement in Saudi Arabia. The argument that you are not only breaking a social, cultural or even religious taboo but also going against the government and legal system can be a powerful deterrent to Saudi women who need to speak up for their rights.
A few months ago, the aforementioned Manal Al Sharif, spearheaded a movement to get Saudis used to the idea of a woman behind the steering wheel. July 17th was set as the day when Saudi women would start to drive themselves to work or school rather than rely on a male driver. The purpose was that from that day and onwards more and more women would slowly gain the courage to drive. At the same time Saudi society in general would gradually get used to the sight of women driving. Unfortunately that was not how it worked out. A couple of weeks before July 17th, Manal Al Sharif was arrested.
On the day itself there was a heavy police presence on all the main streets. Despite these obstacles, a few brave women drove their cars. I was fortunate enough to be able to be a part of it, even though Ive never learned to drive. I got into the car with another Saudi woman, Azza Al Shmasi. As I videotaped, she drove for 15 minutes close to a main street in Riyadh. When I got home I excitedly shared the video with my followers on Twitter, as did all the women who drove that day. Then for the next few weeks, more and more women drove and uploaded videos. It seemed as though we were making progress.
Unfortunately our progress was severely halted when several of the women who took part started receiving phone calls from the interior ministry and getting trial dates. I started receiving calls from the investigation unit at the Interior Ministry about a month after the last time I got into the car with Azza. In the beginning it seems as if they had made the assumption that my husband does not support me in my fight for women rights. They asked to speak to him, as though they did not have his full details right there in my file. This tactic of threatening women with informing their male guardians might have worked decades ago but Saudi society has evolved past that. The overwhelming majority of women who went out to drive have the full support of their immediate families. After two weeks of these harassing phone calls, my husband was called to the ministry. He refused to sign the pledge that he would make sure that I would not drive or upload videos of driving. The phone calls stopped. However, another Saudi woman, Najla Hariri has not been as fortunate. After her phone calls and visit to the interior ministry, she is currently awaiting a trial.
Here we were, fighting for the simple and basic right to drive our own cars. So we were surprised when King Abdullah surpassed all these rights that we had been fighting for and granted women not only the vote but also the right to be nominated as candidates in the 2015 municipal elections. The king also announced that women would be included in his appointed parliament. These changes are huge breakthroughs in the fight for womens rights, however they remain far in the future and have no effect on the day to day life of Saudi women today. They have however enraged many of our sheikhs. One such sheikh is Shiekh Allehiedan, another member of the Saudi highest Islamic council. He came out on TV to state that the king had not consulted with him before these announcements and that he is more protective of the country and its Sharia constitution than the king himself. Other extreme conservatives have also made a point of stating their unhappiness with these announcements. A worrying but unsurprising development; the extreme conservative have had a hold on the country from its very beginning. A partnership between the government and the mosque that is gradually growing sour because of the failure of both in reining in the peoples demands for their freedom and rights.

Many people fail to realize how relatively new Saudi Arabia is. It was not declared a country until 1932, so it is only about 80 years old. It is about 5 times the size of Germany. Our first king, King Abdulaziz, managed to unify this vast desert land despite the different cultures and even religious Islamic sects of its people. Then with the discovery of oil, led our dispersed people into building one of the more prosperous countries of the world.
Unlike the majority of our neighbors we were not colonized so we did not have a western law system imposed upon us. We had to start with the tools we had at the time; Arab tribal law and religion. Starting as we did from square one in the modern world makes for some interesting challenges. Condensing hundreds of years of evolvement of national law, civilian rights and freedom in a few decades. From that perspective, it is not hard to understand how we have come to have all these modern amenities and yet live a lifestyle that is reminiscent of medieval times.
As a Saudi woman, I understand all this. I also understand how exotic Saudi women are to the rest of the world. Our abayas and culture are a more subtle form of the same exoticism of the Padaung tribe where women wore neck bracelets that made them look giraffe necked. Despite how uncomfortable it looked and how much it affected their lives, it seemed to outsiders as though they were proud of their heritage and wanted to maintain it by passing it on to future generations. However when human rights organizations dug beneath the surface they found that it was face, politics and economics that were forcing this tradition on women who wanted better for themselves and their daughters.
Although we don’t wear our niqabs because we need to draw tourists, we still have in common with these Burmese women that a combination of face, politics and economics have constricted our freedom and put many unnecessary obstacles in the path of our happiness. Arab traditions and culture have dictated the most extreme governmentally enforced environment of gender discrimination. So much so that these factors have resulted in the creation of the only gender apartheid in todays world.
As a Saudi woman, I understand all this, yet; somehow it does not alleviate my frustration at how my country’s history has such an impact on my day-to-day life.

What’s it like being a Saudi woman? A common question I’ve come to expect from outsiders – even fellow Arabs. The restrictiveness of the guardianship system, gender segregation and a persistently sexist culture add up to create an exotic and mysterious lifestyle that is difficult to not only explain but also to comprehend. READ ON

Every accusation imaginable has been thrown at Saudi women who spoke up for their right to drive their own cars. Sheikhs and ultra conservatives have created this intricate conspiracy theory on how this whole demand is a well-planned Iranian/Shia plight to bring down the government by corrupting it’s women. Others have claimed that it is a Western conspiracy because somehow the Christian/Jewish West know deep down that Islam is the right path but they need to corrupt Muslim women through using their own women as an example. According to their logic, somehow women driving cars will lead to the fall of Islam. Confusing, I know, but nevertheless quite emotional and effective when presented in a religious context of salvation and preserving our faith and morals in an evil world. Another issue that they have is a “gotcha” argument where they say if women really wanted to drive for the good of the country and independence then they would first have to prove it by giving up their maids. As if maids were a requirement and by law, Saudi women are banned from doing their own housework as they are from driving their cars?! Choice and freedom are two words that are not in the opposition’s vocabulary.

That was all expected, it’s the same rhetoric that is employed by the extreme right in opposing anything they don’t like. However what was surprising is that quite a few Saudis who are progressive and some activists as well are against the women driving campaign. Some have taken it as a matter of pride, that the women joining the campaign are exposing the country to international ridicule. Some are cynical about why Western media has given this issue so much attention. They say it’s just an oriental stereotype that these outlets are abusing for their own amusement. Such a clear black and white case of gender discrimination in the 21^st century is really not worthy of anyone’s attention. And that a government would arrest women simply for driving a car is a “stereotype” and not actual incidents happening nationwide. Then they question why western media doesn’t consult Saudis on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict or why they don’t cover this or that.

They also are upset at Saudi women who have had to resort to Western media to present their case, instead of being upset at local media for not giving these women a platform. The day after June 17, our newspapers completely ignored the issue except for one report in one paper, Okaz, where the traffic police denied that there were any cases of women driving. This was despite the fact that traffic police issued a ticket to a woman, Maha Al Qahtani, for driving without a Saudi license on the very same day they claimed that there were no women drivers.

These same progressives and activists claim that the women driving their cars are going about it the wrong way and that they should go through official channels. It has obviously slipped their minds that Wajeha Al Huwaider and Ebtihal Mubarak  had delivered a petition to the Royal Court to lift the ban signed by over 3000 Saudis. They also must have forgotten when Dr. Mohmammed  Zalfa during his time on the Shura Council (closest thing to parliament in Saudi) presented a proposal to lift the ban in 2006 and received a huge social and professional backlash in return. Also Abdullah Al Alami, a journalist and activist has been trying for the past year to get the Shura Council to revisit the issue with no success. It’s very obvious that the official track is pretty worn out. Although we have still not lost hope and are persevering in its pursuit.

One example of such progressives is Tareq Al Homayed, who claimed in an article published on June 27 and translated to English the next day is that the Western media is out of touch.  And that they have been following misinformed social media hype. He claims that the women who drove on June 17^th and after are fewer than those who protested the ban in 1990. When actually the 1990 protest was only fourteen cars that had 47 passengers, while from June 17^th and onwards there have been about seventy documented cases of women driving. He also claimed that this issue was politicized by the campaign when in actuality the politicization of this basic right was by the extreme right with their accusations from decades ago until today that this is a foreign conspiracy and that women who call for this right are traitors. Finally he claims that the low number of women driving is a reflection of the campaign’s low priority for Saudi women. As if he wasn’t Saudi and does not understand how paralyzed with fear people are here when it comes to any form of public demonstrations.  For example we have thousands of political prisoners who are in prison indefinitely and without trial and yet at its height of the protest only 200 of their loved ones stood in front of the interior ministry to demand their release.

In an interview on a weekly discussion show, Suad Al Shammari, a leading Saudi women rights activist presented the following statistics: only 45000 Saudi women have licenses which they can only acquire from abroad, 40% of cars purchased in Saudi are purchased by women and that there are currently over a million and two hundred thousand foreign men brought into this country for the sole purpose of driving our cars instead of the women owners. FYI the Saudi population is 27,140,000 a third of which are foreign workers.

You would think that it’s a reflection of our wealth while in reality, 70% of Saudi do not have the financial resources to buy their own homes. The unemployment rate for women is over 28%, the majority of those unemployed women have graduate degrees. The unemployment rate for men too is high with two million registering for unemployment benefits.  So essentially many of these foreign drivers are here only due to the ban rather than the “luxurious Saudi lifestyle”.

The low number of women driving their cars is not due to the low number of women who care. The overwhelming majority of women do not know how to drive since Saudi driving schools ban women students and just practicing with your father or brother might end up with both of you with a criminal record. The low number is also because Saudi society shames women who publicly speak out against anything. As one Saudi woman who desperately needs to drive told me: “I will put up with importing a driver and a salary I can’t afford to pay, because otherwise my family would estrange me and people would drag my name in the mud.”

Recommended Reading:

The veil behind the wheel: Reuters report on being in the car with a woman activist who happens to be of a conservative Bedouin background.

An Arabic statement released today by Shiekh Abdullah Al Mutlaq, a member of the highest religious council in Saudi Arabia where he states that women driving is allowed in Islam however he likens it to allowing weapon trade which is also allowed in Islam but would have dangerous consequences on the security of the country and safety of society.

Another member of the highest religious council, Shiekh Qays Al Mubarak, surprisingly is being quite outspoken in this Arabic piece in the call for lifting the ban on women driving.

On 11 March, when Saudi protesters’ “day of rage” did not materialise, Fouad al-Farhan, a human rights activist, tweeted:

“My fear is that the ceiling of our reformist demands will be lowered to women driving for some and combating westernisation for others.”

Two months later, his fears became a reality. A campaign to allow women to drive in Saudi Arabia was started on Facebook. Currently this issue has overtaken all others online, in the press and on the ground. read more…

Recommended:

CBC Radio interview with one of the first women to drive in this campaign, Najla Harriri, and Saudi journalist and activist, Ebtihal Mubarak. I’m also on there too.

A comprehensive historical look at the campaign that goes back over twenty years ago by Ebtihal Mubarak in Foreign Policy.

The world’s shortest conference on Islam ever: Listen to 60 speakers in 60 seconds each as they predict “The Future of Islam In the Age of New Media”. Amir Ahmed, a digital media and marketing consultant, is the man behind the project. Click on the logo below to listen to the program and receive an MP3 version via Email. My contribution is the second one, right after Reza Aslan.

Manal Al Sherif, according to first reports of her sentence, was supposed to be released today. The local media has taken an official stance on Manal’s case. While columnists in these very same schizophrenic newspapers have taken the opposite position by supporting Manal and advocating lifting the ban on women driving. In one estimate, there were over 60 columns supporting Manal on Tuesday and Wednesday. Meanwhile the official stance is that Manal has confessed and repented. The story goes that Manal has broken down sobbingly and said that she was mislead and misinformed by a group of Saudi women, some of whom are in the USA to go ahead with the campaign and driving video. It’s also claimed that she requested that they be brought in for questioning too. Her support campaign and personal friends have denied all this and insist that Manal remains strong. Manal’s lawyer has not denied or confirmed either reports but he did make the following statement:

My client reserves her right in not making any comment at the moment and will take legal steps against any information that goes against reporting ethics and professionalism. He added: What concerns me as a lawyer is to raise the humanitarian sense in dealing with the case until my client is able to return home. “

The latest news is that Sabq, a local news organization claims that it has insider information that Manal’s prison sentence has been extended ten day, starting from Thursday 26^th, May.

The ultra-conservatives have come out in full force against Manal. Sheikh Nasser Al Omer gave a sermon on the matter of women driving. At the beginning of the video he claims that he read in an American newspaper about an American expert who says that the USA is drawing up plans to occupy Saudi oil fields, and that the Iranian TV channels are also making threats. So that raising the issue of women driving is not about rights or whether or not it’s prohibited by Islam; it is a conspiracy against the country, started by Shia who are supported by liberals, secularists, Jews and the West. His argument is that the women driving issue always gets heated when the country is under threat, referring back to the 1990 women driving protest during the Gulf war and now.

Then you have Sheikh Monjed who is originally Syrian describe Manal as a sinful, conspiring and malicious hypocrite and those who support her as evil, infidels, and licentious, conspiring, immoral people who only follow their desires and whims. His words were so harsh and heavy on the accusations that there was a backlash and the next day he issued a statement where he does not apologize but at least shows some remorse. He insists that June 17th was not chosen randomly. That the campaign date is evidence of a Shia conspiracy because it falls on the Hijri date 15th of Rajab which he claims is a Shia holiday or has religious implications for Shia, very Dan Brown, Islamic version.

There are many more but the above had the biggest impact including another Shiekh, Dr. Ghazi Al Shamari, calling on the authorities to publicly lash Manal in a women-only mall. He also backtracked the next day by saying that since Manal has apologized we should show her mercy and forgive her.

On the other hand, you have sheikhs who have come out in support of Manal and lifting the driving ban. Shiekh Dr. Eissa Al Ghaith, a judge, posted an article on his Facebook page in support of women driving. Sheikh Dr. Mohammed Al Ahmari was very outspoken in his support for Manal and lifting the ban on driving. And in the recent past you had several sheikhs including the highly respected Albani who laughed at the suggestion that women driving should be prohibited in Islam. Sheikh Ahmed Bin Baz also supports women driving and says that his father’s original decree banning it is no longer relevant.

Many members of the Royal family also support lifting the ban. King Abdullah in a 2005 interview with Barbra Walters said that it was only a matter of time and that Saudi women have to be patient. His daughter Princess Adelah stated to the press that she hopes that the ban will be lifted. Princess Loloah, daughter of the great King Faisal told France 24 that she would like to see the ban lifted.

Despite all this support for lifting the ban, the Deputy Interior Minister Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz issued a statement this morning:

“Any claims may be received from any party, regardless of them being right or wrong .. but women driving cars in Saudi Arabia has already been decided on in 1411 to not allow women driving. This for us, the Ministry of the Interior, continues to stand.” He added: “Our mission is to implement the system, but whether this action is right or wrong is not for us to say.”

However award winning human rights lawyer Abdulrahmin Allahim see things differently. He wrote a very careful and studied analysis that shows that the 1411 Hijri (1990 Gregorian) law is cancelled because first of all, a year after the 1411 law the Kingdom issued the Principle Governmental System which abrogates all that came before it. Another point is that Saudi signed the international Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women  agreement, CEDAW,  in 2000. And since driving is not Islamically prohibited as an act for men nor for women, the ban goes against the agreement.

Human rights activist, Waleed Abu Alkhair has gathered over 1300 signatures from Saudi citizens, stating their full names and occupation, and the list is still growing. The plan is to deliver the petition to the Saudi Royal Court. Abualkhair, referring to the excuse that Saudi men are uncontrollable wolves tweeted:

And it has become clear that our society is not as bad as is portrayed to the outside world. A woman has driven and no one has harmed her except the politicians.

Writer, Khalaf Al Harbi, also took up this argument and tore it apart in a piece that was so good that Arab News translated it.

I want to end this post by noting who Manal is. Manal comes from the tribe that is known as the descendents of the Prophet (PBUH), so no one can say that she is an immigrant or an outsider trying to force her culture on us. Lineage aside, Manal is a woman that our country should be proud of. She is one of the first women in the world to be a Certified Ethical Hacker–EC-Council CISSP–(ISC)² Certified ISO 27001 Implementer and Lead Auditor -BSI & ISO. She is an IT security consultant at the biggest oil company in Saudi, ARAMCO. Here is a link to an interview she did in 2007 on MBC. This is an intelligent capable woman asking for something that should have been a given; driving her own car. Shame on her for speaking out for her right. Shame on her for not putting up with 38,000 SAR (10,000$) annual tax for being a woman in Saudi. Shame on her for standing up for women much less fortunate then her, when she easily could have been quiet in her high-paying job and comfortable compound. Shame on her for being a courageous patriotic woman.

According to Sabq, a local news organization, Manal Al Sherif has been sentenced to five days in prison. She has been charged with bypassing rules and regulations, driving a car within the city, enabling a journalist to interview her while driving  a car, deliberately disseminating the incident to the media,  incitement of Saudi women to drive cars, and turning public opinion against the regulations. As of writing this, this outcome has not been confirmed by her lawyer or her support campaign. Also Manal’s Twitter account was duplicated. (links to original and fake) Someone pretending to be her tweeted that she has repented once she realized that the call to lift the ban is an Iranian and atheist conspiracy that will lead society to moral decadence.

Update:

Human rights activist, Waleed Abu Alkhair, has prepared a letter and petitionto be sent to King Abdullah. Within hours of posting the letter, it has gotten over three hundred signatures from Saudi citizens and the list is still growing. This a translation of the letter originally translated by Rafah:

To the Custodian of the two holy mosques Peace be upon you We the children of this country have been very hurt by the news of the arrest of your citizen Manal Masoud Al Sharif on Saturday 22//5/2011 on the grounds of her driving her car in the streets of Khobar in the company of her brother. And while we were relieved at her release in the evening, we were shocked by her detention again at dawn in a very humiliating way for both our country and its people, since she was asked to sign a warrant and was instead tricked and arrested against her will, Manal is at Dammam’s Correctional to this very moment.

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,

you have stated in 2007 to the Russian News Network that the issue of Women Driving is a social one and that the state was to facilitate the suitable environment for any decision that the society deems appropriate. The Minister of Interior have also stated that the issue is a social one and not religious, which theoretically means that if the society wants to lift the ban then there should be no obstacles. The same thing was repeated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs: that the decision for women to drive the car is up to her family. Abdullah Al Munee’a, a member of the Higher Council of Ulama, have said that there is no objection from the religious point of view for women to drive. In addition, article 38 of the Basic Law states: there should be no personal or criminal punishment that is not based on a religious or official decree; and since the issue of women’d driving is not a violation of any official law or any religious law, then women should not be arrested for driving their cars based on article 36 that prohibits the baseless restriction on actions and arrest.

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,

we call on you to release your daughter and citizen Manal Al Sharif immediately and lift the injustice that have been placed on her, since she drove her car with her brother’s company and consent, and she has a recognized driving license in accordance with the Traffic law as outlined by article 2 section 34 of the law. We also believe that the time has come to resolve the issue of women’s driving for once and for all in a clear manner. To say that its a social issue and is not prohibited by religion, and then for women to get arrested is completely unjust and it leaves us trapped in a vicious circle. We are in desperate need for a clear law that either prohibits or allows women to drive.

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,

you have said your famous saying that women are your wife, mother and daughter. Your daughter Manal Al Sharif is in jail for no crime that she committed. Will you remove this injustice? We all hope for the prompt freedom of Manal.

May God Bless You and Look after You..

[The signatories]

A couple of weeks back an event page was created on Facebook calling on women to drive their cars on June 17^th. The page was started by a group of individuals, one of whom was Manal Al Sharif. As news of the page got around, it caused a lot of controversy and more Facebook pages. The pages that were created are reflective of the different types of reaction such a call has caused in Saudis. One of the pages is a campaign for Saudi to whip women who drive on June 17^th and another is simply an anti women driving campaign page. The former has over 1900 supporters and the latter has 2800 supporters. On top of that we have a sheikh Dr. Al Habdan who has made it his personal mission to make sure no woman drives in Saudi. He has called on the PVPV to stop these “rebellious women”.  Many of those opposing women driving claim that it is a Zionist/Western/ Iranian/Shia conspiracy to disrupt Saudi society and corrupt the morals and honor of Saudi women. Also that any woman that speaks out for lifting the ban is not a pure Saudi but rather a woman who is nontribal or an immigrant. Because according to them no pure Saudi woman wants to drive.

So this is what Manal Al Sharif was up against and yet she courageously kept on going. Here is Manal on CNN.  She later posted a video with instruction on how to participate in the June 17^th movement :

1- There will be no gathering or demonstrations. Each woman that wants to participate should just get in her car and go about her daily business without the driver.

2- Only women who have valid driving licenses from other countries are to drive.

3- That there are volunteers who will teach other women to drive until the government sets up an official system for women to obtain local driving licenses

4- Everyone should drive with their safety belts on and drive carefully.

5- Women who drive are encouraged to videotape it and upload it to Youtube.

Then she addresses Saudi men. She thanks those that support the cause. For those Saudi men who oppose it, she calls on their famous Arab chivalry and graciousness to not stand in the way of women. She tells them that there is no threat in a woman driving. She asks them if they are happy about the current situation where women are forced to be at the mercy of unreliable drivers or stand on the pavement in the hot sun waiting for a taxi. Manal told them this is your opportunity to show the world how you are capable of respecting women and being civil.

Most importantly Manal points out that the traffic laws say nothing about the gender of the driver. And that King Abdullah, Prince Naif and Prince Sultan all have issued statement where they said that women driving is not a governmental issue but rather a cultural and societal one.

Brave Manal later wanted it to take it a step further and actually went out driving and posted the video on May 19^th. The video is of her driving a car in the Eastern Region with Wajeha Al Huwaider in the passenger seat. They spoke about how AlRiyadh newspaper had a piece that morning on how a woman saved her brother by driving his car when he had an epileptic fit in the driver’s seat.

Anyhow the next day when she drove a car again this is what happened according to an interview just published by Alhayat newspaper:

Mamal spoke to the newspaper via telephone from her place of detention:, she had been stopped from five in the afternoon until seven o’clock in the evening, and then contact with the newspaper was lost. She had reported that she was driving along with her brother and his wife and their children. They were stopped by traffic police who had seen that she was holding the steering wheel. She said: «He asked me if I was a foreigner, and when I replied no, he asked for the car registration. So I gave him my license and my brother’s license with the car registration. He asked: “Don’t you know the country’s system? I asked him if there is any reason to ban me as a woman from driving my  own car». She added: «I told him: There is no law that prevents women from driving a car».

She said: «The traffic police called the PVPV, who asked us to ride with them in their car, but I refused, because what I’ve done does not fall under their jurisdiction, and the fact that driving is not a moral crime within the authority of the Commission». She said: «After an hour the traffic police allowed my brother’s wife and children to leave». She noted that the two men from the PVPV demanded that she and her brother get in their car so that they can take then to the traffic police station.
Al Hayat Newspaper also reported that the spokesman for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice,  Mohsen M. Al Qafari, stated that the issue will be resolved through other governmental entities and that their presence in these cases is only for support, but not essential».

Some of the interesting reactions on Twitter while and after Manal was detained:

Thamer Al Marzouki referring to when he went himself to support Manal as soon as news of her detention broke:

I was told at the crime investigation center that she had been transferred to traffic, and there I met Khuloud Al Fahad and Haifa Khaled who both refused to stay silent and said: No, Manal is our countrywoman and we will stand by her.

Kholoud Al Fahad tweeted:

Manal related how humiliatingly the PVPV treated her, and they were degrading to us too as we waited outside. They treated us as if we were an abomination of Satan.

Manal was later released that night.  However as I’m writing this at 2:15 am, her campaign’s Twitter account reports that she is being taken away by two women prison officer escorted by police.

During the time I was away, among other things, I took a little trip to Holland. While I was there I paid a visit to Anne Frank’s house. Anne was a German Jewish teenager at the time of the Holocaust. Her family left Germany and hid in the upper levels of a house in Amsterdam for two years. Her family was betrayed and she died at the age of fifteen in a concentration camp after witnessing her only sister die.

Anne wrote a diary during the time she was in hiding with her family in Amsterdam, originally for herself but later to document what it was like for a Jewish person during World War Two.  I have always felt for people who suffered in the Holocaust and it’s not difficult to understand the motivation behind the creation of the State of Israel, coming from such a terrible and tragic history. Anne Frank however humanized it even more for me.  But how I feel doesn’t really matter in this equation. What matters today is how the Holocaust is used to persecute Palestinians. No matter how terrible the Holocaust was, it remains a “was” while Palestinian suffering is an “is”. What Anne Frank did by wanting her diary published is give a face to history, if only there was a way to give a face to what’s going on right now.

Ground Zero is not where the World Trade Center stood in New York, the real Ground Zero, the place where West and East clash and the origin and motivation of all misunderstandings between us is the Palestinian/Israeli  conflict. This is why Arabs radicalize, it is why they hate not only Israelis but also Americans. One of the world’s strongest armies occupying an Arab country since 1948 and backed by the world’s strongest nation both financially and politically. Their only argument for their atrocities is that God promised us this land. What would you do if someone came and kicked you out of your home, off your land and even denied your very existence because “God told him to”? What Arab people have done is to radicalize in return. It is very likely that I could be sitting here today in a much more free and open Saudi Arabia, if the West had not dehumized Arabs and given away their lands as compensation to Holocaust survivors.  See, it’s difficult to convince a muttawa that the infidels don’t hate us and aren’t out to get us when they show you in return photos of Palestinian refugee camps, exterminated villages and towns, going from black and white photos up to the latest photos from Gaza.

I digress but it’s hard not to when you’re writing about something you feel so passionately about. Anne Frank touched me deeply and I wanted to get an Arabic translation of her diary so that I could share it with other Saudis. I was discouraged when I went into the museum and found that even Japanese was included as a translation option but not Arabic, a language spoken in over 26 countries. When I got to the gift shop, the only Arabic version of Anne’s diary had poor quality print and no photos. It’s important that we see where both of us are coming from so that we can move forward. Right now to young Arabs, Israelis are not descendents of Holocaust survivors but a genocidal, racist and occupying army. And I bet to young Israelis, Palestinians are not the natives of the lands they’ve taken but irrational fundamentalist terrorists. Khaled Mahameed, a Palestinian from Nazareth is trying to change that by educating Palestinians about the Holocaust and educating Israelis about Palestinian suffering. Here you can watch him at work.

Although the difficulties of being a Saudi woman seem like heaven compared to being a Jewish woman in Nazi Germany, I couldn’t help but understand a little bit about how it must have been like when I saw the star that they had to wear to mark them as Jews and this quote from Anne’s diary that was highlighted by the museum:

“Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees. Jews were required to wear a yellow star. Jews were required to turn in their bicycles. Jews were forbidden to use trams. Jews were forbidden to use swimming pools, tennis courts, hockey fields or any other athletic fields. Jews were forbidden to visit Christians in their homes. Jews were required to attend Jewish schools. You couldn’t do this and you couldn’t do that.”  June 20, 1942

Social media has been credited (and blamed) for many things. However the best thing that social media has done is enable us to realize our common humanity. Instead of being some silent burqa clad woman on your TV screen, I’m now talking to you directly.  And from the heart of the most conservative Islamic region in the world, I’m telling you that we can’t move forward towards global peace until the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is resolved.

Anne’s father and the only surviving member of her family:

“We cannot change what happened anymore. The only thing we can do is to learn from the past and to realize what discrimination and persecution of innocent people means. I believe that it’s everyone’s responsibility to fight prejudice.” Otto Frank, 1970

Recommended reading and viewing:

BBC Documentary:  Louis Theroux: The Ultra Zionists

NYT news report: Israel Clashes With Protesters on Four Borders By Ethan Bronner Published: May 15, 2011

and a reply to it: The New York Times‘s shameless Nakba distortion by Matthew Taylor on MAY 15, 2011

Opinion piece by Roger Cohen: The Post-Bin Laden World

I’m busy with some off-line stuff but will be back soon.