August 25, 2009 · 9:59 pm

Punishment in Saudi Arabia

We’ve all heard or read about the strict laws and forms of punishment in Saudi Arabia. The most notorious of which is cutting off the hands of thieves. But many people don’t dig deep enough to know that a thief has to steal a substantial amount to get that punishment. No one gets their hand cut for petty theft, but when you have a gang who goes around robbing houses, then that punishment comes onto the table. In all my years here, I’ve only heard about it happening once. A friend of mine had their apartment robbed. Jewelry, TVs, computers and everything of value was taken. Eventually the robber was caught and my friend’s father was asked if he would forgive the robber or not. His refusal to forgive him contributed to the judge’s decision to have the thief’s hand cut off. I don’t know the details such as whether or not the thief had a previous history of stealing. I do know that this type of punishment does not happen often. Another instance is one time my husband and I met a real estate agent to show us a house we were interested in. This guy was a young apparently healthy Saudi guy and one of his hands was cut right at the wrist. Both my husband and I did not say anything so I don’t know if it was cut off as punishment or due to an accident or illness but I bet lots of people wonder when they meet him.

The punishments that are most newsworthy when it comes to Saudi Arabia, are the ones given to people guilty of khilwa (unrelated man and woman alone together) and extramarital sex. A punishment for khilwa is common and we’ve all come across muttawas trolling coffee shops and restaurants searching for pairs who seem too happy to be related. But what happens after they are caught? I don’t know about expatriates but with Saudis, the man and woman are separated at the spot and questioned to see if their stories correspond. Questions like name, relatives’ names and even color of furniture, address, employment and all other things married couples naturally know. If they fail the test or refuse to cooperate, they are taken to the local muttawa center. The girl’s father is summoned and the guy is locked up usually after being given a few slaps and punches. The girl is handed over to her father (if he’ll take her) and the guy is later released after they put his information into the system. He is then required to show up in front of a judge, usually two weeks later to take his sentence. How he appears at the sentencing decides his fate more than anything else. The way he dresses and addresses the judge has more influence than the number of times he has been caught, how and where he was caught…etc. His best bet is to dress like a muttawa, start to grow a beard, hold his head down and look remorseful. He should also tell the judge that since the incident, he has become a born again Muslim. If he could get an established muttawa from a mosque to vouch for him, then he might be lucky enough to be let go with a warning. Otherwise he will most likely be sentenced a number of lashes across the back.

Extramarital sex on the other hand is extremely serious and at the same time very hard to get convicted for. In the Holy Quran, it states that four witnesses to the act have to be found for it to be punishable. Here, unless a person has confessed or made a tape it’s unlikely to be considered as extramarital sex. Even if an unrelated couple checks into a hotel together, they will only be convicted of khilwa. In cases where a confession is made, then other things come into play, such as was it consensual or rape and whether either of them was married at the time. Infidelity is an automatic death sentence. Singles are imprisoned and whipped.

Young Saudis have their ways to get around these laws. One that I heard of is that they go in groups. Another is that the guy takes his sister along and voila it is no longer a khilwa.  

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August 22, 2009 · 4:06 am

Ramadan Kareem

Ramadan in the Middle East is something that I will always be thankful for; a whole month when everyone everywhere slows down and reflects. All healthy adults fast from food, drink, sex and actively strive to be kinder, more generous and calmer from sunrise to sunset. For financially able adults who cannot physically fast due to health related reasons, they have to feed one poor person each day of the month.

In Saudi Arabia, it’s all about giving. Tents are pitched every few blocks and anyone can come in for a meal at sunset. Charities give out enormous amounts of food and clothing supplies. And on the last day of Ramadan, literally tons of bags of uncooked rice are handed out to the poor.

Within households, Ramadan has its own unique atmosphere. Special Ramadan recipes are prepared. Neighbors exchange dishes just before sunset. And people throw Ramadan themed parties where all the kids get to dress in Saudi traditional clothes and collect little bags of toys and candy.  

The whole daily schedule is turned upside down. Work hours are changed with the majority of employers only requiring a maximum of six hour workdays. And then there’s the shopping and build up towards Eid. If you want to avoid the crowds, do not go shopping from 9 pm to 2 am. But if you really want to see the natives in action, that’s the time to hit the malls.  

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August 21, 2009 · 2:35 am

Tell it like it is.

Two articles that I’ve come across are an excellent read if you are interested in Saudi Arabia. The first was written by Wajeha Al Huwaider on the abuse of Saudi women rights and the second is on the CNN website about what motivates Muslim terrorists. Finally journalists are starting to get it right about the recruitment of youth into “the holy war against infidels”. I wish though that they had put more emphasis on the Palestinian/Israel conflict. What makes youth turn against the outside world rather than facing their own governments and life conditions are the great injustices by Israel against Palestinians. They can’t demand such luxuries as democracy and government accountability when Palestinians are raped of their land and basic human rights. The latter is just a greater cause.

Once Palestinians are happy with their own country, these recruitments will go extremely down. And our youth will be able to look inward for a cause within their own borders.   

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August 20, 2009 · 2:12 am

They always have been winning and probably always will…

If you read anything related to Saudi Arabia or have a conversation with someone living there, inevitably this remark comes up”but change is coming soon”. Well from my perspective, it’s just not true. Short of an outright war or a western invasion, women will never get their rights. I remember a Bahraini friend of mine telling me how her grandfather respected her grandmother because he was influenced by the British. Sometimes the thought that we would actually be better off if we were colonized in the late 1800s and early 1900s like our neighbors creeps into my head.

The muttawa way of life, in which everything that brings a smile to your face is HARAM (prohibited), is integrated into the very heart of our society. Music, plays, festivals even when they are segregated are strongly discouraged. And the prohibition is only related to doing it in public. It is a fact that most Saudis do not practice what they preach. Get on any plane leaving the country and witness it for yourself. Abayas come off and men and women become much more relaxed. Women are pressured and brain-washed into living the way they do. But why do men live the way they do, when for many it is obvious that they would rather be more relaxed with their families and have their wives drive their own cars…etc.

International tourism was not affected by H1N1 or the economy in Saudi Arabia. Strangely enough, more and more Saudis are leaving the country each year for a vacation. I know one woman who actually took a loan from the bank just to treat herself and her family to a trip to France. Another woman in her sixties, never had a passport until two years ago and ever since all she talks about is where she’s going and where she’s been for the summer. Just a week ago, there was no traffic in Riyadh! And I could get an appointment at my favourite hairdresser on the same day! Usually it takes at least two weeks advance planning. Everyone was outside the country.

And then they come back to another year-long round of pretending that they agree that everything should be prohibited. I think that what goes through their heads is something in the vein of “well I can handle all this freedom because I’m a responsible person but my fellow citizens need to be treated like caged animals, otherwise they’ll go crazy”. By crazy they mean things like convert to another religion, openly announce their homosexuality, walk around in revealing clothes and/or promote someone that has no blood relation to them.

But these things have not happened in any of our surrounding countries. Why can’t they see that a little freedom does not mean Hollywood?!

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July 12, 2009 · 9:18 am

The Saudi college system

Right now is the time of the year when many households in Saudi Arabia are worrying about their high school graduates getting into a good college. Recently the system has gone through a few changes. In the 80s and 90s it was rather stable especially the girls’ high schools. The boys on the other hand had some variety of choice in experimental schools where the education ministry would try out new systems before implementing them nation-wide.

To get into college, you have to have a high grade which is done in percentage. Each subject is given a score of 100, 50 points for each semester and grades for each subject are added up and divided by the number of subjects. It’s a little bit more complicated than that with marks for attendance and good behavior factoring in. Until recently, only the marks that students got in the final year of high school were taken into account by college administrations. That has proven too stressful for many students and has been a reason for many others to slack off the first two years of high school. So now the system has changed so that the whole three years are considered and the final average point is taken from the marks of all the years spent in high school.

Another new big change is the standardized exams given right after high school. This is one centralized system across Saudi Arabia which administers the exams to all high school graduates each year. An advantage of this new system is that students no longer have to apply to each college in person. All they have to do is take the standardized exam and then after a couple of weeks log onto a website managed by the ministry of higher education and make their choice of major. The system then matches up students with the appropriate college. However this is only for government universities. Students who are interested in private universities have to apply there in person and take other exams that are unique to each private university. The majority of Saudis prefer government run universities because not only are they free (no tuition) but also students get a monthly stipend just for attending. The stipend varies from about 200 dollars up to 400 dollars per month depending on the student’s major. Humanties and arts get the lower end and science and technology the higher end.  

The summer that a Saudi graduates from high school is for many a stressful time what with new changes almost every year and worrying about whether or not they are able to find a placement at a local university. Without a college education, there aren’t many jobs to choose from and so the majority do go on to college. Parents at this time frantically set up fall back plans such as finding someone big to get their rejected child into university, or finding the means to send them to a private university. Some even go as far as to apply to colleges in other towns and cities to expand the likelihood of getting a placement. And in the latter case, if it’s a daughter, family members actually take time off from work to accompany her or for the unlucky ladies pay for a prison like dormitory to take her in.

It’s a time of year when it is polite to call up acquaintances that have kids graduating from high school and ask them how are they coping. And have they been able to get acceptance for their son or daughter? 

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July 10, 2009 · 1:09 am

My July article at Relativity Online

In the past decade, the Saudi government has been consistent in its approach to women’s participation in society and their availability of lifestyle choices. Conflict avoidance and postponement has been the answer to each and every request for more women rights. The Islamic perspective plays no role in these decisions and their more crucial implementation. In an Islamic state that prides itself on being the only country that truly rules according to Islamic Shariah, the lives of half of its citizens are exclusively run according to cultural and tribal traditions . . . and little else…to read more click here.

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July 7, 2009 · 11:54 pm

We are the world

 

Michael Jackson

When I first heard about Michael Jackson passing away, I was sad. But when a friend suggested that I should post about him, I said no, this blog is about Saudi Arabia and MJ is an American icon. However the more I think about it I find that there is no way that anyone could say that he is only American. He has had such an impact all over the world and a very special impact here in Saudi Arabia. In the eighties he was the first non Arab to penetrate the thick muttawa influence. I remember the huge VCR thriller tape that was obtained on the black market and considered so valuable that people would not lend it to anyone. My cousins and friends would watch it over and over until the tape would go gray and choppy and they didn’t even understand English! I remember a religious lecture I attended in which the muttawa lady was telling us about a Saudi who was led astray through listening to music. The Saudi, she claims, got in a horrific car accident while listening to MJ’s music and died singing along instead of saying al shahada. At the time, all I could think was wow this muttawa knows MJ!?  

Before the internet and satellite TV, most Saudis didn’t know the names of world leaders and got most of their information filtered by fanatical and political agendas, but MJ was the only person that was able to cut through all that and reach even here.  

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July 1, 2009 · 1:06 am

Love in KSA

Yesterday Riyadh Newspaper carried a story about a couple. Their relationship ended horribly when the guy blackmailed the girl into meeting him on a secluded roof. Only she came with a bottle of acid. She agreed that he would be there first waiting for her and when she got there he had already gotten down to his undies in anticipation but what he got was acid poured on his pelvic area. Unfortunately she was unable to get away before he had wrestled the acid from her and attacked her with it. They both started screaming in pain but no one came so they somehow managed to get down and run into the street where some civilians took them to the hospital. They were found to have 40% third degree burns and put in ICU.

What the guy was using to blackmail the girl was not mentioned in the article. However I’m betting that it was something relatively trivial like a photo with her face uncovered all dressed up to go to a party or maybe it was a tape recording of an illicit phone conversation, something that would not really be substantial enough to blackmail a single Muslim girl into sex anywhere else in the world except Saudi Arabia. What with so much being forbidden and our culture of shame one, shame the whole family, the stakes are so high. A girl who lets her guard down for a second sometimes will have to spend her whole life paying for it. I remember a friend of mine who was really smart and graduated from high school with a 98% and got accepted into the computer science department at King Saud University. Only she had the bad habit of making phone boyfriends during her years in high school, so her parents forced her the summer she graduated high school to marry a distant cousin who also happens to be a school drop out just so ‘yistir aliyha’, an Arabic term that means to cover her or to shield her from people’s talk. I visited her after she settled down and she told me that she had saved the bedsheet she lost her virginity to her husband on. I asked her why? She said it was like a keepsake but I believe it’s more than that. It’s her proof. Within a year she had a baby and we lost touch but I heard that she had many more babies and I don’t know if she ever got the chance to go to college. All because she liked to talk to guys over the phone. Granted that is a problem on a religious level but if it was only religion, her parents would have not taken such extremes to cure her of it. If this daughter got a reputation that she talks to guys, she would not only ruin her prospects of marriage, but that of her sisters. Hence her parents were sacrificing her for the sake of the family. It’s complicated with centuries and layers of tradition and culture and I’m not sure I personally want it to change but it would be nice if they would ease up a little on the girls so that they wouldn’t have to tote bottles of acid every time an innocent photo gets out.

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June 29, 2009 · 9:24 am

Quit smoking and we’ll give you a wedding

Al Naqa Charity association has started a campaign to encourage Saudi citizens to quit smoking. Posters are hung on all the major streets stating in Arabic “You quit and we’ll give you a wedding”. Of course, anyone who knows anything about Saudi Arabia, knows that getting married is a costly affair for the groom. And what the charity is paying for is the wedding and dowry, they aren’t going to find a bride or mediate, just pay the bills. So far so good. Last Sunday a writer in al Watan newspaper Maha Al Jahilan slammed the charity comparing what the charity is offering to selling sex. I especially enjoyed her melodramatic conclusion which I translated:

Isn’t presenting a woman as a prize to a person who quits smoking comparable to what primitive societies did when they sacrificed women to gods by throwing them into rivers, or wild animals? Wouldn’t it be better if the charity offered to find jobs for the quitters to raise their income, or offered to help them in housing, or continue their education, or self-improvement courses instead of finding a solution that would create worse and uglier problem?

 Come on?! Is she serious? I consider myself a Saudi feminist if there ever was one and I saw those posters long before I read about them. It never occurred to me that they were demeaning to women. Her suggestions are fine and so is paying for a quitter’s marriage costs. But probably the charity’s idea might be a stronger motivator for the younger love-stricken smokers. But if people who are calling for more women rights in Saudi raise arms at every silly thing then that will undermine what they stand for and the conservatives won’t take then as seriously.

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June 5, 2009 · 7:11 pm

Wish me luck

I’ve been neglecting this blog recently because I’m really busy keeping up with my schoolwork. I’m taking a few courses and let me tell you it’s kind of funny being back in a student’s chair after teaching a few years. Makes me appreciate what my students go through and I think every teacher should have a similar experience every now and then just as a reminder of how tough and stressful it is.

Well I have final exams and a bunch of papers to hand in so until then I don’t believe I’ll be adding anything here. Meanwhile, please check out this new online paper in which I am a staff writer. It has a truly enlightening global perspective and shows a lot of promise.

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