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Najla, Wafa’s youngest daughter. Last seen at age five. Now age 13.

Eight years ago Wafa Al Yahya was a divorced mother of three and a PhD candidate at the Religious Studies department at King Saud University here in Riyadh. Her three children were 12 year old Sarah, 10 year old Abdullah and five year old Najla. I use the past tense when referring to this single mother and her three children because eight years ago they disappeared into thin air.

There are two versions of what happened to Wafa Al Yahya and her three kids. The only thing that the two versions agree on is that she disappeared in August 2005. The first version is the government’s. The National Society for Human Rights, NSHR, (a governmental organization), issued a statement last week:

 What has been spread on social networking sites about the citizen Wafa Mohammed Yahya and her three children being held by the Saudi authorities is not true at all. The NSHR has been following her case for a long time in cooperation with the concerned authorities. She is not being held by the Saudi authorities and current information indicates that she was smuggled with her children to Yemen. We do not currently know their fate and whereabouts. We urge anyone who has documented information about her or her children to communicate that information to nshr.sms @ gmail.com. This is to help her family.

The regional director for AlArabiya News Channel, Khalid Al Matrafi, also offered a bit of information on Twitter. Al Matrafi wrote on the 29^th of July:

Exclusive and important … Wafa Al Yahya married Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. After his death she married Abu Suleiman Al-Otaibi who left her and moved to Afghanistan. He was later killed along with his Iraqi wife. His daughter from his Iraqi wife was handed over to his father. Wafa was killed in Iraq. Her eldest daughter married one of the rebel leaders in Iraq. There is no information on the fate of her son and youngest daughter. The man who smuggled Wafa and her children to Yemen then Iraq is in Saudi custody and awaiting trial… Wafa’s mother and her brother Ahmed know the details.

The family version of what happened to Wafa Al Yahya was stated on July 25^th in a protest in Jeddah. Two of the women at the protest claim that they are Wafa’s sisters. Their version is that on the day that King Abdullah was announced king, Wafa and her three children were abducted by the Saudi authorities from their apartment in Riyadh. They say that she was taken because of what she wrote online in support of Al Qaeda. In a Twitmail that was posted nine days ago by an Ali Al Ajami and read over 50,000 times, it states that her ex-husband, Osama Al Dawood, an army officer, insists that he knows nothing about her and the children’s whereabouts. The article also claims that when her brother Ahmed went to the Saudi authorities to ask about her, he was detained for 45 days.

Right now the Saudi deputy consul in the southern Yemeni port city of Aden, Abdulla Al Khalidi, is being held by a group linked to Al Qaeda. He was kidnapped on March 28^th and his captors demand the release of women political prisoners in Saudi in exchange for AlKhalidi. However the Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki insists that since the release of five women on July 23rd, there is only one woman related to Al Qaeda in Saudi prisons. Here he is obviously referring to Heila Al Qusayer who I’ve written about previously. Today HRH Prince Khalid bin Talal went on AlMajd TV, an ultra-conservative network, to again assert that Wafa is not in Saudi and he offered to escort anyone who believes they have a female relative in prison to personally see the Minister of Interior Affairs.

Yet AlQaeda, their sympathizers and Wafa’s family insist that she is being held in Saudi, while the Saudi authorities insist that she had left the country.

In Saudi Arabia the Olympics usually does not get much attention. The Games comes and goes every four years without even registering with most Saudis. The only sport that Saudis are passionate about is football. On the world stage, it’s the World Cup that makes them sit up and pay attention. It does not help that local media give the Olympics the bare minimum coverage.

 Saudis did not seem to mind until this year when at the last minute and after much resistance, the Saudi Olympic Committee relented and allowed women to join its delegation. The committee had resisted on conservative grounds and also because it’s not an easy task to find Saudi women athletes. Click here to read on.

Do Saudi Arabia’s two Olympic female athletes — the kingdom’s first ever — represent changing times in the Land of the Two Holy Mosques, or will the conservative religious backlash win out?

For years, human rights organizations hoping to use the Olympics as leverage to challenge Saudi Arabia’s restrictive gender policies have looked to the case of apartheid South Africa. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), after all, expelled South Africa in 1970 for its policy of racial discrimination — a ban that stayed in place for 21 years, until the fall of apartheid in 1991. If the IOC took action against South Africa to help end race-based apartheid there, shouldn’t it bar Saudi Arabia from the 2012 London Olympics in protest of gender-based apartheid in the kingdom? Read on here.

NOTE: Writing this article, I researched some of the books and fatwas against women sports and I refer to one of these books in the article. In that same book, I came across something interesting that wasn’t included in the article. So I thought I would share it with you here:

AlShathri (the author) argues that physical education will require that the girls change in front of each other and that this “will open the evil door of lesbianism, admiration and their hearts getting attached to each other and as our sheikh Abdulrahmin Al Barrack, bless him, has stated, “This is currently common among our students before the incorporation of physical education, so how will it be after?!””

On Thursday it was announced that Saudi women will after all be participating in the 2012 Olympics. An American with Saudi origins, Sarah Attar, will be in the 800m race while Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani will compete in judo above 78kg. These two are not finalists, or the best of the best of Saudi sportswomen, because according to the Saudi government, femininity and sports are incompatible. Read on here.

On the 7^thof July at 2am a young Saudi family was taking advantage of the cool night air at a public park in a small town, Baljarshi, Southwest of the country. According to AlRiyadh newspaper, Abdulrahman loaded his family into his car to head home and started playing Arabic Islamic children songs on the car stereo. The PVPV came up in their huge GMC and ordered him to turn down the music. Witnesses say that there was a back and forth between him and the five members of the PVPV. Abdulrahman decided to ignore them and drove off. The PVPV responded by giving chase with the assistance of their accompanying  police patrol car. The chase went on for 4 kilometers until they reached an overpass that was still under construction where Abdulrahman lost control of the car and went over the edge. Witnesses say that when the family went over the edge, the PVPV and the patrol car panicked and fled the scene instead of assisting.  Abdulrahman passed away at the accident site. His six month pregnant wife had her right arm completely smashed and is currently under threat of having it amputated. Their six year old son, Khalid, is in the ICU with internal bleeding and a head injury and their four year old daughter, Dorar, is in stable condition with a few broken bones. A life lost and a whole family  ruined because of a little music on a car stereo.

Abdulrahman’s car at the site of the accident

When the news broke out muttawa PVPV sympathizers came out of the woodwork fabricating stories about how Abdulrahman was actually going through a police checkpoint and didn’t stop or was uncooperative and the police were the ones to chase him while the PVPV only came upon the scene after the accident. However the governor, Prince Mashari bin Saud, ordered an emergency committee to investigate what actually happened. The committee announced yesterday that the accident was mainly caused by the PVPV members and their accompanying police patrol car and secondly by the road construction company. This of course isn’t the first time that PVPV members have caused the death of innocent civilians due to their fervent enthusiasm for a moral society. Some of these deaths can be read about here and here. I’ve also written here on the blog about deaths, stabbings for showing pretty female eyes via a slit through the face cover…etc.

The new head of the PVPV has tried to rein in his overly eager employees and even issued a complete ban on car chases a few months ago. Honestly I can’t see the sense in that, considering you have fanatically religious young men with the conviction that they are doing God’s work on Earth and saving the souls of their fellow citizens from sin being equipped with state of the art jeeps, GMCs and surveillance devices. They are then divided into pairs and groups of three and four. They are also accompanied by an armed police officer. It would take a lot of self-control and will-power to not chase people who resist moral guidance given the whole structure, provisions, mission statement and attitude of the PVPV. If  Al-Shiekh is truly serious about making the PVPV more civilian friendly, he would look into how they go about their work. If they are to have their GMCs and surveillance than they should be given real police training and of course start dressing in a uniform. But if they are going around in their Islamic thobes and cloaks and are here to simply advise and provide guidance then why are they provided with all these serious man-toys?

It’s hard to think of something positive to end with after the news of a death over something so stupid but remember when the nail polish girl insisted on her rights in the mall a month ago? The religious establishment with the blessing of the government has ensured that every average citizen is fair game when it comes to personal beliefs, clothing and behavior. Add to this the widespread and widely accepted method of proving your own personal faith through the harassment of others in the name of moral advocacy and you get a society where it’s easier to just give in and suffocatingly obey.

I’m very happy to report that a new discourse of asserting your rights and giving others theirs has started to take over the younger generation of Saudis. An example of this is this video where two Saudi men openly state when asked their opinion on if women should be allowed to drive that the real question is why is the government treating citizens like children or dependents by even considering such a ban never mind implementing it. The way the two argue their opinions shows how the terminology and the dialogue has changed from what it was only a few years ago.

My Right to Dignity has published an open petition addressed to the King on the occasion of one year since the beginning of the June 17th women driving movement. The petition renews the request to lift the ban. You can sign it by going HERE. Below is a translation:

To his majesty, the custodian of the two holy mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, may God save and bless him.

Peace and God’s mercy and blessing be upon you,

We address your majesty with thankfulness and gratitude for the utmost care that you have granted to Saudi women issues and the progressive steps that you have taken to involve women in the national development projects. These steps that you summarized in your historical speech on September 25^th 2011 when you said, “We will not approve the marginalization of women.” This was followed by the two decrees concerning women membership on the Shura Council and women participation in the municipal elections.

With the rise in the number of Saudi women granted the King Abdullah international scholarship to 27,500 recipients, many of them have returned hopeful to take part in building this nation side-by-side with their brothers. Due to your advocacy towards opening more fields to women and the implementation of your wise decree this past January to allow women to work in retail, more than 300,000 job opportunities for women have been created and billions of our immigrating riyals have been nationalized.

Thus it is our hope that you take into consideration our campaign I Will Drive My Own Car to encourage women who have obtained driving licenses from neighboring countries to forgo their male drivers and start driving themselves when they need to. This encouragement is nothing more than the practice of a right ensured to us by all religions and national and international law. A right that has been denied us by some customs and traditions that are not of God. We also hope that you advocate the opening of women driving schools and the issuance of driving licenses to women who qualify.

This campaign does not seek to disrupt the government or to violate any national laws or regulations. Here it is important to point out that there is no explicit law banning women from driving. We are not in cooperation with any foreign organizations or bodies nor do we represent a political party or opposition. We do not intend to start a public protest. We merely request that any woman who needs to go about her daily business and does not have a man to help her be allowed to help herself. We want this right to be an option for those who want or need to. As King Faisal (God rest his soul) historically said when he decreed girls’ education, “No one will be forced nor will anyone be turned away.”

Our Precious King, we trust in your majesty and our guardians but we are trying as adult capable women to do everything in our power for the betterment of our families and society.  We seek to facilitate the affairs of our lives and the lives of our families while maintaining respect and loyalty to the values of our gracious nation and to the principles of our faith. We are optimistic that our campaign will succeed, as did other campaigns and projects such as ARAMCO, KAUST and women in rural areas.

Our initiative comes as an inevitable result of the failure of ongoing initiatives that began more than thirty years and have included directly appealing to officials, writing in the media, and sending petitions and demands to the members of the Shura Council. These have all had no real results on the ground. Our hope is now hanging on the generosity of your response and support for this campaign. We hope that your majesty will instruct all those who have in their capacity to support us to do so, such as the regional princes, the police and the Commission for Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue. We hope that you will command them to enable women who have valid licenses to drive their own cars when running their basic daily errands and thus lift the financial and social burden on some families that has lasted far too long.

We hope that your majesty would hasten the enactment of laws and regulations that criminalize and punish those that harm or harass women drivers. In this the government could gain from the experience of the other GCC countries. We also hope that your majesty will hasten the establishment of driving schools and the issuance of licenses for women. Until then, we raise to your royal court a number of urgent demands from those who have been gravely affected by the women-driving ban. These demands are that these families and women be compensated by waiving the Saudi entrance visa fee for migrant drivers and be granted by the government a monthly stipend equaling the amount it takes to employ, board and feed a driver. Another demand is that the salary transportation allowance be increased for women to three times what men are paid. The final demand is that government ministries and institutions and private employers be required to provide their female employees the option of safe institutional transportation.

We are still in great anticipation and hope that public transportation projects will see the light of day soon.

Your majesty is well aware that the simple yet essentially important request to allow women to drive is practiced easily by all women in the world. Hence lifting the driving ban should not be difficult here in the country of security and safety and under your wise leadership. With sincere efforts we are confident that our wise leadership will realize the ban lift in our compassionate and gracious nation for the benefit of our sons and daughters.

We pray that your majesty will remain our pride, strength, and empowerment and that God grant you and the nation perseverance and blessedness.

Date of petition 20 Rajab 1433, corresponding to June 10, 2012

Last week a sixty year old woman was arrested for driving a car in Madina. She was accompanied by a twelve year old girl and they were driving around an empty construction site to gather scrap metal. According to the traffic police she was convicted of driving without a license, the person who gave her a car will be punished and her male guardian will be called in to sign a pledge promising that he will ensure that she never drives again.

Within the same week, two lawyers, Mohammed Al Zamil and Mohammed Al Sultan won a case at the Board of Grievances, a government agency administrative court, on the recent decision to allow women to work in lingerie shops. They raised the case on behalf of a Saudi businessman. The court revoked two of the ministry of labor’s recent bylaws; the first that lingerie shops are mandated to only employ Saudi women and the second that department stores employ women in the women sections of department stores. The unnamed businessman hired the two lawyers in objection to being forced to hire Saudi women instead of foreign men. The two lawyers took up the case because they are ultra-conservatives and believe it a religious  conviction and requirement that women should be removed completely from the public sphere and strict gender segregation be implemented. The Board of Grievances verdict still has a long way (and fortunately a long shot) to see actual, on the ground, implementation.

I took it upon myself to head out to a mall and actually talk to women currently working there. They told me that the case is just a ploy by businessmen because these employers do not want to hire Saudi women. Saudi women demand higher salaries and better working conditions than their migrant male counterparts. And when I asked if they would prefer for the front of the shop to be closed up completely and only women allowed in, they said that they wouldn’t feel safe because that way if anything happened inside the shop passers-by would not see and intervene. One even said who’s to prevent a man from coming in and raping me if it was all closed up in the front and secluded.

In an interview with Al Majd channel Al Zamil clarified exactly how they went about the case. First they were approached by a businessman who opposed point nine of the women employment bylaws:

IX: Penalties

The Ministry of Labor will block all of its services to shops that do not comply with the employment of women in the selling of women’s necessities. This is without prejudice to any other penalties provided for in the system.

But what these ultra conservative lawyers really care about is point three of the new bylaws:

III. the organizational requirements within shops

The following must be taken into account in shops selling women’s

a. The employer must cover the windows of the women’s necessities shop if the place is reserved for women only and prevent men from entering it. The employer is prohibited from covering the windows if the shop if open to families.

b. The employer is prohibited from hiring male and female employees together in one shop, with the exception of stores with multiple departments; these may hire men and women employees when they are responsible for different sections. In the latter case the number of female employees must not be less than three per shift.

c. The employer must, whether the shop is a stand-alone or located within a shopping mall, ensure that a security guard or an electronic security system is provided unless there are general mall security guards. The employer is allowed to follow the traditional way of the closed-segregated system currently used in women’s salons.

d. The employer must, whether the shop is a stand-alone or located in a shopping mall, ensure that a bathroom or more, as needed, are inside the store. This is mandated unless there are public women restrooms within fifty meters of the shop inside the mall.

The ultra-conservatives took particular offence to points A and B. They don’t want to leave the business owners the option of opening the shop for male customers accompanied by their wives or daughters to enter a shop where a woman works. They were also horrified to see women working in department stores and at make-up counters where male colleagues are able to speak to them.

The lawyers based their case on a Royal decree issued by King Fahad in 2000 requiring all public and private sectors to maintain strict gender segregation regardless of the nationality of the women involved. But if we were to implement this decree fully then it would be illegal to employ male drivers for women passengers and female maids in households that have male family members. No objection here and no pending court cases in defense of the “honor” of female maids from having to work in a non segregated environment.

The ultra conservatives were thrilled when AlZamil first announced the verdict on Twitter. Then they were overwhelmed with self-righteousness when a report by the British paper Daily Mail came out under the headline Sexual harassment suffered by HALF female workforce – while 40% say they have been touched inappropriately by colleagues. They felt that the report vindicated everything they stood for. They would rather have 100% of women be discriminated against. And I bet in their heart of hearts they think that these British women, 33% of whom are reported to have considered leaving a job due to harassment, would love to have their car keys taken away from them, would love to be ordered to cover their faces, banned from main government buildings, discriminated against by the judicial system, and be at the mercy of male guardian if they want to travel, get married or even leave the house.

It’s funny that while women unemployment is in staggering numbers instead of actually offering gender segregated employment opportunities, these lawyers are obsessed with only stopping opportunities that don’t fit in with their belief system. I don’t see any of these ultra conservative lawyers and businessmen actually starting a women only factory or implementing a work from home option for potential female employees in their own offices. Nope, all they do is run around objecting in every way possible to women who are trying hard against all odds to make ends meet. In the interview AlZamil admits to being on this case since it was only a proposal six years ago. All this obsession with stopping Saudi women from working openly in malls, while it is an extremely common sight to see women in traditional Arab markets on floormats in the heat and dust selling their wares. Yet again no objection here. And that sixty year old woman gathering scrap metal to sell, no problem there either, just as long as she uses those profits to pay for a male driver.

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA — There are many misconceptions in the West about what life is like for women in Saudi Arabia — perhaps almost as many misconceptions as there are among Saudis about people who live in the West. READ ON

Manal Al Sharif is a Saudi woman who was courageous enough to be a face for an underground women rights movement in Saudi. You see, in Saudi there are many women and men who oppose how women are treated in Saudi, but rarely do you find someone who’s willing to come out in public and state their opposition. You can’t blame them, though, since the consequences of such a stand touch upon every aspect of a person’s life. They could lose their livelihood and be harassed by co-workers, family, neighbours and even friends. READ ON

Last Tuesday a Saudi woman in Riyadh was followed at a major mall by the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV). They demanded that she leave the mall because she had nail polish on. She in turn refused and started videotaping the incident on her cell phone and informed the CPVPV member that she’s also uploading it to social media. Then she called the police and in the second video you can see three police officers trying to calm the situation and hear her tell them that she’s afraid to leave the mall because the CPVPV might follow her in the car and purposely cause a car accident.

Before I go any further, I’m going to give the CPVPV statement to news organizations and a CPVPV sympathizer’s witness statement:

 Informed sources confirmed to Sabq that the incident occurred last Tuesday evening, indicating that the Commission’s headquarters are in the process of raising and reporting the issue to higher authorities, asking them to take necessary action against the girl according to the rules and regulations in regards to her videotaping and disseminating videos of members of the commission during their official business on internet sites. The sources also informed Sabq that the security authorities used the mall’s security cameras to see the merits of the case, especially after identifying the girl through the phone number on which she called the police accusing members of the commission of harassing her.

 The witness statement was made by a Talal Al Gharmoul who claims to have been there and tweeted:

 By God, I stood by and witnessed the incident, the woman does not have an atom of modesty. Her face was only covered by a transparent veil over her mouth. She also had a lot of make-up on. In addition to her wearing an abaya accentuating her waist, very similar to a dress. She had her mobile’s earphones in and she was reeling and swaying in front of the men. The CPVPV advised her politely and respectfully. Suddenly she raged against them and started screaming until everyone heard her cries. What was of the CPVPV men only to act leniently while she held up her cell phone. Then she sat beneath the escalators with her mobile held up and her earphones in and continued to scream at the men. She had her legs crossed with one foot swaying left and right in a shameful way. The CPVPV men stood about 4 meters away out of modesty. The CPVPV men insisted on her leaving the mall politely and respectfully while they faced her insults and profanity such as her saying “Do I look like I’m naked to you?”

 On Twitter many insist that it was not only her nail polish that upset the CPVPV and that she was behaving immodestly and dressed suspiciously. However if we go to the video, at the beginning she asks the CPVPV sheikh is it because of the nail polish and he doesn’t deny it. Then later when the police arrive the sheikh claims that she wiped the nail polish off and she raises her hand and says no that she didn’t. And he never says anything about her having too much make-up on. At the beginning he says that she has no right to uncover her face and instructs her to dress like her “sisters” pointing at women with their faces covered. In the second video after the police arrive, he says that he also objects to her lipstick.

 Another issue that many harp on is that she shouldn’t have taped and disseminated a video of government employees doing their job. And this one is such a double standard argument because it never came up when the minister of agriculture was talking to a citizen dismissively or when the minister of civil service was talking to job applicants or when the Saudi ambassador to Egypt spoke disrespectfully to a woman. In all of these cases the person taking the video was hailed as a hero.

 And the whole thing about the sheikh being lenient and polite is shown on the video to be untrue. From the very beginning he disrespectfully shouts at her “Yalla, yalla get out of the mall, yalla out!”

 Finally the CPVPV are portrayed as sacred and the embodiment of how Islam was at the time of the Prophet (PBUH). However everything I’ve ever read points otherwise. The way a CPVPV sheikh struts around malls with a fancy cloak on his shoulders and two subordinates flanking him enjoying the atmosphere of fear their entrance causes and sometimes going as far as terrorizing people is not the way I’ve read that the Prophet behaved. For example just a couple of weeks ago I wanted to leave a restaurant during prayer time. I simply needed to exit the restaurant but the management refused out of fear of the CPVPV and the manager who was obviously traumatized started shouting that he would be called an animal and spend another night in jail for opening the door to just let me out during prayer time.

 Meanwhile if you actually go back to religious and historical texts you find that the Prophet (PBUH) was known for his humility, quiet demeanor and wearing simple and humble clothing. And ironically the first head of anything similar to the CPVPV was not a man but a woman called Layla daughter of Abdullah Al Qurashi and known by Al-Shifa.

 In a hadeeth about the Prophet (PBUH) towards the end of his life, he was with another man as a beautiful woman came towards them to ask the Prophet a question. The Prophet’s companion obviously liked the way the woman looked because he was staring at her. The Prophet did not harass the woman or demand that she cover her face or leave the premises as did the CPVPV sheikh last Tuesday. He simply turned his companion’s face away.

 Here I’m going to put the actual hadeeths I was referring to above and their sources so that people don’t start accusing me of lying since Saudis are rarely exposed to hadeeths that prove that many women at the time of the Prophet were empowered and did not cover their faces.

عن ابن عباس رضي الله عنه: (أن امرأة استفتت رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم في حجة الوداع (يوم النحر)، والفضل بن عباس رديف رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم …فأخذ الفضل بن عباس يلتفت إليها- وكانت امرأة حسناء- (وتنظر إليه)، فأخذ رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم بذقن الفضل فحول وجهه من الشق الآخر). والحديث مروي كذلك عن علي بن أبي طالب رضي الله عنه، وذكر أن الاستفتاء كان عند المنحر بعدما رمى رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم الجمرة (فقال له العباس: يا رسول الله لم لويت عنق ابن عمك؟ قال رأيت شاباّ وشابة فلم آمن الشيطان عليهما) وفي صحيح مسلم (وكان- أي الفضل ابن عباس- رجلا حسن الشعر أبيض وسيماّ) وفي رواية أخرى: (فكنت أنظر إليها، فنظر إلي النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم، فقلب وجهي عن وجهها، ثم أعدت النظر فقلب وجهي عن وجهها، ثم أعدت النظر فقلب وجهي عن وجهها، حتى فعل ذلك ثلاثاّ وأنا لا أنتهي)

ورد في صحيح البخاري، صحيح مسلم، سنن أبي داوود، سنن النسائي، سنن ابن ماجة، سنن الترمذي

عين عمر بن الخطاب رضي الله عنه امرأة من قبيلته اسمها ليلى، ولكن غلب عليها اسم الشفاء، وهي بنت عبدالله بن عبد الشمس القرشية، ناظرة على سوق المدينة وهو منصب قضائي، وكان يقدمها في الرأي. فعن أبي حثمة قال: (قالت الشفاء ابنة عبدالله، ورأت فتياناّ يقصدون في المشي ويتكلمون رويداّ: ما هذا؟ فقالوا: نُسّاك، فقالت: كان والله عمر إذا تكلم أسمع، وإذا مشى أسرع، وإذا ضرب أوجع، وهو الناسك حقاّ)

ورد في الطبقات، ج 3، ص 290  وهذا رد على من يقول أن الشفاء عينت في وظيفة الحسبة على النساء فقط.