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An off-the-cuff comment by a leader of Saudi Arabia's religious police has led to dismissals, death threats and debates about menopause. The story of how a $10-billion scientific research center led Saudi Arabia to a series of royal dismissals, religious death threats and a senior Saudi sheikh making national news for screaming at a Kuwaiti woman "you are post menopausal whether you admit it or not", is long and convoluted. It all began with a $10 billion new research center. In late September last year, Saudi King Abdullah opened the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), billing it as the Arab world's most advanced university on the northern shores of Jeddah. Hoping to attract high-level international talent, the king took a gamble, announcing the university would be the kingdom's first co-educational institution, with male and female students from over 60 countries studying side by side, unveiled women driving around the 14-square-mile campus, and no religious police on site. Against the backdrop of a region that makes up only 1.1 percent of global scientific publishing, KAUST was one of the Arab world's most ambitious educational initiatives in over a decade and, one would think, a source of pride for many Saudis. It didn't work out that way. The advent of mass gender mixing in an institution founded by the king caused a crises for Saudi Arabia's conservative religious authorities, with support of KAUST becoming a cultural proxy war for whether or not women and men should be allowed to mix publicly. A senior Saudi cleric, Sheikh Saad Bin Nasser A-Shithri, was the first to criticize KAUST's gender mixing. He was quickly fired by the king. That was followed in December by a surprise announcement from Sheikh Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, head of the Saudi religious police commission in Mecca, who published an article in Okaz, a Saudi daily, in favor of KAUST and against the khilwa sex segregation laws. “The word [khilwa] in its contemporary meaning has entered customary jurisprudential terminology from outside,” the 47-year-old sheikh said in an interview. “Mixing was part of normal life for the Ummah [Islamic nation] and its societies." "Those who prohibit the mixing of the genders actually live it in their real lives, which is an objectionable contradiction," he said. “In many Muslim houses – even those of Muslims who say mixing is haram [forbidden]– you can find female servants working around unrelated males." To top it off, Al-Ghamdi then published another article in Al-Madina against the closure of businesses during the five daily prayer times. The enforcement of Saudi Arabia's strict gender segregation laws, along with the ban on shops opening during prayer time, is the principal occupation of the kingdom's religious police, and Al-Ghamdi's comments led to a high-profile national dispute that has snowballed for over half a year. In late April government news agencies announced that the sheikh had been demoted as part of a "routine shuffle." Two hours later,all Saudi media was ordered not to publish news of the announcement. It is still unclear whether Al-Ghamdi still has his job. A number of sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have claimed that the firing of Al-Ghamdi has caused an internal spat within the Saudi royal family, with King Abdullah rebutting a number of princes calling for Al-Ghamdi to be fired. The sheikh meanwhile received a flood of criticism from hard-line Saudi religious figures. There were two nationally televised debates, hundreds of newspaper articles and, presumably, thousands of sermons on the issue across the country. Some said Al-Ghamdi was an embarrassment to the country, others accused him of being paid off to find religious justification for gender mixing, others accused him of defaming Islam. Most notably, Sheikh Abdul-Rahman Al-Barrak, a highly influential Saudi cleric, issued a fatwa (Muslim religious edict) calling for all "modernizers" advocating gender mixing in the kingdom to be put to death. "Whoever allows this mixing allows forbidden things, and whoever allows them is an infidel and this means defection from Islam," the sheikh said. "Either he retracts or he must be killed." The snowball continued to roll this week with the revelation that Sheikh A-Najaimi, another senior Saudi cleric who had publicly supported the Al-Barrak fatwa calling for the death of those supporting gender mixing, attended an International Women's Day conference in Kuwait last month. A-Najaimi stands accused of eating, sitting and talking with the conference's female attendees for hours. The sheikh justified his attendance by claiming that the majority of the women at the conference were menopausal, therefore he is permitted by Islamic law to interact with them. Islamic scholars disputed A-Najaimi's interpretation of the Sharia, Islamic law, arguing that a woman must be post-menopausal, uninterested in men, and decide on her own whether or not to announce her status. When some of the female attendees announced that they were not, in fact, menopausal, the sheikh allegedly told them "you are post menopausal whether you admit it or not!" Meanwhile, the king himself appeared with Crown Prince Sultan in a photograph smiling with a large group of Saudi women, almost none of whom had their faces covered, as well as in a photograph with Princess Mozah, the 'first lady' of Qatar. "This was not an accident. Any photo of the king or the major princes has to be approved ahead of time," Eman Al Nafjan, a Saudi critic and blogger who has followed the case, told The Media Line. "The King was sending out a message that the king is on Al-Ghamdi's side and trying to push us forward." "It's become a huge issue," she said of the various gender mixing scandals. "Lots of people are talking about it, but mostly it's a personal scandal revolving around Al-Ghamdi." "What's interesting is that there are not many women weighing in," Al Nafjan added. "I don't know if anyone has noticed it but it's all men talking about whether to allow women in as fully functional members of society or not. You would think that it would matter more to a woman and some senior women or princesses would speak about gender segregation." Dr. Fawzia Al-Bakr, a professor of education at King Saud University, argued that the Saudi leadership seemed to be signalling the beginning of a major shift. "King Abdullah is definitely making a move," she told The Media Line. "First, I never dreamed of having a mixed institution, especially an educational institution. He was very brave and he did it, and it has had a major effect. Now the religious police have been less strict, the media is writing more about gender desegregation, publishing pictures of women leaders in medicine, science, and business and even talking about allowing women to drive. It's all over the Saudi news." "I think the king realized that this is a serious problem," Dr Al-Bakr said. "You cannot segregate the two sexes and expect to have a normal functioning society. So he opened KAUST, supported Al-Ghamdi, and had this picture taken with women in the South, in a very conservative area, with the crown prince. There is a totally different ideology slowly taking over and I really hope, from the bottom of my heart, that they will succeed." | ||||||||||
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Saudi Arabia Reels Over 'Menopausegate'
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