Posted on 01/31/2008 4:26:59 AM PST by SJackson
Hello Caroline Glick, I am a 20 year old female living in Saudi Arabia. My family and I used to live the United States for 13 years, until we decided to move back to be closer to our relatives. The other day, I was searching for articles on Google and I came across your op-ed on Laura Bush's recent visit to Saudi Arabia.
I am sorry to say but I was very disappointed with your article. You said things that are not true about my country. For instance, you mentioned that women in Saudi have no choice on who they marry, and that men can marry up to four women and divorce them just in a matter of words.
We do have a choice on who to marry. You do realize we live in the 21st century?! Both my sisters and brother knew their spouses before they were married, and I come from a relatively religiously committed family. My mother and father met through family outings in Saudi Arabia in the 50's. While it is true that men can marry up to four women, there are still consequences that comes with it.
First, this is a part of our religion which gives no one the right to mock us about it. Second, no sheikh (the equivalent to a priest) will allow a man to marry a second or third wife without conducting an interview with him to see what his reasons are. For instance, my uncle recently married a second wife. This second wife was a woman who's husband died and was in financial debt. My uncle did what he thought was right, after asking for his wife's blessing. If he had not received this blessing he would not have done it. Nor would he have done it if he had not realized how bad the situation this woman was in.
You also mention how no other religions can be practiced in Saudi Arabia. I want to point out this is the land that Islam was introduced in; the land the prophet was born in, the same land that contains Mecca and Medina, two of the holiest sites in Islam.
It makes sense not to allow another religion to be practiced in such a sacred place. As far as I know there is no mosque in Vatican City. I respect the fact that it is a sacred place for a religion, and I would expect to receive the same respect from others about my country.
AS FOR OUR education, it is well on its way to becoming one of the best in the world. We have a wide range of opportunities. The college I attend has marketing, accounting, media, nursing, special education, electrical engineering, architecture, management, finance, and psychology. Another college here offers law, graphic design, interior design, banking, Management information system and fashion design. Our public universities offer all departments of medicine, physical therapy, economics, media, sociology, religion, literature, translation and so on.
As far as I can see we are well-off, it is just a matter of what interests people. And no, contrary to what people assume, we are allowed to leave the house. Even without our brothers or fathers. It is a cultural choice whether a mother of father permit their daughters out without male supervision. Perhaps one in 15 families take a stringent position. I go to the beach, restaurants, parks, cafes, bowling...with my friends - males and females. Yes I do wear an abaya, but we do not necessarily have to cover our hair or faces; again this is a personal and cultural choice.
To be frank, abayas are not a big deal to us, we actually embrace it and design lovely abayas that portray our personalities. And yes, it was ridiculous for the French government to try and ban women from wearing scarves. Where is the freedom of choice there? Was this to protect the country from terrorists? Anyway, how did it transpire that head coverings came to be seen as symbols of oppression? I wish the world would stop judging us.
America is not perfect, Europe is not perfect, Israel is not perfect and yes even I admit the Arab Middle East is not perfect. We all have our flaws! What is the use of learning about the world if we all had the same way of living.
Our way is our choice. Nothing is forced upon us.
My advice to you, Caroline, is to befriend a Saudi. This is the best way to get to understand our culture. Or better yet, visit Saudi Arabia.
I did not write this to offend you or the Jerusalem Post, but to set the record straight. I live in Saudi Arabia. I laugh in Saudi. I am happy in Saudi. My life is not any different that it was in the United States.
One day my country will rise and shine above all, and I am sure when that happens the world will suddenly want to befriend us. Until then, I will do my part to correct misperceptions about our image. Thank you.
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Laura Bush's embrace of tyranny
By CAROLINE GLICK
For people around the world, the United States is not merely a country, and not merely a superpower. The United States is also a symbol of human freedom.
Because their country is a symbol, the way that American officials behave is rarely taken at face value. Rather, their behavior is interpreted and reinterpreted by friend and foe alike.
Because she has no statutory power, the American First Lady's actions are wholly symbolic. So when last week First Lady Laura Bush embarked on a visit to the Persian Gulf to promote breast cancer awareness in the Arab world as part of the US-Middle East Partnership for Breast Cancer, she traveled there as a symbol. And the symbolic message that her visit evoked is a deeply disturbing one.
As a Washington Post report of her trip to Saudi Arabia from last Thursday noted, there is a dire need in the kingdom to raise public awareness of breast cancer and its treatments. Due to social taboos, some 70 percent of breast cancer cases in Saudi Arabia are not reported until the late stages of the disease. It is possible that the local media attention that Mrs. Bush's visit aroused may work to save the lives of women whose husbands will now permit them to be screened for the disease and receive proper medical treatment for it in its early stages.
And this is where the disturbing aspect of Mrs. Bush's visit enters the picture. During her public appearances, the First Lady limited her remarks to the issue of breast cancer awareness. Yet in the Persian Gulf, it is impossible to separate the issue of breast cancer or for that matter the very fact of the First Lady's visit from the issue of the systematic mistreatment and oppression of women in the Saudi Arabia specifically and throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds generally.
IN THE context of the regional degradation of women, while the consequences of Mrs. Bush's visit remain mixed, the overall effect of her mission was negative.
Women in Saudi Arabia do not have human rights. As Amnesty International puts it, "The abuse of women's rights in Saudi Arabia is not simply the unfortunate consequence of overzealous security forces and religious police. It is the inevitable result of a state policy which gives women fewer rights than men, which means that women face discrimination in all walks of life and which allows men with authority to exercise their power without any fear of being held to account for their actions."
For instance, women in Saudi Arabia cannot choose whom they marry and they have no real power to divorce their husbands. Men on the other hand can lawfully marry up to four women and divorce any of them simply by announcing that they have divorced them. And once they are divorced, they are by law and practice denied custody of their children.
Marital rape and physical abuse are not generally considered crimes and therefore women have no legal recourse for dealing with abusive husbands, or fathers or brothers. Since they are legally barred from serving as lawyers, and Islam weighs a woman's court testimony as worth half the testimony of a man, even if they were able to press charges against their male tormentors, Saudi women are effectively denied recourse in the local courts.
Women of course are not the only victims of the Saudi regime. Non-Muslims are denied the right to worship. Shi'ite Muslims' right to worship is subject to draconian limitations. Jews are officially barred from entering the kingdom. Then too, there are no real elections in Saudi Arabia, no press freedom, no freedom of assembly. Yet even against this totalitarian backdrop the position of women stands out in its severity.
Take education for example. As the State Department's 2006 Human Rights report notes, there is little academic freedom in Saudi Arabia. For instance, "The government prohibited the study of Freud, Marx, Western music, and Western philosophy." Yet women's educational opportunities are even more constrained. Due to gender apartheid, women may only study in all female institutions. There they are prohibited from studying fields like law and engineering and petroleum sciences. In 2005 the BBC reported, "Although women make up more than half of all graduates from Saudi universities, they comprise only 5 percent of the kingdom's workforce."
Saudi women have no freedom of movement. They may not drive. And they may not move around in public unless escorted by their husband, father or brother. Women found in public unescorted by suitable males are subject to arrest and corporal punishment.
The limitations placed on public appearances are mind boggling. As Freedom House reported in 2005, "Visible and invisible spatial boundaries also limit women's movement. Mosques, most ministries, public streets, and food stalls (supermarkets not included) are male territory. Furthermore, accommodations that are available for men are always superior to those accessible to women, and public space, such as parks, zoos, museums, libraries, or the national Jinadriyah Festival of Folklore and Culture, is created for men, with only limited times allotted for women's visits."
TO THE extent that women in Saudi Arabia are allowed leave their homes, they are prohibited from actually being seen by anyone through the rigid enforcement of Islamic dress codes. As the State Department 2006 report explains, "In public, a woman was expected to wear an abaya (a black garment that covers the entire body) and also to cover her head and hair. The religious police generally expected Muslim women to cover their faces and non-Muslim women from other Asian and African countries to comply more fully with local customs of dress than non-Muslim Western women. During the year religious police admonished and harassed citizen and noncitizen women who failed to wear an abaya and hair cover."
Perhaps it is because it is so offensive to the Western eye to see women covered like sacks of potatoes, the abaya has become a symbol of Islamic oppression and degradation of women. Although outlawing their use, as the French have attempted to do in recent years, is itself a form of religious oppression, the sentiment informing their ban is certainly understandable. The fact is that a free society should not be able to easily stomach the notion that women should be encouraged, let alone obliged to wear degrading garments that deny them the outward vestiges of their humanity and individuality.
Due to the fact that the abayas convey a symbolic message of effective enslavement of women, Mrs. Bush's interaction with women clad in abayas was the aspect of her trip most scrutinized. In the United Arab Emirates, Mrs. Bush was photographed sitting between four women covered head to toe in abayas while she was wearing regular clothes. The image of Mrs. Bush sitting between four women who look like nothing more than black piles of fabric couldn't have been more viscerally evocative and consequently, symbolically meaningful.
The image told the world that she - and America - is free and humane while the hidden women of Arabia are enslaved and their society is inhumane.
But then Mrs. Bush went to Saudi Arabia and the symbolic message of the previous day was superseded and lost when she donned an abaya herself and had her picture taken with other abaya-clad women. The symbolic message of those photographs also couldn't have been clearer. By donning an abaya, Mrs. Bush symbolically accepted the legitimacy of the system of subjugating women that the garment embodies, (or disembodies). Understanding this, conservative media outlets in the US criticized her angrily.
Sunday morning, Mrs. Bush sought to answer her critics in an interview with Fox News. Unfortunately, her remarks compounded the damage. Mrs. Bush said, "These women do not see covering as some sort of subjugation of women, this group of women that I was with. That's their culture. That's their tradition. That's a religious choice of theirs."
It is true that this is their culture. And it is also their tradition. But it is not their choice. Their culture and tradition are predicated on denying them the choice of whether or not to wear a garment that denies them their identity just as it denies them the right to make any choices about their lives. The Saudi women's assertions of satisfaction with their plight were no more credible than statements by hostages in support of their captors.
As the First Lady, Laura Bush is an American symbol. By having her picture taken wearing an abaya in Saudi Arabia - the epicenter of Islamic totalitarian misogyny - Mrs. Bush diminished that symbol. In so doing, she weakened the causes of freedom and liberty which America has fought since its founding to secure and defend at home and throughout the world.
Saudi propaganda...I’ll wager than “Caroline Glick” doesn’t even exist.
Not the columnist Caroline Glick, but this anonymous writer who probably doesn't exist as a girl living in Saudi Arabia.
It's too early in the morning....need more caffeine!
Right, but there are plenty in Italy, duh?
Caroline Glick is an American-Israeli Journalist and is the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. She is also the Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs of the Washington, DC-based Center for Security Policy.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Life
2 Remarks
3 Documentaries
4 Articles
5 References
[edit] Life
Glick was born in Chicago and graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. She emigrated to Israel in 1991 and joined the IDF.[2]
She worked in the IDF’s Judge Advocate General division during the First Intifada in 1992, and while there edited and co-authored an IDF-published book, Israel, the Intifada and the Rule of Law. Following the Oslo Accords, she worked as coordinator of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. She retired from the military with the rank of captain at the end of 1996. In 1997 and 1998 she served as assistant foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She returned to the US to get her Master of Arts in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, in 2000.
Upon her return to Israel, she became, and remains, the chief diplomatic correspondent for Makor Rishon newspaper, for which she writes a weekly column in Hebrew. She is also the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post for which she writes two weekly syndicated columns. Her writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Times, Maariv and major Jewish newspapers worldwide. She has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News Channel, Sky News, the Christian Broadcasting Network, and all of Israel’s major television networks. She also makes frequent radio appearances both in the US and Israel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Glick
She’s (C.G.) quite well known, however you’re correct.
The letter writer is clearly delusional.
“You do realize we live in the 21st century?! “
So you can drive yourself to your own stoning?
You’re an idiot, Miss Anonymous of Saudi Arabia. If you have choices, it’s because your parents give you a few. If they decided to take those away, you’d have to comply or suffer dire consequences.
When you marry, if your husband decides to take away your privileges, you will have to comply or suffer dire consequences.
You have NO rights. You have some privileges, like a pampered pet, granted by people who have the state-sanctioned power to lock you away for life, or have you destroyed.
Repeat. You have NO rights in Saudi Arabia.
To be frank, abayas are not a big deal to us, we actually embrace it and design lovely abayas that portray our personalities.<<
Foolish girl! What would happen if you chose not to wear the head covering? Your wonderful “religious” police would beat you in the streets. Also, the remark about the Vatican is ridiculous. No Muslim is forbidden to enter the Vatican. No harm will come to a Muslim who walks through St. Peter’s Square. This girl states that she is 20 yrs. old and lived in the U.S. for 13 yrs. How fortunate for her that she has a loving and understanding family. Unfortunately, there is a strong streak in her letter that points up exactly what is wrong with Islam. No Golden Rule. She doesn’t care about the abuse of women because it does not happen to her.
At least she has not been brainwashed by her religion. SARC
I actually knew who Caroline Glick was when I first posted, but in the best tradition of Homer Simpson, I was half-asleep when I hit the enter button.
You know, I have read several similar letters from Saudi women, all claiming to love wearing the abaya and having lots of freedom and fun. Somehow that just doesn't ring true. Maybe they do enjoy having Uncle Ahmed drive them to the mall wearing a hefty bag garment, so they can pick out a new one. Maybe they enjoy sitting in the womens' section of the falafel court, whispering about guys in white sheets walking by. Better not let Uncle Ahmed hear that, or he'll tell your husband, and you know what that means.
I've also read letters from American women who married Saudi men, moved to SA and entered a life of hell. Others that escaped had to leave their children behind to be raised as Muslims, as children are the property of the man. So this writer thinks her country will someday rise to shine above all others? Riiight.
So polygamy is just a magnanimous gesture on the part of Islamic males. Well now we know. The girl is wrong, we do have a right to mock her. We have a thing called “Freedom of Speech” in America. I would guess this girl has a colored moustache that is either red, orange, purple or some other color, because she has sure been drinking the Kool*Aid.
It's always lots of fun until someone gets stoned.
Same here and not the info I got from the Saudis I knew and dealt with, or what I observed
If we allow a Mosque in Vatican City wilkl they allow a CHurch in Mecca???
It makes sense not to allow another religion to be practiced in such a sacred place. As far as I know there is no mosque in Vatican City.
Let's try a different example, shall we?
You also mention how no other religions can be practiced in Israel. I want to point out this is the land that Christianity was introduced in; the land Jesus was born in, the same land that contains Bethleham and Jerusalem, two of the holiest sites in Christiandom.
It makes sense not to allow another religion to be practiced in such a sacred place. As far as I know there is no Christain church in Mecca.
If that were published, the screams of "Bigot" and "Religious Intolerance" would ring from the rafters of every pressroom in America.
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