Saudi fatwa against women cashiers

Agence France-Presse ^ | 11/2/10 | Staff

[Nachum]

SAUDI women activists expressed outrage and confusion overnight at a new fatwa challenging a government initiative to allow women to work as cashiers in supermarkets and department stores.

The fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, issued on Sunday by the kingdom's governing body of clerics, said the cashier jobs were not permissible because they resulted in the women mixing with unrelated men, which is prohibited under Saudi Arabia's ultra-strict form of Islam.

Signed by the country's grand mufti and six other top clerics, it contradicted a push by the government to create new jobs for women, who face high unemployment in the kingdom.

According to figures reported in April, unemployment among Saudi women was 28.4 per cent in 2009, up from 26.9 per cent in 2008.

"The progressive women are all outraged," said Fawzia al-Bakr, a professor at Riyadh's King Saud University.

[Silentgypsy]

Thank God for America. Thank God for American men. Islamic males are inadequate. Kudos to the Saudi women.

[PGR88]

There is one job for which Muslim women are accepted....

[monkeyshine]

Um, so when women shop and use male cashiers, that is not “mixing with unrelated men?”