"The man she with? He looka like a man."
Posted on 02/06/2008 5:30:29 PM PST by Stoat
A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.
Yara, who does not want her last name published for fear of retribution, was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom's “Mutaween” police.
Her story offers a rare first-hand glimpse of the discrimination faced by women living in Saudi Arabia. In her first interview with the foreign press, Yara told The Times that she would remain in Saudi Arabia to challenge its harsh enforcement of conservative Islam rather than return to America.
“If I want to make a difference I have to stick around. If I leave they win. I can't just surrender to the terrorist acts of these people,” said Yara, who moved to Jeddah eight years ago with her husband, a prominent businessman.
Her ordeal began with a routine visit to the new Riyadh offices of her finance company, where she is a managing partner.
The electricity temporarily cut out, so Yara and her colleagues — who are all men — went to a nearby Starbucks to use its wireless internet.
She sat in a curtained booth with her business partner in the café's “family” area, the only seats where men and women are allowed to mix.
For Yara, it was a matter of convenience. But in Saudi Arabia, public contact between unrelated men and women is strictly prohibited.
“Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked ‘Why are you here together?'. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin,” recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.
The men were from Saudi Arabia's Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.
Yara, whose parents are Jordanian and grew up in Salt Lake City, once believed that life in Saudi Arabia was becoming more liberal. But on Monday the religious police took her mobile phone, pushed her into a cab and drove her to Malaz prison in Riyadh. She was interrogated, strip-searched and forced to sign and fingerprint a series of confessions pleading guilty to her “crime”.
“They took me into a filthy bathroom, full of water and dirt. They made me take off my clothes and squat and they threw my clothes in this slush and made me put them back on,” she said. Eventually she was taken before a judge.
“He said 'You are sinful and you are going to burn in hell'. I told him I was sorry. I was very submissive. I had given up. I felt hopeless,” she said.
Yara's husband, Hatim, used his political contacts in Jeddah to track her whereabouts. He was able to secure her release.
“I was lucky. I met other women in that prison who don't have the connections I did,” she said. Her story has received rare coverage in Saudi Arabia, where the press has been sharply critical of the police.
Yara was visited yesterday by officials from the American Embassy, who promised they would file a report.
An embassy official told The Times that it was being treated as “an internal Saudi matter” and refused to comment on her case.
Tough justice
— Saudi Arabia’s Mutaween has 10,000 members in almost 500 offices
— Ahmad al-Bluwi, 50, died in custody in 2007 in the city of Tabuk after he invited a woman outside his immediate family into his car
— In 2007 the victim of a gang rape was sentenced to 200 lashes and six years in jail for having been in an unrelated man’s car at the time. She was pardoned by King Abdullah, although he maintained the sentence had been fair
I have witnessed and heard about several run ins with these thugs over the years. They are pretty much unregulated and don’t answer to the civil authorities. Their presence in Saudi Arabia is part of a bargain the Saud family made decades ago to obtain power.
couldn’t pay me enough to work there
Anyone going to a lion’s den should not be surprised when they end up as food for large angry cats.
When you sleep with camels don’t be surprised when you wake up with fleas.
I wonder if she really thinks she can accomplish anything by staying there: These are men who think women are inherently unclean and evil. And a Westerner, even more so. I also wonder if she still thinks it’s a great place to make money. At what cost to your human dignity?
If you hang out with the dogs you’re gonna get some fleas.
The muttawah are the very definition of “jerk”. If you’ve ever watched those guys in action, you want to pop their little heads like a pimple.
Sounds like she didn’t keep a lid on things.
I have no doubt that you're correct, and I thought it would be helpful for readers to see what you, other posters and this article refer to.
I looked for an example on YouTube and found this by using the keywords "saudi religious police"
YouTube - caught by saudi religious authority
It's probably not the best example, but I was surprised that I didn't see more videos of this sort of thing. I'm wondering if
If she wants to make big money working there she better be prepared to suffer the consequences. Most sane women wouldn’t be so foolish as this mother of 3 children.
I’m sorry but as much as I despise Saudi Arabia and ALL that it stands for this woman has no business complaining about living in an entrenched 7th century culture.
Western women simply should not go to or live in a muslim country under any circumstances.
The barbarity and backwardness of Saudi Arabia and Islam aside, this headline really irritates me. What does the fact that this woman is a mother have to do with her getting arrested?
I don't think that it had anything to do with her getting arrested; it merely describes who she is.
Perhaps, but the headline writer could have referred to her as an American woman or American businesswoman, a description that would actually have been relevant to the story.
Do you think that it may be possible that the headline writer was sympathetic to her plight, and so she wanted to describe her in a sympathetic yet accurate way?
I think that most people would want to read about a “mother” who was cruelly mistreated as opposed to an “American Businesswoman” who was mistreated, particularly in a fairly liberal UK paper that has not gone out of it’s way to print a whole lot of pro-American articles lately.
"The man she with? He looka like a man."
Probably so, and frankly, that's what I find irritating about it. When I see a headline like this, I generally see it as an attempt to manipulate the reader's emotions. These kinds of headlines usually show up above stories about people like Cindy Sheehan or Elvira Arellano--women who use their children and their status as mothers to cynically manipulate public opinion. I am actually sympathetic to the plight of the woman in this particular article, but I resent the attempt at manipulation and the implication that she is more worthy of concern than a childless woman.
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