Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, CDHR, Washington DC

October 3, 2014

Commentaries and Analysis

Destructive Taboos, Women Cannot Compete, Terrorism and Christian Cleansing

Consequences Of Destructive Religious Indoctrinations And Taboos

CDHR’s Commentary: Studies conducted by Saudi women suggested that “Nearly a Quarter of (Saudi) Children (are) Raped and up to 46% of students suffer from homosexuality.” This should not come as a surprise given the severe and destructive religious taboos, especially gender segregation, imposed on society by zealots and their heavy-handed partners, the Saudi ruling family.  

In one of his recent scare tactics and paternalistic sermons, the Saudi government’s front man, “Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Abdullah Al-Asheikh has urged the Kingdom’s youth not to visit websites that feature lewd content because such sites encourage illicit relationships.” “Illicit relationships” means any unrelated male/female relationship, even if it’s a life-saving female physicians’ confidential communication with their patients, which the Mufti and his cohorts call “khilwa” (public meetings between unrelated genders), which incurs arrests and barbaric floggings in public squares. 

Known for his obsession with women’s sexuality and fear of any hint of their self-reliance and equality, the Mufti (the highest religious authority in the country) has adamantly opposed women’s basic rights such as driving and working to earn an honest living. He and his like-minded clerics have done nothing but harm to Saudi society socially, politically, scientifically, religiously and economically. Under his leadership, the clerics have emphasized traditional and religious education instead of modern and scientific studies. They impose severe gender segregation, teach religious intolerance and support extremism as well as encourage discrimination against minorities. They issue flawed fatwas, religious edicts, and apply a multitude of contrived taboos against all natural human cravings and then cry wolf when frustrated young Saudis resort to terrorism to act out their social frustration/deprivation and political repression.  

However, no segment in Saudi society has been more targeted, marginalized and maltreated by the Saudi zealots and their system than women. The dogmatists bigotedly maintain that women are mentally and physically incapable of thinking for themselves or of controlling their sexual insatiability, therefore, they must be cloaked in black and controlled by male relatives from cradle to grave. For example, the clerics are adamantly opposed to women’s right to drive; not only do they claim that will render Saudi Arabia a virginless country, but (according to a high ranking cleric, Sheikh Saleh Al-Loheidan) ‘If a woman drives a car, it could have a negative physiological impact.’ He absurdly declared that ‘Medical studies show that it would automatically affect a woman's ovaries and that it pushes the pelvis upward.’ He continued to say, ‘We find that for women who continuously drive cars, their ch ildren are born with varying degrees of clinical problems.’ In other words, if Saudi women are allowed to drive, they will lose their virginity and only give birth to deformed children.

 The Saudi clerics, under the direction of the Mufti and his royal handlers, deceivingly insist that gender mingling is antithetical to the values and teachings of Islam; therefore, that’s a depravity that cannot not be permitted or tolerated. According to their paranoiac fear of women’s progress, the clerics insist that women must be camouflaged (disfigured) in black from head to toe. The religious restrictions imposed on women, especially emphasis of male superiority and control of the female population, are interpreted to authorize men to execute women if deemed nonconformist to the parameters of religious taboos.

It’s no wonder that many Saudi men and women, especially youth, have resorted to underground social activities, such as entertainment and homosexuality for which they can be cruelly punished if discovered by the same system that thrust them into such undertakings in the first place.  

According to studies conducted by Saudi women, “46% of students embrace homosexuality”. The study indicated that, “Twenty-three percent {of Saudi children} had been raped during their childhood. For 62% of those, the rape was never reported. This was because it (the rape) was (often committed by) one of the victim’s relatives. In the study, it was mentioned that more than 16% of the rapists were relatives, specifically 5% were siblings, 2% were teachers, and 1% were parents.”

When engaging Saudis in thought-provoking discussions about their society’s social maladies, political repression and scientific backwardness, most of them are quick to point fingers at the choking domination of the religious establishment and its royal allies instead of blaming religion itself or old traditions which the system’s operatives tend to blame for their political, social, economic and religious failures. This is a reality most Saudi citizens are becoming increasingly aware of and are debating intensely on social media, in forums and, occasionally, on newspapers columns. Many Saudis, of all stripes and orientations, feel that in order to save their country from harmful strife and move it forward, the current religious institutions must be transformed radically or replaced by modern and inclusive entities that correspond to the demands of modernity, not the seventh century’s way of life as the clerics continue to enforce.

Despite the clerics’ malicious war on Saudi women, crippling restrictions imposed on them by men and the state’s institutionalized discriminatory policies, such as the male guardian system, courageous Saudi women are fighting to win their emancipation from the talons of chauvinism and are slowly succeeding. However, they need and deserve support from visionary and anti-sexism women worldwide. Undeniably, there are millions of other women who need help and are financially less fortunate than most Saudi women. However, empowering Saudi women serves urgent need that affects most people of the world, especially Muslim women. Saudi women cannot achieve their legitimate rights to impact dogmatic Saudi policies without defeating Saudi extremists and their counterparts worldwide. 

Saudi Arabia is the birth place of Islam and home to the 1.6 billion Muslims’ holiest shrines in Mecca and Madinah; therefore, empowerment of Saudi women will resonate throughout Arab and Muslim lands and beyond. 

If This Is Not Ludicrous, What is?

 CDHR’s Commentary: “Saudi Arabia has failed {again} to include a single female athlete in its 199-strong team for the upcoming Asian Games in South Korea, saying its women are not sufficiently competitive.” How can Saudi women be competitive to do anything if they are denied everything that allows them to compete, especially in sports which they are not allowed to practice in their segregated and unequal schools, let alone in public? It’s reported that the head of the Saudi Olympic Committee, PRINCE Abdullah bin Musaed bin Abdulaziz “rejected sending women to only participate, he wanted them to compete.”

We agree with the PRINCE that Saudi women must be competing not only in domestic, regional and global sports, but in social, political, economic and religious activities. The question is how can they as long the PRINCE, his ruling family and their zealous power-base, the religious establishment, deny them their basic human and natural rights even to drive a car which is one of modernity’s absolute necessities? The religious establishment and its royal handlers “warned that allowing women to drive would” ‘provoke a surge in prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce.’ The PRINCE ought to know that, unless Saudi women are allowed to participate, they cannot compete. This is embryonic logic, but then, contradictory and unrealistic people don’t think logically.

“Degrade ISIS”- Maybe, “Ultimately Destroy”- Don’t Hold Your Breath Unless…

CDHR’s Commentary: The West can “degrade” the ISIS’s visual activities, but cannot destroy it unless it stops the terror groups at their roots: religious schools, mosques and institutionalized legitimacy where the Quran is the constitution and Shariah is the law of the land in the country where Islam was established. This is what educated and well-informed Arab and Muslim men and women, as well as many others, are saying and they are right. Terrorists do not hail from the skies. They are product of their countries’ educational institutions, mosques and socialization process.

Given this reality, the West has two options, either eradicate the root causes of Muslim terror groups or brace for decades of terror on Western soil, as King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia correctly predicted and he should be taken seriously because he knows what he is talking about. Based on what's being said and done thus far, the latter option is more likely to win because the West has no strategy, as exemplified by the US Secretary of State John Kerry’s and other Westerners' efforts to recruit the support of and rely on the creators and financiers of Muslim terror groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, Islamic Front and the Army of Islam to fight and dismantle their most valuable asset and sources of legitimacy and power base.

Dropping Bombs From High Altitudes Will Not Kill Lethal Ideologies

CDHR’s Commentary: Bullets and bombs do not kill lethal ideologies; only eradication of the institutions and detoxification of the men who create and use them to terrorize and control their populations and export them to spread their influence and achieve their objectives will do so.

Arabs, and Muslims in general, should be very concerned about the international community's realization that the ISIS's operatives are only a symptom and not the real cause of what President Obama alluded to in his speech to the UN on September 24, 2014: threat of "fascism" which led to World War II in which millions of people perished.

Despite the fact that some of the Gulf Arab states are participating in bombing ISIS’s encampments in Syria, the international community knows that the oil rich regimes, their clerics and some members of their societies are the sources of lethal religious ideology and financing of extremist and terror groups worldwide. It will take more than displaying a Saudi prince sitting in a parked plane ostensibly to take off to “degrade” ISIS and its murderous ambitions to convince the world that the Saudi regime is serious about eradicating the root causes of extremism and terrorism.

As Muslims and non-Muslims know and have decried for decades, the Saudi dogma, Wahhabism, plays a major role in religious incitement against non-Muslims, Muslim minorities, all forms of freedom of expression and individual rights to choose.  

Even King Abdullah, the Custodian of Islam’s holy shrines, has told Muslims to spread Islam because “people have no direction and are rebelling against their inner selves. Only Islam’s mercy, light and guidance can provide people with a way forward in life and toward the Hereafter.” With due respect to King Abdullah, this is precisely what Bin Laden and ISIS have proclaimed in their manifestos. ISIS is only a symptom not the disease.

 “Christianity in Iraq is Finished”

 CDHR’s Commentary: Uprooting Christians from the Middle East is not only a crime bordering on genocide, but a setback for a region that’s already suffering from the lack of political, economic, religious and scientific progress. As exemplified by the vibrant Christian segment of the Lebanese population, Arab Christians are the most academically and socially advanced, religiously tolerant, business-savvy and the only democratic community in the Arab World. They have been in the Middle East long before Islam was established. They must be protected and remain in the region, not only because that's their homeland but because of the benefits they bring to the area. 

The best and most logical approach to protecting Arab Christians is for them to have states of their own in countries like Lebanon and Egypt where millions of Christians live under Muslim laws that discriminate against and subject them to deadly attacks and destruction of their religious sanctuaries by their Muslim compatriots. Additionally, autonomy must be granted to smaller Christian communities in other Arab and Muslim states like Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey. Those countries are the Christians’ ancestral homelands where they have the right to live safely and with dignity.

Independent Christian states and autonomous regions in the heart of the Arab East can help facilitate faster transition from the current political and social stagnation that is afflicting the mostly disenfranchised Arab populations. It’s the Arab Christians’ human and divine rights to live in peace in their homelands, known as the Arab World. Their presence in the region and advanced academic and business knowledge will serve the best interest of all populations in the Middle East.

The Christians’ departure from the Middle East will only strengthen the hands of extremists, terrorists, tyrannical regimes and the zealots of backwardness. Not only will deracinating Christians from their homelands plunge the region into further darkness, but it will empower those whose main objective is the destruction of all forms of democratic governance. Those in the US and Europe who continue to insist that the West should stay out of the Middle East (with good intention) may live to regret what they think might be the right thing to do now.

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