A Day for the Illegally Detained: Remembering Saudi’s Prisoners

This past Monday was named a “Day for the Illegally Detained”. A Twitter account called ‘al-Munaseron’, which translates simply to ‘the supporters’, first announced that May 20th would be designated as a day to remember illegally detained prisoners. Many families of detainees and their supporters have decided to participate, the most prominent cities participating are Buraidah and Riyadh.

Numerous ways of supporting the cause and joining in protest were discussed for the past week or so among detainees’ families and sympathizers. The ‘al-Munaseron’ account then released a list of suggestions via TwitMail. Below, I have translated the suggested methods of participation and included pictures and videos of how supporters actually went about doing them:

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1. Make contact with all parts of society and spread the word. Focusing mainly on families of illegally detained, Ministry of Interior, Secret police, Human Rights Organizations, and religious clerics, to remind them of their duty to support the oppressed.

Description: The slideshow shows text messages sent to officials in the Ministry of Interior and those working in the jails. It also shows women who attempted to meet the officials (video can be seen here) but were turned away and only allowed a phonecall with a lower-level official.

 

2. Hang fabric protest signs on houses, bridges, and all other locations. They should be written on in big, legible writing, pictured, and posted on the “illegally detained day” Twitter hashtag.

Description: Fabric protest signs were hung over numerous homes, mostly in the city of Buraidah. Signs were also hung on people’s cars in their driveways and by their main doors. Homemade foods were also cooked that then had slogans written on them.

 

3. Record video interviews that are 2 minutes long of a detainee’s parents or spouse in order to describe their case and oppression of the detainee. These videos ought to be directed to the Saudi people.

Description: The video is a short skit done by children of detainees to show their experience of illegal arrests and house searches.

 

4. Distribute protest posters, pamphlets, and signs that do not have Allah’s name on them (likely out of respect, in case the posters were to be dirtied or fall on the ground). Possible locations of distribution are cars, houses, mosques, stores, schools, colleges, and should be printed within homes.

5. Print stickers that describe the suffering faced by detainees. They should be printed using home printers and their distribution should be documented in pictures.

Description: The slidshow shows posters and stickers with protest slogans being placed in various locations: Imam University, Riyadh Mall shopping carts, candies to be handed out in Riyadh Mall, school computer, school doors, car doors, car windshields, house doors, King Fahd Rd. Bridge, a mosque, and an ATM. “Release the detained” slogan was also written on money to be circulated. A link was also provided to participants by the al-Munaseron account for a template of printable posters and can be seen here. Videos of the distribution of these posters and stickers can be watched here, here, and here.

 

6. Joint release of balloons into the air at the same time with slogans written on them for the release of illegally detained prisoners. The designayed time is 10 minutes before Maghreb prayer.

 

7. Record a women’s protest-stand within homes. Three or more women should participate by holding signs and banners for the illegally detained.

 

8. Turning on car and house lights during the day as a symbolic sign of protest.

9. Redistribute old youtube videos on the issue of illegally detained on the “day for illegally detained” Twitter hashtag.

10. Using the protest’s designated logo on Twitter accounts.

 

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• Reactions to the Day for Illegally Detained

Governmental reaction was initially minimal. Which was probably strategic, so as to avoid escalations. From what I can tell, there were approximately four cases in which police got involved.

The first being at a house of the son of detainee Abdullah al-Ayaf, whose picture hung from their roof, tweeted that patrol cars surrounded his home. The second incident was at the house of relatives to the detainees Fayez and Faraj al-Rashid. The security police also took great issue with their houses’ protest sign, though it did not have the detainees’ pictures on it. Their mother tweeted that she had just come home from her farm to find police had surrounded the house again and were using a flashlight to take pictures of her protest sign.

The third case happened earlier that day, the mother of detainees Saleh and Yaser al-Rashid had spoken with the police who asked her to take down the sign. They told her it wasn’t a solution, it wouldn’t do any good, and that she should go to officials directly instead. She replied, “Four years we’ve tried, nothing worked. This is a solution. Our livers are burning. We sent faxes, we made calls. Went here, went there. We’re fed up”.

That night, her daughter Aminah al-Rashid tweeted that her brother Omar was taken by the secret police and was threatened that their home would be searched and their own protest sign taken down. This did not happen, however, and just hours later her brother was released without bail and without signing any forced pledges. It is unclear why he was even taken in the first place other than as a form of intimidation.

The fourth case was with the sister of detainee Houd al-Oqail, Khawla. She hung a photo of her illegally detained brother from the roof.

And she tweeted a picture outside her window that showed patrol cars around her house that night.

While I cannot determine why the first three cases occurred, it is highly likely that the fourth case happened because Houd al-Oqail’s arrest for participating in protests was very public and possibly because of his loose affiliation with ACPRA.

The day before the final trial of ACPRA’s co-founders, on March 8, 2013, al-Qahtani posted a picture with Houd al-Oqail sitting next to him during a lecture – the physical injuries he incurred after his first arrest can be seen as well.

After the trial and arrest of ACPRA co-founders, al-Oqail was arrested for a second time on March 18, 2013. ACPRA issued a statement condemning his detainment and others on March 29, 2013. Unlike most arrests, it was caught on camera and video. Below are pictures of the illegal arrest and house search.

And here is his mother’s witness testimony and video of the arrest.

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• Remembering Saudi’s NGO Activists and Reformists

As for my contribution to the Day for Illegally Detained, I’d like to draw attention to the recent crackdown on NGOs in Saudi Arabia and the illegal detainments and pressure these activists have been subjected to. The Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) had its co-founders Mohammad al-Qahtani and Abdullah al-Hamid sentenced to jail and banned from travel for 10 years after their semi-public joint trials on March 9, 2013. They were abruptly arrested as they were walking out of their final court session. Many of their supporters didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. Myself included.

As a result of that same trial, the court ordered ACPRA to be dissolved and its possessions confiscated. The organization had never been officially recognized and many found it almost humorous that it was only acknowledged by the court in order to be disbanded. This past week, lawyer Abdulaziz al-Hussan tweeted that a group had just completed writing up the first draft of a memorandum of appeal of the court decision against al-Qahtani and al-Hamid. The next day, March 18, 2013, lawyer Ibrahim al-Modaimig announced that he had reviewed the memorandum of appeal with his clients and that they were in high spirits and decent health.

 

Currently, the following ACPRA members are in jail:

1. Mohammad al-Qahtani: Co-founder of ACPRA. Arrested after semi-public trial on March 9, 2013.

2. Abdullah al-Hamid: Co-founder of ACPRA. Arrested after semi-public trial on March 9, 2013.

3. Mohammad al-Bajadi: Co-founder of ACPRA. Arrested after secret trial on March 20, 2011.

4- Sulaiman al-Rashoudi: Elected president of ACPRA on November 25, 2012.  Arrested from his home on December 12, 2012.

5- Abdulkarim al-Khodar: Co-founder of ACPRA. Arrested during ongoing trials on April 25, 2013.

6- Omar al-Said: Youngest member of ACPRA (22 years old). After his college classes on April 28, 2013, he went to attend an interrogation appointment and was detained.

7- Saleh al-Ashwan: Member of ACPRA. Arrested after an illegal house search on July 7, 2012.

 

The following ACPRA members and/or affiliates are undergoing investigations and governmental pressure:

1- Fowzan al-Harbi: Co-founder and newly elected president of ACPRA on Janurary 29, 2013 after the arrest of detainment of former president Sulaiman al-Rashoudi.  Summoned by Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution on May 6, 2013 and attended first investigation on May 15, 2013.

2- Abdulaziz al-Hussan: Lawyer of ACPRA co-founders al-Qahtani and al-Hamid. A complain was first issued against him on April 12, 2013 by the Riyadh Governance after he tweeted, “We just came out of Malaz Prison and my clients have refused to meet us in chains”, and “Prison administrator refused to unchain them and asked us to bring an order from the governorate”. He was forced to take a temporary academic appointment in the United States. Foreign Policy’s Marc Lynch met with him and commented, “during a conversation in Washington this week, Hussan emphasized that this was not just a personal matter. He told me that his case was part of a broader crackdown on human rights activists, lawyers, and reformers. ”

3- Iman al-Qahtani: Affiliate of ACPRA. She is a journalist and often covered their trials and other activities. After receiving threats, as reported in Doha Center for Media Freedom and the Gulf Center for Human Rights, she was forced to stop her activities on Twitter temporary.

4- Waleed Abu al-Khair: Head of Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. It was confirmed that he was banned from travel on March 28, 2012 and has been under on and off investigations and trials. He was awarded the Olof Palme Prize in 2012, which his wife accepted in Sweden on his behalf, and dedicated it to ACPRA’s co-founder al-Hamid.

4- Mohammad al-Abdulkarim: Affiliate of ACPRA. Banned from travel for two and a half years and banned from academic work due to his activism. He gives a lecture with al-Qahtani that can be watched here on the future of peaceful protest in Saudi Arabia.

5- Saeed bin Zuair: Reformist and affiliate of ACPRA. Arrested approximately five years ago. Cleared of charges, reissued charges, and is now undergoing trial. Awarded ‘AlKarama Award for Human Rights Defenders’ in 2011. ACPRA’s Mohammad al-Qahtani attended the ceremony and accepted the award on his behalf in Geneva.

On April 3, 2013, a new rights organization called “Union for Human Rights” was launched. Some of its members are activists close to ACPRA and/or former members of it. In comparison to ACPRA, the organization was noticeably more watered down in the rhetoric of its founding statement and tried to emphasize its goal as being the defense of Human Rights in itself, rather than a broader call for political rights and reform. It is likely that this caution was due to the fact that its initiation occurred so soon after the trials of ACPRA’s al-Qahtani and al-Hamid. Even so, the government’s response to this new organization was swift.

The following are members of the new “Union for Human Rights” that are all undergoing investigations and have been charged with “establishing a non-licensed NGO”:

1- Mohammad Ayed al-Otaibi: Summoned on April 27, 2013. Attended first investigation on April 28, 2013.

2- Mohammad Abdullah al-Otaibi: Summoned on April 28, 2013. Attended first investigation on April 29, 2013.

3- Abdullah al-Atawi: Summoned on April 28, 2013. Attended first investigation on April 30, 2013.

4- Abdullah al-Harbi: Summoned on April 29, 2013. Attended first investigation on April 30, 2013.

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• Conclusion

It is impressive to see such a degree of organized forms of protests. Most Saudis who took interest received it well; some taunted the efforts as being too minor and not daring enough. But in a country with such dismal respect for citizens’ rights, particularly in political cases, it is important to appreciate those who still tirelessly demand the law’s just application.

There is an Arabic saying that goes, “repeated hits break the welding”. The distributed stickers and posters for the ‘Day for the Illegally Detained’ may have been small, the ‘protests’ may have been in people’s backyards, and the fabric signs may have only been hung on their homes’ balconies and rooftops, but even these small efforts make a difference. This rights movement is persistent and this makes it significant. These acts may seem timid in other contexts, but in Saudi they are steady hits at a welding of injustice. And maybe, one day, it will break.

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My own little sign for the ‘Day for Illegally Detained’, it says “ACPRA is in our hearts”. They will not be forgotten..

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Boston Bombings: A Saudi-American Perspective

On wind he walks, and in wind / he knows himself. / There is no ceiling for the wind, / no home for the wind. / Wind is the compass / of the stranger’s North. / He says: I am from there, I am from here, / but I am neither there nor here./

By traveling freely across cultures / those in search of the human essense may find a space for all to sit.. / Here a margin advances. / Or a centre retreats. / Where East is not strictly east, / and West is not strictly west, / where identity is open to plurality, not a fort or a trench./

- Mahmoud Darwish (excerpts from his elegy poem to Edward Said)

 

• INTRO

I’ve felt so many things following the Boston Marathon bombings; it is impossible for me to narrow it down to a single sentiment. Events that touch on identity are challenging for me to process, as I’m often left in a schizophrenic daze. Throughout this ordeal, I felt myself shift from one side of my Self to the other, and from one emotion to the next. So, I won’t try to simplify what is inherently complex. I will simply present and reflect, and nothing more. No fancy theorizing, no overarching message. This post is only meant to be a glimpse at personal identity – that wild thing which one cannot pin down.

 

• HEARING THE NEWS

I heard about the Boston bombings first from a group of Saudi, Arab-Nationalist friends. I was driving to class at the time, and felt my chest tighten as I read the news on my phone. My first question was: “did a Saudi do it?” I thought again, “did an Arab and/or Muslim do it?”.

The media was quickly saturated with the event, and everyone was talking about it. This kind of intense coverage is typically accompanied by a flow of criticism that goes something like: “only an American life lost matters, whereas lives in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq are forgotten”. Among my group of friends, this sentiment was present. It was quickly shushed, however, when one of them said their brother in Boston was possibly affected by the bombing. She said that he was not answering his phone, and their entire family was worried.

I was angry that it took a personal connection for them to have some empathy for the situation in Boston. I was angry that they had dismissed it at first as “not a big deal, only a few deaths, nothing in comparison to the many deaths of Arabs”. I know three people is a small casualty count when compared to the millions of victims of various wars, I understand the resentment toward the imbalanced news coverage. But I detest the idea that asserting Arabs’ right to have grievances and to be heard means that it’s morally appropriate to taunt any grievance heard from their American counterparts. I don’t often identify with local American events, but at that moment I had felt for “my people” in Boston. And why shouldn’t I? The bombings were a horrible event, and it wasn’t their fault if news coverage emphasized their lives more than others.

 

• THE ACCUSATION

Well, that shift didn’t last for too long. I soon felt for “my people” in Saudi, since the New York Post began to point fingers at them, irresponsibly releasing an article stating: “Investigators have a suspect — a Saudi Arabian national — in the horrific Boston Marathon bombings”.

Anxiety had displaced sympathy; I was worried he was the culprit. I was worried about the possible subsequent “fallout” of his involvement, as political analysts emptily call it.

It’s a selfish emotion, isn’t it? To be so worried that half of your identity will be tarnished by a crime, that you have no time to sympathize with the effects that crime inflicted on your other half.

 

• INITIAL SAUDI REACTION TO ACCUSATION

It turned out, however, that the Saudi student, named Abdulrahman Ali al-Harbi, was not a “suspect”, as clarified by the Boston Police: “Honestly, I don’t know where they [NY Post] are getting their information from, but it didn’t come from us”. And in a later press conference repeated, “Those reports are not true, there is no suspect in custody”.

But the damage had already been done. Ironically, it was some Saudis that were all too ready to accept the title of “suspect”. Twitter lit up – Saudi liberals began blaming all Shaiks for ruining young minds with extremism, Saudi self-Orientalists went on to complain how the “backwards” Arabs will never “progress” since all they do is bomb people, and so on.

Arab media outlets were also among the most eager to spread the news. Equally irresponsible Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera were all over the story, and began circulating the thinly-sourced claim against the Saudi student. Only to later back out of it in cowardly fashion, arguing that they were only repeating what they had heard from NY Post. Basically admitting that their credibility was equal to that of hearsay.

 

• LATER SAUDI REACTION TO ACCUSATION

The Saudi was later declared a “person of interest”, rather than “suspect”. It was anyone’s guess what that meant, really. But, at this point, all Saudis began to feel like “persons of interest”. I say this because it was around this time that a steady flow of condemnation began to emerge from Saudis abroad via social media, particularly those in Boston. Unlike 9/11, this wasn’t just an event in the distant West. Many Saudi students are in Boston, it hit very close to home (away from home) for them and their relatives. Some were even at the Marathon and began recounting the experience on Twitter and in local Saudi media like Arab News. Others decided to donate their blood to help victims of the bombings and shared their intent to do so online.

This didn’t go unnoticed by other Saudis. Some tantalized them, likening them to cowards who only expressed empathy for Boston because they were intimidated by the US government. Others dismissed them as ungenuine, claiming instead that the empathy expressed was out of self-concern for their own fellow Saudis in Boston. This is what happens when emotions enter the political realm. Once they are made public, they instantly become subject to suspicion and power-play. They inevitably fall into political narratives and personal agendas.

I was going to object to these critiques launched at the empathetic Saudis, but after careful thought, I decided there might be at least a grain of truth there. I realized there were two possible motivations behind the empathy for Bostonians and condemnations of the bombings. One was pure sympathy. The other was fear of blame.

It’s frustrating to see that some Saudis felt compelled to condemn the Boston Bombings publically, whether out of sympathy or fear, or both, knowing that keeping such emotions private, though private is where they remain most genuine, will only leave them looking like “persons of interest”. It’s sad. No one should feel compelled of expected to show anything private to anyone publicly.

It seemed as though they were operating within the Other framework, rather than against it. I understand, however, why pragmatic methods of “outreach” like this are often used. Saudis, and Arabs more generally, remember being synonymous with terrorism following 9/11. They remember racial profiling, just as Muslims of all ethnicities remember Islamophobia. It’s not so easy to operate against an Other construct when you feel it being so intensely framed around you.

I was reminded of this when I came across a news article on the Boston Bombing that had a picture showing the 15 Saudis involved in the 9/11 attacks. It was so disturbing to see – what was its purpose there, placed so loosely next to an article on the Saudi “person of interest”? I felt like writing the editors: is that the only picture you could find to associate with Saudis? Is that the only way you figured you could jog the memory of your readers’ minds as to who Saudis are? Were those 15 faces supposed to stand in substitution for and as a reduction of who I am as a Saudi, and more broadly as an Arab? The answer is likely an indifferent, “yes”.

Around this time, my Saudi friend had told me that she finally heard back from her brother in Boston. He was okay; he had just left the marathon before the bombs went off. It turned out that cell phone service had been briefly turned off afterwards, which is why calls to his phone hadn’t been going through. Like her brother, my friend was also studying abroad, and their mother was a wreck with worry. The family Skyped, just happy to see each other safe, like many other victims of the bombings. My friend told me how she had never been particularly close to her brother; she didn’t know she cared as much as she did before then. I was saddened by what she said next. It turns out, she had been worried that he would be suspected in the bombing because he looked Arab… and he had a beard. Which, as my Saudi friend knew all too well, might classify him as “scary”.

 

• BEING CLEARED OF ACCUSATION

Eventually the Saudi student was fully cleared of his “person of interest” status. However, that was not before his apartment was searched and his roommate was harassed by the media to the point where he had to tell them, “dude, just let me go to school”. The student was then named a cooperative witness and a victim of the bombings, as he had acquired burn-related injuries.

I was relieved.

I suppose I feared the consequences of the case being “foreign”. When a foreigner is linked to an attack, an outward patriotism begins and it is a tool for revenge, rather than healing. It turns ugly, and that is typically when xenophobia and bigotry make their entrance.

This relief comes with guilt, of course. As a half-American, one might ask: why would I want one of “my people” to have been the culprit of an offense against themselves?

While thinking through this, I came across an article by David Sirota. He argued, “regardless of your particular party affiliation, if you care about everything from stopping war to reducing the defense budget to protecting civil liberties to passing immigration reform, you should hope the bomber was a white domestic terrorist. Why? Because… white privilege will work to not only insulate whites from collective blame, but also to insulate the political debate from any fallout from the attack… If the bomber ends up being a Muslim and/or a foreigner from the developing world… As we know from our own history, when those kind of individuals break laws in such a high-profile way, America often cites them as both proof that entire demographic groups must be targeted, and that therefore a more systemic response is warranted”.

But I’m not really comfortable wishing blame on a people to clear another, frankly. I’m not a consequentialist, either. I won’t sit here and calculate the amount of harm that will be caused to Arabs/Muslims and thus find it morally permissible to use Americans as a means to my end. And so, I was able to work out my feeling of guilt in this way: it wasn’t so much that I wanted the case to be domestic as that I wanted so much for it to not be foreign. I do believe there is a difference there.

 

• SEEING THE SUSPECTS

On Friday, April 18^th, the FBI held a press conference and released photos of the suspects. Supposedly they had footage of one of them placing the bag with a bomb in it down, and a photo soon surfaced of him walking away from the site. In the same photo was the little boy who lost his life as a result of that man’s act. It’s chilling to see a picture capture a moment in time that held both the ideologue and his ‘collateral damage’ in the same frame.

 

These images came as a refutation to CNN’s so-called “exclusive” information regarding the “dark-skinned” suspect, which basically implicated all “brown people” as being behind the bombings. It also refuted NY Post’s “bag men” cover story, which specifically incriminated two young men, one who was identified first on Reddit as a Morrocan-American high schooler.

CNN reporters began to analyze how surprisingly “American” the suspects looked in these photos released by the FBI, but that foreign links could still exist. The “experts” were then brought on to discuss how pressure cooker bombs are mentioned in Jihadist magazines, followed by a quick mumble on how The Anarchist Cookbook also mentions the same type of bomb.

Journalism was dying, I thought. Rather than working from the facts, leads, and inside sources, toward the “truth” – reporters were working from assumptions, prejudices, and phobias, toward the “speculative truth”. It was yellow journalism at its finest.

Now, a critique might be made that this is natural, since Muslims/Arabs have been the culprits of crimes before. I agree, they have been, but so have others. To firstly focus on one group, ideology, or religion, rather than others, is to expose your bias. Precedence does not excuse prejudice. Unless there is concrete evidence, I don’t want to hear any “speculative analysis” on official news outlets. It’s important to watch words used, especially in image-creating professions like journalism. They can rouse emotions, and smear a people.

An example of this is a story posted first by the New York Post that a Bangladeshi had been beaten for looking like “a f**kin’ Arab”. I cannot comprehend the gall that the NY Post has. After twice implicated people of Arab descent, they were the first to report of a crime that resulted after such fear-mongering and Otherizing. And yet no apology for their false reporting has been made, not even an edit or correction was added to clear up their false accusations.

 

• THE CHASE OF THE SUSPECT

Then, a break in the case occurred – the suspects were identified. They were of Chechen in descent and Muslim in faith.

A police officer was shot at MIT and a carjacking happened in Cambridge by the suspects. And the chase began, complete with grenades, mini-explosives, and approximately 200 rounds of bullets. The entire city of Boston was on lockdown.

At this point, I realized a dear American friend of mine might be in Cambridge, as she currently is studying at Harvard. She’s a former writing teacher of mine and has meant a lot to me throughout recent years.

I grew worried and contacted her to make sure she was okay. I was then glued to my laptop screen, watching a local Boston news channel (since CNN was absolutely failing at any sense of coherency in reporting by this time). I refreshed her social media pages every few minutes, waiting for any updates.

My worry was exasperated when, on Twitter, a Bostonian posted a picture of a stray bullet that had shot through his window, chair, and hit his wall.

Moments later, I noticed another picture on my Twitter timeline. It was of a group of Syrians holding a sign that read, “Boston bombings represent a sorrowful scene of what happens everyday in Syria. Do accept our Condolences”. Under the horrible circumstances in Syria, it’s no wonder that such sentiments exist among its people.

But the commentary on Twitter around the image is what I did not care for. It was that of emotional blackmail. From what was being said, it was as though my sympathy for Boston, and those I cared for in it, was somehow a betrayal of Arab causes. And it was as if Americans owed something to Syria, they hadn’t “saved” it, and for failing to do so, they were experiencing a form of retribution.

I continued to watch the Boston’s local news channel; mentally reminding myself there is nothing wrong with caring for Boston and those in it, and that I was not becoming less Arab somehow for doing so. Nor was it a belittling of Syrians, Iraqis, or Afghanis.

For, just as I despised watching some demonize Muslims as a result of the suspect being one, I despised watching some demonize Americans as a result of their government’s foreign policy. It is important in such times to remember that the acts of a few are not the fault of the whole, and I refuse to spread blame so thin that those who rightfully should have it, do not, and those who rightfully should not, do. To blame all is to blame none, since fault comes apart with the loss of its prerequisite of specificity.

 

• AFTER THE SUSPECTS’ ARREST

Early Saturday morning came and the suspect was apprehended, while the other suspect had died Friday night. Boston was safe again. I was happy for this.

In the following days, as Boston is getting back to normal, the sensationalizing of all things related to the suspects now begins. Some media outlets are literally fishing for gossip-like information on the suspects. The Daily Mail released an article of the Boston bombing’s wife, that reportedly shows how she was “an all-American girl who was brainwashed” by her husband. Implying that, apparently, “all-American girl” is the symbol of “good” personified in her old yearbook pictures meant to show “the good ‘ol days”, before she turned “bad” and began wearing a hijab and called herself a Muslim. While The Daily Beast picked up a Tumblr entry written by Alyssa Kilzer who claims, “I got facials from Dzhokhar and Tamerlan’s mother for years”, and that “I became uncomfortable as I watched her religious zeal and offensive political views grow over time”. One may not agree with such a religion, or such political views, but, presented in such a bare manner, they ultimately don’t relate to the case at hand other than to sensationalize it.

And so it goes, I suppose. Demonization, from all sides, is here to stay.

 

• CONCLUSION

Ultimately, I personally do not have a clear-cut “my people”. I only have this people, and that people. As Mahmoud Darwish phrased it, “I am from there, I am from here, but I am neither there nor here.” Politically, I may identify with Arab causes more, but I desire the Otherizing of neither side by either side. I find myself, “Where East is not strictly east, and West is not strictly west. Where identity is open to plurality, not a fort or a trench”.

And I don’t think it’s such a bleak observation to make that the Self-Other binary will always exist among us. I consider it in more of a matter-of-fact way, that’s just how humans understand each other. I’m not even sure we can fully identify our Self without first seeing an Other. Without others, we just ‘are’. Difference is almost needed, in a way, to meaningfully say what we define ‘is’.

But taking it that step further, to say Americans “deserved that harm”, because of past governmental acts, or that Arabs/Muslims “deserved that blame”, because of past individual or group acts by those who identify with either group, even when said out of anger at very real grievances from either side, is wrong. Blame must remain specific and proportionate.

Even the blame to be issued to the suspect that is still alive ought to be specifically to him: Dhokhar Tsarnaev - not Muslims, not Chechens, and not American immigrants. The consequence of that blame also ought to be proportionate to his murders: the death penalty, after due process. Not because he is a devil, but because he is a criminal. Not because he committed evil, but because he committed a wrong.

Why do I emphasize such distinctions? Because “evil” and “devil” are otherworldly. And, sadly, wrongdoing is very much of this world.

But, so is goodness.

My friend in Boston wrote, after finding out the suspect was in custody, and in reference to the factory explosion in Texas that occurred around the same time: “My brother reminded me today, [to be] grateful for all who run toward the danger to get everyone else out. The first responders in West were volunteer firemen, like him”.

Such great people do deserve the title of “heroes”, and it is good to be reminded that they exist following recent events. They remind us that heroism is not such a rarity; it is an expected response from some people.

So, let us also take comfort in remembering that, like extraordinary crimes we see committed by individuals, groups, or governments, the extraordinary courage of such people is natural, almost ordinary. We tend to treat altruistic actions almost as otherworldly as we treat “evil” acts. When, really, human nature has the capacity to do both great wrongs and great goods.

As was once told to me: humans are neither devils, nor angels. They’re just human.

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I was asked by the director of the Saudi Student Organization at University of Evansville in Indiana to share their video for the Boston bombings victims and their families..

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Saudi Feminism In The Social Realm: In Defense of Personal Revolutions

“’Cover up, you woman!’, [they say]. But I won’t cover, and your trashy way of offering religious advice wont work with me”, proclaimed a Saudi woman named Loujain al-Hathloul in a video posted on her “keek” account. She then laughed, and began to show her “keek” followers various campus buildings at the University of British Columbia in Canada, where she studies French Literature. A day or two later, her video went viral among general Twitter users. She is now the #1 top-viewed Saudi user on “keek”, and the #18 top-viewed user in All Countries.

 

• Understanding Authentic Acts & Defining ‘Personal Revolutions’

I admit; my first impression was that the video was juvenile, since it wasn’t exactly the most serious attempt to start a debate on the interplay of societal pressure and religious practice. Many who are mainly focused on the political dismissed her videos outright as just reckless and pointless.

But, I am reminded of an old conversation I once had, in which I was asked simply, “why must every act have a point, or a purpose in the grand scheme of things?”. I remember, I’d never thought of it that way before, and soon came across Nietzsche’s warning against this same tendency in understanding human affairs, “mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity”.

It does make sense, when one thinks about it. In all honesty, who has not had such frivolous moments? Who has not spontaneously poked at fire, seeking the thrill of watching its sparks fly? Life would be a bore without these bursts of valor, as silly as they may appear at first. As Heraclitus, one of the first Ancient Greek philosophers to favor rebellious thought, said, “Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play”. And so, in her playful seriousness, Loujain was asserting her Self. And socially, even the smallest of such authentic assertions can be considered personal revolutions.

Now, what do I mean by “personal revolutions”? I mean an assertion of Self through choice of action, irrespective of its alignment with society. In other words, I do not applaud Loujain’s act because she was uncovered in a video, there is nothing intrinsically better about forgoing Hijab nor is there anything intrinsically worthy in defying society simply for the sake of defying society. Rather, I support her “personal revolution” in making a choice for herself, whatever it may be, and then displaying this choice before others. And since appearing authentically before others, such as individuals and more broadly society itself, is especially difficult, as all that is typically encouraged is timid obedience and homogeneity; that is why I deem any Self-made decision a sort of personal revolt.

 

• The Range of Reactions to Loujain al-Hathloul’s Videos

In the case of Loujain al-Hathlou’s “personal revolution”, reactions have ranged from harmless spoof videos, to the emergence of groupies and admirers of her looks, while many others pass judgment on her, either directly calling her a whore or at least insinuating it, and a few others hold her responsible for smearing the image of Saudi women who study abroad.

And before the Orientalists get overly excited to cite her story as a case of “conservatives of society versus Saudi women”, I will point to two prominent, yet drastically different reactions of conservatives. The first being a Saudi conservative who expressed his concern for Saudi women abroad, and asked for a ‘print’ on her, which I can only translate to be a sort of societal background-check on Loujain and her family. He then offered that his brother in Canada would marry her, most likely in order to “fix” her supposedly immoral ways. This conservative was hashtagged, and later deleted his Twitter account. Many felt he had gone too far and some began arguing that it was no one’s business what she does or does not do. The second, on the other hand, was a well-known conservative named Shaik Twfeg al-Sayg who came to her defense in stating, “a woman is not a whore for simply being openly uncovered and beautified. It may be morally wrong, but this does not legitimize speaking ill of her reputation”.

The harshest reaction, however, was a widely circulated response video in which a Saudi man reiterated the most common issue any Saudi woman will face in both the social and political realm: her reputation. He tells Loujain, “do you know that you just lost your future?”,  meaning, in posting her videos while uncovered, she just lost social respect and any prospect of marriage and a ‘good life’. He went on to refer to her self-worth vis-à-vis her dowry price, “did you know that with your Niqab you were worth 120,000 riyals. Now, you are worth 1400 or 1300 riyals, no more than an Internet modem, 3 sticks of gum, and half a water bottle”.

Another video response was then posted by a man, it is unclear whether he is Saudi or Kuwaiti, in which he shows himself throwing stacks of money onto his car dashboard, claiming to be ready to pay 1.4 Million riyals as dowry to marry Loujain. I was perplexed by this last reaction, was it a compliment that he was willing to pay such a high amount to marry her? Frankly, even if he meant well, the imagery of his throwing so much money onto a car dashboard was just too similar to throwing money at a pole for me to find it as anything but derogatory.

 

• The Need to Revolt Against Restrictive Social Reputation & Materialized Self-Worth

The prevalent theme in negative reactions to Loujain al-Hathlol was that of deeming her irreligious and morally corrupt, and the subsequent focus on her dowry emphasized how, as a tactic against Difference, a woman’s worth and reputation is monetized, reduced to the material. I found it appalling, and I think this illustrates how important it is that we ought not take our political goals so seriously that we do not allow space for social revolts to take place against, in this case, material visualizations of women and their worth. I do not mean to say that every political feminist must partake in these “personal revolutions” in the social realm, but they ought to at least refrain from tearing down those women who choose to.

From my own observation and experience as a Saudi woman, each is born with a theoretical price tag, i.e. social reputation, and an actual price tag, i.e. her dowry amount. The higher the price, the more prestige and self-worth she can claim for herself socially as a woman. The price is initially dictated by arbitrary factors: what economic class she is born into, the standing of her family name, and the degree of her natural beauty, to name a few. These factors will in themselves allocate an initial range for her price tag. The price will then go up or down based on how she conducts herself in public and whether she decides to maintain and/or improve her appearance. For this reason, public appearances can sometimes take on a whole other, inauthentic dimension: that of selling herself.

And while I understand the rationalization of some who view the dowry in more rosy terms, as simply a symbolic gift from a new husband, or a practical method to give a new wife initial financial independence. I personally intend to accept no dowry, as I simply do not find these rationalizations persuasive enough, nor do I wish to contribute to the larger modern trend of materialization of human interactions.

Needless to say, growing up with this both imaginary and real price tag on you that fluctuates based on how appear to others can be quite daunting. Almost as daunting as the prospects of being pitied for the rest of your life if no one accepts your price, and you end up a spinster. And so, it takes real bravery to live against these ideals and upset society’s norms. It is not an imagined feat; it takes courage to be accomplished.

 

 

• ‘Personal Revolutions’ As Self-Ownership & Rejection of Social Hypocrisy

Like most social issues in Saudi, this is not so much a moral vs. immoral debate as it is a debate between the authentic vs. the hypocritical. In my opinion, it was not Loujain’s decision to post the video that was of any significance, since she could not have known that it would go viral. Instead, it was that she did not disappear afterwards and kept posting videos, despite the reactions received. This authentic ownership of self and acts is noteworthy.

In the subsequent videos she posted after the viral one, she proceeded to confuse stereotypes about what a Muslim Saudi woman ought to do, as she recited Quran while she was uncovered and emphasized that although she didn’t cover, she respected women who did. She even tweeted about her father’s approval of her actions; further confusing some who thought her family would “take care of her” had they known she was posting videos online. And while there may have been a hint of eurocentrism in a few of her videos in which she flaunts her knowledge of the French language and in her drawing comparison to The Arts in “uplifted” European societies, she balanced this by her being the head of her University’s Arab Students Association, as she spoke in a few of her videos on future projects planned with its Department of Middle Eastern Studies. This is at least less self-hating than what so-called Saudi liberals who tend to utilize righteous, Orientalist rhetoric when asserting their Selves.

The negative reactions to Loujain’s videos did not result from Saudi society being uniquely conservative, as some might mistakenly understand, as anyone familiar with it will know of the far from conservative acts that take occur away from the public eye. Rather, it functions as any other society: it creates norms, and seeks to hold all of its members to the unified standard of behavior these norms perpetuate.

Perhaps what makes Saudi society feel different to Saudis is that these norms are not often challenged openly, as it is simply easier to be done quietly, resulting in what most Saudis know as social hypocrisy. This also explains the recent rumors that Loujain al-Hathloul is of Indian descent, since, as some in Saudi society like to pretend, nothing different from the standard behavior could ever be committed by the “actual” Saudis, and so the only solution to those troublesome Saudis who are openly different is to simply deny that they are Saudi at all.

Identity exclusion via intimidation and shame are common societal tactics to force conformity. And yes, you may argue that one could avoid it by simply conforming, and thus, if you chose to act differently, it is “your own fault” in a sense. But, while it is true that one should reasonably expect negative reactions from some judgmental types, it does not make it feel anymore fair, or any less hurtful. I sympathize with what Loujain al-Hathloul is experiencing, as her followers shot up from around 11,000 to over 41,000 within a week, reading all that is being said of her on Twitter, and even hearing her and her family discussed briefly on a Rotana radio station.

I’ve recently spoken with other Saudi women who use their names and pictures as avatars in Twitter. Those who write under their full name typically chose to cover, due to either genuine religious choice or social pressure. They explained that same sorts of moral judgments Loujain has received are passed on them, however, for not covering their face. But they continue to do so, as their own sort of “personal revolution”.

I, too, have occasionally been criticized. I recall the moment a few of my ‘friends’ realized I did so on Twitter, by their reaction you’d think they’d just seen me in an x-rated movie! Or the time a few relatives discovered I spoke on politics, oh the shock I caused. But it was only once when I found myself in an only mildly similar situation to that of Loujain. Seemingly out of the blue, I was in a conversation with a woman who told me that a respectable Saudi family would never allow their son to marry me because I was active on Twitter and used my own picture as an avatar. It was only once that this happened, but it stuck with me. It hurt to hear I was apparently not the “right kind of girl” and supposedly failed to meet some virtuous criteria, and as a result found myself wearing a Scarlet Letter.

 

• The Political Relevance of ‘Personal Revolutions’

Sometimes, maneuvering the social realm can be just as much a challenge as the political realm. And on a personal level, I realize that social revolts can take just as much bravery that ought to be appreciated, not taunted.

Every Saudi woman ought to be able to define her womanhood and its relation to morality and religion as she sees fit. And she must practice doing this for herself while learning to disregard the little voice implanted in her head by others that repeats, “you will ‘lose your future’ if you choose to do this or that, rather than obey what we dictate to you”.

And as she does this, political feminists ought not make it their aim to decry these acts that may appear in the social realm by overriding them as “untimely”, “inappropriate”, or, “bad for the cause”. For if political feminists begin to demand that every woman who makes a public appearance be on her “best behavior” at all times, than, frankly, they has simply assumed the role of patriarch over a fellow female. A woman’s ability to appear before others ought not hinge on what they judge of her character.

Feminism is about the right to choice: that each woman determine the meaning of her own Womanhood, regardless of what social constructions may inform her of her own identity. And political feminists ought to welcome this choice when it manifests itself socially, rather than seek to impose their own set of norms on how a woman “ought” to act publically to advance the political feminist goals. It is important that in our focus on battling it out in the political realm, that we not belittle these skirmishes that take place in the social realm. To each woman her own revolution.

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“I am proud to be a woman. I am proud of my identity. This is my face, and this is my name, and these are all of my actions. They appear before you all, hypocrisy is foreign to me. But I was born in a society that only knows superficial virtue.”

- Loujain al-Hathloul

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Published on Bil3afya

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Arab Spring Expectations & ACPRA Trials: Word Play & A Shift of Power in Saudi Arabia

I.

Following the Arab Spring, there have been suggestions that the image of the Middle East has been improved, according to some mystical set of standards, and that the need to dispel stereotypes is no more. I believe this is false, the framework around the Middle East, on whole, has not changed. The Orientalist and Islamophobic lenses remain firmly before the eyes of analysts, even adopted by some locals of the Middle East themselves, who chose to practice ‘self-Orientalism’. Recently, I have become interested in whether this problem of framework does, or does not, plague the field of Middle East Studies. So far, the most successful classes I have come across were ‘Arab Revolutions’, with Mark Levine, and ‘Middle East Narratives’, with Daniel Brunstetter, as both incorporated voices directly from the Middle East, either via guest speakers or Skype calls, and both placed an emphasis on historical context. It was not so much what was being said by these ‘voices of the Middle East’ that added value, rather, it was the simple attempt to dispel the prevalent ‘Otherness’ that is perceived about the region.

Over the past quarter, however, in which I took two US Foreign Policy classes, I have been introduced to a new brand of Middle East Studies. The first of these classes issued a disclaimer at its start that the class will span a history of America’s relation to the world, except the Middle East. I haven’t the slightest idea why. The second class, while well intentioned, offered analysis of the Middle East no deeper than a Thomas Freidman article. “Saudi Arabia is like a pile of sand. And if you poke it, oil will burst out. Kuwait is just a smaller version, it’s about the size of this campus!”, explained my professor. While I busied myself, looking around for the nearest hard surface to bash my head on.

He went on to say how “volatile” the region is, and that the Arab Spring meant only problems for Washington. A student asked what the Arab Spring “in countries like Saudi Arabia” would mean – at which point I felt like the ‘problem child’ of a family. My professor responded that he wasn’t too sure, but that there were “terrorist sympathizers” in “those kind of countries”. I watched as my fellow classmates feverously took notes. For them, his opinion was Truth. It was one of those moments when you are faced with a choice: should I just let it go? Or, do I bother pointing out how his viewpoint itself hinges on the assumption that anything is only worthy if it is stable, predictable, and in accordance with the desires of Washington, while all else, apparently, is “terrorist sympathizing”. I grew frustrated; he had stripped Saudi Arabia of its diverse peoples, complex history, and current changes. I was also resentful of how he managed to portray the Arab Spring as ‘scary’ by pointing to its supposed inevitable Clash with ‘Terrorists’, all while alarming my impressionable classmates in the process.

As a result, later in the course, I found myself using the open-ended essay assignment as an opportunity to list “proofs” that “change” was happening in Saudi Arabia, and that it was more than a terrorist-loving pile of sand. Only after submitting it did I realize that, although I was trying to problematize his flat commentary, I only did so by pointing to examples that aligned with what I knew he would consider “US values”. I came to the frustrating conclusion that I had just succumbed to the temptation of arguing within his same framework of judgment. And it is a temptation, isn’t it? It is tempting to practice the far easier method of simplifying Saudi Arabia, and more broadly the Arab Spring. It is easy to idealize it, and point to all the aspects that we know will please whomever it is we’re debating with.

But the fact is that the “Arab Spring” is a term fit only for the relativists’ playground. There is simply no way around it; it has been assigned different meaning by different people, and you will find elements within it from absolutely every single strand of political thought. As a result, very little can be said generally about the Arab Spring. In fact, it’s questionable whether anything can be said of it at all. But that is the role of the writer, isn’t it? To at least try and create meaning around what they observe, while acknowledging that the influence of perspective is always present when doing so.

And so, in this post, I will symbolically resubmit that essay, leaving behind the pressure of appealing to a Thomas Friedman–like professor. I will attempt to look at what the Arab Spring has meant for current Saudi political discourse, how it has fueled the rights movement that is being pioneered by the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), resulting in arrests and trials of its co-founders, as well as highlight a few cases of Saudi citizens who have witnessed its activities and explore the patterns of exclusion and Otherizing throughout.

II.

I recall the moment I read a tweet by Mohammed al-Qahtani, one of the ACPRA co-founders on trial, in which he wrote, “the government wanted to intimidate us (himself and fellow activists Abdullah al-Hamid) by putting us on trial, so we have decided to put the government on trial!”. Is it possible, I wondered, for two individuals to put an entire government on trial? Do they really have the power to do so?

But this is misrepresenting power; it cannot be possessed by one, or be taken by another. Rather, power shifts, and is mediated with reference to the “dominant discursive structures [that] provide a set of expectations with reference to which agents may exercise power over other agents, as well as over themselves, to ensure conformity… [to] what constitutes normality or deviance” (Foucault). In short, power is word play. Thus, in effect, when al-Qahtani proclaimed that ACPRA was “putting the Saudi government on trial”, this meant that he, and his fellow activists, were intent on utilizing the moment to shame the regime in social media and expose it in countless letters filed to the UN Human Rights Council for its violation of its own rhetoric and the dominant discursive structure of what has come to be perceived generally as “Arab Spring expectations” in current Saudi Arabian political discourse.

III.

And although it is difficult to determine what precisely the “Arab Spring” means, it can be said that those in the Saudi government have not only taken note of it, but also realized that, whatever it may mean, it has imposed its presence on the country. The Arab Spring was appealed to as a dazzling event that (direct and indirect) members of the government wanted to associate it with, its force as a positive rhetorical tool could not be avoided. For instance, in a recent interview with The Charlie Rose Show, Prince Turki al-Faisal, former Ambassador to the US, stated, “I think Saudi Arabia over the past 80 years has been going through an Arab Spring”. And Prince Khaled al-Faisal, the self-proclaimed poet, told an audience of students at their graduation ceremony, “You started the Saudi Spring 82 years ago. The miracle is you always surpass others… you proved that there is a miracle in this land, called the Saudi man”.

Others, often called “drummers”, i.e. someone who consistently beats the drums of flattery at the regime’s every move, have also attempted to associate the Saudi government with the “Arab Spring”, sometimes by alluding to it through the use of “democracy”, which has become closely tied to “Arab Spring” in Saudi discourse. An infamous example of this is a writer who argued in an op-ed that Saudi Arabia is a “Silent Democracy”. Props for the discovery of this entirely new form of Democracy go to Samar al-Megren, who claimed, “Many always complain that Saudi Arabia has no free press… [but it] might be the only country in the Arab World that permits dissidents to write in its newspapers… [Because] we are practicing Democracy silently, and this is true Democracy”. While Idris al-Drais wrote, after King Abdullah announced the new Crown Prince (and after his first newly appointed Crown Prince died), that “King Abdullah’s new appointments were a result of him knowing the pulse of the streets, the high opinion of those he has chosen, and their popularity among the public for their patriotic works… in reality, this is the true form of Desert Democracy”. It is not a coincidence that they appeal to concepts such as “free press” and “public opinion”, terms that can be considered derivative of “democracy” and have also become associated with “Arab Spring” within Saudi domestic discourse. These are the “Arab Spring expectations” to which I referred to earlier that even the government’s supporters have found themselves evoking rhetorically. There are numerous other “drummers” examples to point to, but these two were my favorites, and by far the most humorous.

Now, it’s important to note that I am not claiming that these expectations are universally agreed on in their specificity, that would be sugarcoating it. Some of these expectations are more contested than others, as evidenced by the issue of “free speech”, another perceived “Arab Spring expectation” in Saudi, that was hotly debated during the arrest of Hamza Kashgari for blasphemy (a story of domestic political rivalry and classism that will require it’s own post). But I do believe these expectations have in fact become far more widespread and entrenched as abstract moral expectations of behavior posited by the government and individuals alike. This is not to say that the Saudi population was “awakened” by the Arab Spring, for corruption has never been a secret. Rather, the desire for the abstract “change”, since different individuals have different definitions of improvement and change, has been elevated to full-blown expectation. This expectation is a result of a combination of witnessing the genuine potential for change that resulted from the Arab Spring, and an increased ability to speak out in regards to grievances within the Kingdom. The center stage of this is Twitter, which brought to light previous conversations that remained within homes and only occasionally slipped into mosques and op-eds, typically to be followed by swift governmental repercussions. Now, the general public has a place to speak. And when one speaks and hears his words echoed back to him by others, an incomparable feeling of being justified and confident as speaker results. This is how firm expectations are born.

It is this constant flow of collective critique on social media, along witnessing with the Arab Spring and its promise of change, which has normalized the political, bringing the ‘unmentionables’ out into the open, to all of society. This is particularly true when you couple it with the current Saudi youth bulge and high unemployment, in other words, the inability to be subdued by good living conditions. Because, contrary to the common stereotype of the Gulf, affluence is not to be found across society. Rather, it is concentrated in a class of elites and the upper-middle class of the Saudi bourgeoisie. And these upper classes practice political blindness, they are aware of corruption, some even participate in it, but they will not speak of it. Instead, they busy themselves with self-Orientalist musings of how ‘backwards’ the country is, and often travel to ‘get away’ from it all. And because of this tendency, perhaps the most iconic moment in which the Arab Spring imposed its political force on every part of society imaginable, including these affluent classes, was when protests of the “e3teqal” movement, for the illegally detained, filled their Riyadh malls. At that moment, the Saudi bourgeoisie were forced to face the political. And I must admit, I found it quite amusing to watch their complaints fill Twitter, they claimed they understood the cause but didn’t like their shopping activities being disrupted. I couldn’t help but smile at the ever-expanding political mischief the Arab Spring has brought to my beloved “pile of sand”.

IV.

Not all of the Saudi bourgeoisie were as understanding of the protestors, however. Some referred to them as “extremists” who ought to be jailed for their protesting. The women in the protest were fully covered and the men had shorter thoubs, a physical indication of their conservative religious stances, and apparently this was sufficient to determine their guilt in the eyes of the shoppers. Frankly, they reminded me of my professor in their demonizing conservatives as “terrorist sympathizers”. The government is well aware of the opportunity this poses for it, and has attempted to exploit it when possible. In a recent comment by the Grand Mufti, a religious figurehead of the Saudi government, he said, “It is religiously wrong to make light of serious crimes by al-Qaeda affiliate, it is wrong to make them appear as prisoners of conscience. Some are publicizing the issue, holding gatherings for periods of time at different places, and they’re calling for the release of those who are charged or accused of terrorist crimes”. What is most telling of the “e3teqal” movement’s influence is that this statement used the same language that the activists have been using online and at their protests. And in its distinguishing between different types of detainees, though the intent was to demonize the activists, the government was still using rhetoric in accordance with the “Arab Spring expectation” of “free speech” when it implied that the detainees were “terrorist criminals” and ought to be imprisoned, rather than prisoners of conscience, who ought not be. The Saudi government also issued an uncharacteristically detailed statement to the media in which it claimed all prisoners are “receiving their full rights” after imprisonment and then listed the names of ten individuals and the supposed charges against them, the same names that had been circling online. Many were disturbed by the fact that the government had included Mohammed al-Bajadi, a co-founder of ACPRA who was arrested for his activism and speech against the government. They viewed the inclusion of his name among a few names that were publically known for their terrorist affiliations, such as Haila al-Qairsar, as purposefully done in order to smear his image of being a prisoner of conscience. And while this is likely true, it is still significant that the government felt it was prudent at all to issue such a long statement in response to, and evidence of, the pressure mounted by the “e3teqal” movement, its allegations against the government’s ill-treatment of prisoners, and its numerous protests against their illegal detainment. Paradoxically, the government’s indirect rhetorical responses to the movement have only made it stronger. And yet the government cannot abstain from issuing such responses, since that too would only strengthen it.

Rhetoric is a tool and words are powerful; their versatility allow for manipulation through associations, but it is not always practiced with intent to demonize and deceive. In fact, one of the key contributions of ACPRA to the Saudi civil rights movement is the active rhetorical refashioning of the term “Jihad” as peaceful protest, and “Shura” as democratic participation in government. This rhetorical refashioning is most notably the effort of Abdullah al-Hamid, ACPRA’s co-founder. This comes after the Saudi government had first promoted “Shura” as political participation achieved through a non-elected Shura Council that only held advisory status. While the term “Jihad” had been promoted as a term holding proactive force, and allowed Sahwa Shaiks of the 1970-80s to utilize it as a rallying term to encourage Saudi citizens to fight the US and Saudi government’s war against Communist USSR in Afghanistan. After which the term was later pointed inward, by what was then called “al-Qaeda”, to launch attacks against the Saudi government itself in the 1990s. Mass arrests resulted, along with the instatement of governmental rehabilitation centers that used highly questionable tactics to “fix” the situation. It was hardly a just response to such a complex issue. Recently, as part of John Hopkins’s International Reporting Project, a “Saudi ex-Jihadist” and former Guantanimo detainee named Khalid al-Hubayshi was interviewed, “Jihad is a good thing in Islam, but it’s often misinterpreted. If someone fought in my country and takes my house, I’m going to fight. This is what we call jihad. But if I go to some area to help one group against another group, that wouldn’t be Islamic”. According to the article, this man had undergone “rehabilitation” by the Saudi government, which found itself having to refashion the term “jihad”, after the September 11 Attacks, to be a negative act, limited to self-defense, as heard in al-Hubayshi’s interview.

Abdullah al-Hamid has promoted another alternative meaning and is featured in one of ACPRA’s YouTube lectures telling his viewers, “There are important differences between militant jihad and political jihad. First, that political jihad is peaceful. It’s tools are the pen, the tongue, and social efforts like protests and sit-ins that are void of the shots of guns and during which its participants lift no whip or stick… Women and elders may participate in this peaceful jihad, although they are not obligated to do so. I have even witnessed many women and children attend my own court trials… Peaceful Jihad (peaceful protest) needs to be promoted in political culture, rather than militant jihad, along with the concept of Shura (democratic participation)… How beneficial has the current method of ‘quiet advisory to the ruler’ been? Not at all! And yet look at civil society in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, they are all headed towards Shura-based governments in months! This is proof that peaceful jihad is the solution and it, not the sword, has lead to over hundreds of democracies across the world”. From this small excerpt of the lecture, one can understand the redefining of the term “jihad” to not be limited to a negative action that is purely for self-defense and reactionary, as al-Hubayshi learnt in the Saudi regime’s rehabilitation center, instead, it is a positive action that includes action aimed at alleviating an injustice through participation in peaceful protest.

This is, of course, not to deny that Saudi so-called “enlightened Islamists”, and more broadly, Islamic scholarship in general, in the past has also interpreted religious text in such a way that supports what is called “democracy” and its “values”. In fact, it was the Prophet Mohammed that began this legacy in stating, “the greatest Jihad is a just word before a tyrant”. But rather, it is the Arab Spring generally, and ACPRA specifically, that have rejuvenated such interpretations and brought them to the forefront again in Saudi politics. Ironically, it is the Saudi government itself that has assisted in this rejuvenation, through its continuous arrests of activists, which motivates the “e3teqal” movement, and its trial of two prominent ACPRA co-founders, which mobilizes their supporters to campaign for them regularly online, thus maintaining a steady public awareness of the NGO and its aim of change through “peaceful Jihad” and “Shura”. This was further accomplished when the activists pushed for their trials to be public, resulting in Saudi Arabia’s most public trial yet, as even local newspapers and reporters from Al Jazeera and Sky News were present.

V.

Some Saudi liberals have voiced complaint at ACPRA’s apparent “religious-cloaking” of what are perceived as “Arab Spring expectations” and its support of conservatives in the “e3teqal” movement. And, while these liberals claim to support the concept of the Rule of Law, they too view these political prisoners as “terrorist sympathizers” that ACPRA ought not bother itself with, either because they pose a safety threat to society or for the pragmatic reason that they might tarnish the image of ACPRA. A relevant example of this was a conversation that occurred a few months ago on Twitter, between Mohammad al-Qahtani, co-founder of ACPRA, and a Saudi woman, who is liberal-leaning ideologically and has indirect ties to the Saudi government’s Human Rights Commission. She asked, “Why do they want liberation of all those in jail, do they want to make the guilty innocent?”. Al-Qahtani responded that each citizen is innocent until proven guilty in a fair and open trial, “I never claimed that they are all prisoners of conscience, but they are in fact victims of illegal detentions. Why haven’t they been tried?”, he asked. She replied by pressing her own view of their guilt further, pointing to the Twitter accounts of some of the “e3teqal” protestors’ supporters, and their avatars of black flags. To her, this was confirmation of their evil, terrorist sympathies. Not only had she resorted to Other-izing, with the aim of excluding the Other of its rights, she also did not hear her own contradiction: she was concerned with all the illegally detained being framed as prisoners of conscience, while essentially sanctioning the arrest of their supporters, simply for their less-than-appealing opinions towards what she defined as ‘terrorism’. “ACPRA welcomes only peaceful protest, we have worked hard to draw many away from violence to more peaceful means of expression”, argued al-Qahtani. “If ACPRA should be credited for anything, it should be for encouraging many to forgo violence”, he went on to remind her, “and [remember,] it was the government that first legitimized violent means by promoting its use in Afghanistan”.

 

 

VI.

I will now turn to an example of the “terrorist sympathizers”, so that the discussion of this Other does not remain in abstraction, and the complexity of real-life can be acknowledged.

It was Saudi Arabia’s National Day, September 23; a day of endless traffic, green spray-painted cars, vandalized stores, and Saudi flags. And while the unruly celebrations carried on, the city of Buraidah in the Qassim Province saw Saudi protestors spend their 20th hour in what was called the “al-Tarfiyah sit-in”. The protestors were mainly conservatives, and attended the sit-in because they had a relative who was illegally detained. Many pictures were posted online; one struck me in particular. It was a picture of a child, the accompanied caption explained that he was dressed in Afghan clothing… and his name was Osama. No doubt his name was chosen to emulate what they considered “good” in contrast to what they deemed “evil”.

I wondered what he must have been thinking. His eyes were so big. He had a loved one in jail, I realized, that’s why he had joined the sit-in. Under other circumstances he might’ve been, like other Saudi children on the National Day, sitting on the edge of a car window, or dancing in a street.

But he wasn’t. He was at a sit-in, protesting a relative’s illegal detainment, along with 13 other children, 60 men and 45 women.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wondered what he must have thought of his clothes; different from the regular white thoub protestors were wearing. I wondered further, was he told the stories of battles conquered in Afghanistan? Did he hear of the great fight against the “infidel” Soviet Communists years ago, with the help of angels, as legends say, – and, of course, with the training and financial support of the US and Saudi governments.

He must be frightened, too, I thought. The governmental response to this peaceful sit-in was anything but mild. Anti-riot buses approached the protestors; officers with helmets and shields emerged. In the picture below, you can see young Osama holding onto someone’s hand, watching as the riot police approach. How will he remember them, what solid associations will he have with their uniforms? All from that single moment in time, right there.

The officers spoke with the protestors and assured them that their demands would be met if they agreed to leave. Due to exhaustion and ill preparedness, as the protestors had stayed the night and their food and water had run out hours ago, they obliged. Unfortunately, as they made their way out, they discovered the road had been blocked on one side, and the anti-riot busses began to surround them from the other.

The problem with this protest was that it was in a secluded, desert-like area, just outside of a prison. This meant it was far from the public eye, which could have acted as semi-protection for the protestors. Needless to say, it ended horribly. It is estimated that around 50 men were arrested. Some have been released since then, while others remain detained. A woman named Rema al-Joraish, whose husband has been illegally detained for the past 8 years and she too has been arrested briefly after taking part in protests against his detainment, spoke to Reuters before participating in the al-Tarfiyah sit-in and (likely because of that) was later specifically targeted and physically attacked by officers. She had to recover in a hospital afterwards, but did not hesitate to speak to Al-Hewar Channel regarding the treatment she received. There were reports of other beatings occurring, including the use of electric tasers. All with the young Osama present.

Just a few months later, a student in my classroom will ask about “countries like Saudi Arabia” and the “problem of terrorist sympathizers”. These reductionary questions are asked because it is moments like these that no one will remember. It is this governmental oppression and lack of care for citizens’ grievances that will be ignored. And like the Arab Spring protestors who held up tear-gas canisters to reveal the “MADE IN USA” stamp on the bottom, young Osama will likely grow up to learn of the ‘special relationship’ between his country and another, the United States. He will grow to read of the countless riyals spent on arms deals in the newspapers, as he speaks of it to his jobless friends. He will think of the Syrian revolutionaries, just as many do now, and wonder why the Saudi government banned his ability to help them through Jihad. It will be a confusing message; didn’t the government like what was done in Afghanistan? We beat the soviets; we (ultraconservatives) were heroes, weren’t we? The mixed messages will feel endless. He will see US bases in Riyadh and the special treatment given to those within or affiliated with them, he will hear of the occupation of Iraq. He might learn of how, “during the 1970s, there was a growing convergence of interests between the world’s leading petroleum and armament corporations… the politicization of oil, together with the parallel commercialization of arms, exports, helped shape an uneasy weapondollar-petrodollar coalition” (Nitzan & Bichler) and he may conclude, as Mark Levine did, that “the peoples of the region have to fight two battles simultaneously: against their own despotic and corrupt governments, and against the larger ‘world’ financial system”.

And, yes, he may utter the religious “infidel” label, but only after feeling the political loss of his country’s sovereignty and questioning his own self-determination within it. He will likely hear of the Islamic Umma Party which attempted to achieve legal status in Saudi Arabia, but failed and many of its founders were arrested for merely asking for such a “privilege” . He might even then ask, why aren’t I allowed to discuss things with my government, participate in it, protest it, or voice my opinions on issues I care about? The government will give the ready answer: its doors are always open. And when he finds that those doors open only when the government decides they will, the Ulema will respond: protest is religiously prohibited, it means going against the ruler, which is unjust – unless, of course, you are a Syrian revolutionary. In that case, protest would be religiously permissible, not the least because you’d be protesting the Assad regime, an ally of a politically “evil” foe of Saudi: Iran. He will ask himself, isn’t political oppression in my own country, religiously “evil”, as well? Realizations of hypocrisy will fill his mind.

Maybe he will join in the peaceful “e3teqal” movement for the illegally detained and organize his own sit-ins, just like the one we first saw him in. Or, maybe, he will find his intellect drawn to Saudi’s Constitutional Monarchy movement and participate in legal battles against the government, just as ACPRA has. Or, unfortunately, he may turn the way of violent protest. And if he does, the audaciously shallow commentators will be shocked anew, repeating the same questions, “why are they so violent?” and, “how do we solve the problem of these ‘terrorist sympathizers’”. There are plenty of reasons why people become violence, why this “problem” exists, if only you cared to listen.

VII.

I do not write this post easily, or take my stance lightly. As a Saudi-American, it is difficult to work through these views. On September 11, 2012, I woke to a Twitter timeline filled with tweets from relatives of prisoners, that I follow and have written for in support of their rights, tweeting their support of Osama Bin Laden. A few of them even used his picture as their Twitter avatar. I then watched as a few hashtags were created titled ‘Happy September 11′, ‘In Memory of Osama’, and the like. And later that day, after the fiasco of the anti-Islam film erupted; I saw protests with anti-American sentiments appear in a few cities of Saudi Arabia. This was topped off by an Arab Nationalist friend retweeting something to the effect of, “since American’s didn’t care that we (Arabs) die, we don’t care when they die!”. It is emotionally taxing, to grapple with being Other-ized for half of my identity and resisting the temptation to respond in the same manner. It also felt like a moral dilemma, it occurred to me that perhaps I was doing something wrong? In advocating for the political inclusion of ‘Others’ and actively writing in support of their rights, when it appeared they were happy at the sight of American deaths, am I somehow betraying my American half?

For that short moment, I had thought as my professor did, and some Saudi liberals do, and viewed them as the abstract “terrorist sympathizers”. After giving it further thought, I came to the conclusion that I had entirely missing the point. I had allowed myself to understand it as a personal attack, rather than a political complaint. Their opinions are not ahistorical; they have roots in perceived and actual wrongs committed in the past. And if I give in to the desire for their exclusion, I essentially consent to the possible exclusion of myself as well. Citizenship ought not be based on sameness. And we ought to engage with others, not point at Others.

And this is precisely why I support ACPRA, regardless of what liberals have said. It has chosen to engage, to participate, to try and maneuver through the complicated Saudi political stage. And I am ever grateful to them for this. I only wish the liberals would come down from their Ivory Twitter Towers, stop their hysteria over any inkling of religiosity they see in political reformists, and forgo their government-promoted fear of them as “terrorist” Others. Accept that they are citizens of their same country, who ought to have their same rights.

VIII.

This Saturday was the final court session of ACPRA’s co-founders. Mohammad al-Qahtani spent the week before his final trial tweeting his experience in political activism, starting in the summer of 1991 when he arrived in the US to earn a degree in economics. Sadly, his tweets have a sort of farewell-tone to them. During the previous trial session, Abdullah al-Hamid, whose representative Salman al-Rashudi has been arrested, read a 40-page long response to the court. He called for a Constitutional Monarch, and ended up shedding tears while doing so. Many reacted online, even starting a hashtag in his honor. Now that the final court session has taken place, many are worried to hear the judge’s decision on January 7, 2013. A brief moment of controversy occurred after the arrest of Turki al-Hamad, a well-known Saudi liberal. Some critiqued ACPRA for its initial silence at his arrest, but these voices were soon quiet when both Mohammad al-Qahtani and Abdullah al-Hamid spoke against the illegal detainment of Turki al-Hamad, and they did so in spite of their knowing the possible political repercussions they may face from their conservative supporters.

On a lighter note, just this past week, the Arab Spring blew its winds through the halls of a small elementary school in the city of Rafha, where little boys hung their campaign posters, making promises to contribute to their school. And others placed a paper in a box, in hopes that their choices for the Student Union would win. It was covered in a local Rafha newspaper, where the teachers explained the point was that, “it was a way for the students to learn responsibility, love of others, care for their needs, and a method for them to express their opinions and preserve their rights within the school”.

 

Hopefully, the “Arab Spring” and the bravery of activists in protests and trial sessions, will continue to push along the power shift from the government to the people. Whatever the judge’s decision is in regards to the most public Saudi trial of ACPRA’s co-founders, these activists have pushed for rights, influenced minds, risked their lives, and have already left a great mark on the history of Saudi Arabia – I cannot thank them enough.

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لماذا تستمر بالكتابة؟

مهما كرهت كتاباتك، فأنت في الحقيقة تحبها. بغض النظر عن من يقرأها، حين تكتب، أنت مؤمن بأن أفكارك تستاهل بأن تسجل، وإلا ما كتبتها.

لكنك تخاف.. تخاف مما تكشف عنك، عن حقيقة نفسك. فالكتابه أكثر ما يمكن أن تظهر عيوبك. تخاف بأن تندم لاحقاً، أن تكتشف أن ماكنت مؤمن بأنه يستاهل أن يكتب، لايستحق ذلك، فتكرهه. ومايخيفك أكثر من ذلك، أن من يقرأ كتاباتك، قد يكتشف بأنها لا تستحق شيء من وقته، ويكرهها أيضاً.

فلماذا تستمر بالكتابة إذاً؟  أليس من الجنون أن تغامر هكذا؟ ألاتعتقد أنه من الغباء أن تظهر عيوبك بنفسك؟ فأنت تعلم، كل حرف تكتبه، بداخله احتمال فضحك..

قد يكون لأنك تعتقد بأنك ذكي بقدر كافي لتكون قادراً على اخفاء عيوبك دوماً، لكن كل كاتب يعلم بعد وقت ما بأن هذا مستحيل، مهما حاولت..

قد يكون لأنك إيجابي، تعتقد أن كتاباتك دوماً سيكون لها تأثير في عالمك وتطمع في ذلك.. لكن هذا يعني أنك تكتب لترك الأثر هذا.. فإذا انعدم الأثر، تركت الكتابة.. وكل كاتب يعلم من تجربة، أن كتاباته ليس شرطاً أن تؤثر، ليس شرطاً أن تقرأ حتى..

الكتابة إدمانك. تستمر لأنك لا تستطيع التوقّف. لأن كل ماتملكه في حياتك هو نفسك، كل ماتستطيع تقديمه للعالم هو أن تظهر له حقيقة نفسك هذه. ولاتعرف كيف تفعل ذلك، سوى عبر كتاباتك.

ونفسك ليست ثابتة، بالتالي كتاباتك ايضاً ليست ثابتة.. قد تعدلها، تمسحها، تضيف عليها..

بمجرد كتابتك لفكرة من أفكارك.. أنت تسجل شيء معين، في لحظة ما، عن نفسك..

تسجل تاريخ أفكارك، فأنت لاتضمن عالمك، قد ينساك تماماً بعد موتك.

لكن، مادمت حي، فالكتابة وسيلتك الوحيدة بأن تثبت وجودك هذا لنفسك.. فحين تكتب أفكارك، تراها أمامك.. تقرأها بينك وبين نفسك..

وتكشف حقيقتك بنفسك، لنفسك.

وليس من السهل أن تجرأ على هذا، فأنت تعلم، أحياناً، قد لا يعجبك ماتراه. لكنك تستمر، كي تصدق مع نفسك.

لاحظ بأني لم أقل أن الكتابة تطورك، فهذا يضع لها مسار، وهدف (تطوير الذات). والكتابة ليس ضرورياً أن يكون لها هدف، أو مسار منظم. لكنها بالتأكيد تغيرك، تؤثر فيك، بطريقة ما..

كل ماتفعله أنها تجبرك على التعايش مع أفكارك، وتقبل حقيقتك.

وتستمر لأنك تدمن على الصدق هذا.

ومع الوقت، تتعلم، كيف تكتب بخوف أقل من عيوبك.. تتعلم، كيف تظهر نفسك لنفسك ولعالمك، ولاتبالي بالعواقب..

ليس لأن الكتابة تمحي تخوفاتك هذه، فلا أعلم إذا كان هناك شيء يمكن أن يمحيها بشكل كامل.. بل لأنك اعتدت على الظهور بصدق، وأصبحت تبغض كل ماهو مزيف، وتهرب من الكليشيه..

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Jadaliyya Interview: On Twitter, the Narratives re Muslims/Arabs/Violence, & Saudi Political Dissent

Part of an ongoing Profile of a Contemporary Conduit series on Jadaliyya that seeks to highlight distinct voices primarily in and from the Middle East and North Africa.

Link to Interview: On Twitter and Political Dissent in Saudi Arabia

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Related on Riyadh Bureau

Trial of Saudi Civil Rights Activists Mohammad al-Qahtani & Abdullah al-Hamid

Note: This post aims to serve as a reiteration of the trial’s events in order to record an important moment in Saudi’s Civil Rights Movement. The majority of its content was provided by first-hand accounts and live-tweets from Saudi journalist, Iman al-Qahtani, and activist Sultan al-Ajmi. Other info/picture sources include Nawaf al-Qudaimi, Abdullah al-Saed, Omar al-Saed, Mamdouh al-Zaidi, Abdullah al-Mataq, and Ibrahim al-Twayjrey.

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Trial of Saudi Activists Abdullah al-Hamid & Mohammad al-Qahtani 

September 1, 2012 at 9 A.M. in Riyadh’s Specialized Criminal Court

 

Rows of supporters formed outside the Riyadh courtroom as they waited for the arrival of activists Mohammad al-Qahtani and Abdullah al-Hamid, both of the co-founders of ACPRA (Saudi Political and Civil Rights Association). Upon their entrance through the courthouse’s door, hands were shook and encouraging smiles were exchanged. The presence of around 50 people, all with cell phones in hand, was to mark this event as one of the most public trials of activists held in Saudi Arabia thus far.

Among the supporters were prominent Saudi political and intellectual figures such as Nawaf al-Qudaimi, Mohammed al-Abdulkarim, Abdullah al-Saed, Sultan al-Ajmi, Abdulrahman al-Hamid, and Abdulkarim al-Khudar. A few prominent lawyers such as Abdulaziz al-Hesan and judges like Shaik Salman al-Rashoudi had also made their way to the courthouse to show their solidarity. In addition to the list of famous activists present were numerous low-profile family members of illegally detained citizens. They were ready to provide testimonies regarding the secret security’s crimes against their kin, which would assist in disproving charges made against the accused activists who documented such rights violations.

All sat outside the courtroom in anticipation. Activists Mohammad al-Qahtani and Abdullah al-Hamid were pictured talking amongst themselves, as they waited for the judge to arrive and their trial to begin.

Finally, the judge arrived and the trial started with Mohammad al-Qahtani giving his statement of defense. The courtroom was filled; most had to stand as they listened intently. Al-Qahtani’s statement opened with condemnations of the human and civil rights violations in Saudi Arabia, referencing recent cases of such as ACPRA member Saleh al-Ashwan, arrested in July, and co-founder of ACPRA, Mohammed al-Bajadi, sentenced in March to four years in prison, both for their involvement in civil rights activism. Mohammad al-Qahtani then addressed the charge made against him, that his own political activism impedes the country’s developments, “the corrupt are those who have brought our development to a halt!”. He then accused the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution of being an accessory to the secret security’s crimes against illegally detained citizens, adding that further evidence of this has been made available to the court, as many of the citizens’ families were willing to serve as testimonial witnesses, some were already present in the courtroom.

“We must stop leading the youth into the flames of proxy wars, and then throwing them into jail cells”, explained al-Qahtani. Many observers noticed that by this time the judge was acting indifferent to the activist’s statements, forcing tired yawns to appear uninterested. He then interrupted al-Qahtani, asking him if he was simply rambling on, or if this was supposed to be part of his statement of defense, despite it being apparent that al-Qahtani was in fact reading from prepared documents that he had brought with him. The judge then allowed Al-Qahtani to continue, only to interrupt a second time with the ring of his cell phone.

Meanwhile, the heat in the tiny courtroom was rising, noted Saudi journalist, Iman al-Qahtani. A court officer asked her to refrain from taking pictures, but another supporter, Ibrahim al-Twejry, was able to take one of the accused activist Abdullah al-Hamid. Al-Hamid had decided to sit on the floor, to avoid the crowdedness of the room, and laxly fanned himself with papers that held his criminal charges.

Al-Qahtani concluded his statement of defense by claiming that the charges raised against him were of malicious intent. He then requested that the testimonies of witnesses be permissible evidence to the court, as they served as supportive proof of ACPRA claims regarding the secret security’s rights violations. The judge, Hamad al-Omar, mockingly replied, “How could you prove that the charges against you were of malicious intent? All you have done is read 15 pages to me, your statement of defense is an insufficient response to the claims put forth against you.” To which al-Qahtani flatly responded, “Actually, it was 25 pages.”

At this point, the judge announced that al-Qahtani’s statement of defense was sufficiently reviewed by the court and found to be “an inadequate, ill-prepared response to the charges” and he required a revised version be submitted by 9 A.M. the following day. The judge asked the second accused activist, Abdullah al-Hamid, to step forward to begin his statement of defense in response to the charges against him, the most pressing one being his involvement, along with al-Qahtani, in ACPRA (Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association) and that he published a document titled ‘Freedom of Protest Combats Governmental Oppression: 20 Suggestions to Successfully Protest’. The judge chastised Abdullah al-Hamid as he approached the bench, “No peaceful jihad [meaning: peaceful protests] is permissible without the permission of the ruler”. Journalist Iman al-Qahtani observed the elder activist to be covered in sweat, the courtroom’s physical heat seemed to increase simultaneously with the tension forming between the judge and the accused activists.

Abdullah Al-Hamid began his statement of defense by answering the judge’s earlier question directed to al-Qahtani, “we know the charges were raised against us with malicious intent because we filed a complaint against the Minister of Interior himself. It would’ve been more transparent of him [previous head of MOI] to have filed these charges against us under his own name, rather than under the guise of governmental institutions”. The activist then began to criticize the court itself, “You are both prosecutor and judge. You say peaceful political protest is only legitimate with permission of the ruler, so how can you tell me that you are an independent judge if you still acknowledge the concept of a supreme ruler? And if this were an independent court, why was it silent when citizens were illegally arresting and tortured by that same supreme ruler who now wants to silence ACPRA for documenting such violations? You cannot stop rights activists. They are like weeds; when you pull out a few, more grow back stronger and thicker. In fact, we are in the process of publishing another document titled “a thousand testimonies of human rights violations” and it will be completed and released to the public regardless of whether we personally are detained or not. Don’t underestimate the youth, there are many ready to promote justice. And the government cannot detain them all.”

The judge dismissively asked al-Hamid, “why don’t you just retire to a mosque in your old age?”. Al-Hamid replied, “and give up the greatest form of jihad – speaking a just word before a tyrant?”. After which he continued his critique of the court, “if the judiciary is not independent, it will only function as a symbol of oppression. How could charges of impeding development be entertained by a court that is fully aware that those accused of such have no power to do so? A just judicial system is the true basis of development, stability, and the mark of a civilized state.” The judge demanded al-Hamid respect him as a judge, and reminded him that he was restraining himself in respect of the activist’s old age. Al-Hamid then claimed that the judge has no legitimacy worthy of his respect; describing him as merely judicial representative of the ruler’s will. The judge intervened, “your words are repetitive and they do not address the charges against you” and ordered that only the accused activists themselves and their lawyers would be allowed to attend future court sessions, citing the public supporters’ violation of the no-cellphone rule for this change in courtroom’s attendance policy.

Accused activist al-Hamid argued, “You are just trying to intimidate us! Why don’t you keep our future sessions open to the public, and allow pictures to be taken? Why not even provide chairs for supporters who decide to come? You cannot call yourself an independent judge when you are susceptible to governmental pressure. A secret trial cannot be fair; justice will not be reached in this case. A political defendant is only protected as much as he is publically seen, holding our sessions secretly is a violation of our rights”. Al-Hamid then took the opportunity to criticize the judge’s earlier requirement that all present supporters names and ID numbers be recorded, claiming that this too was a form of intimidation and an outright violation of their privacy. Finally, he added, “And I apologize if my earlier words hurt your feelings, but the only real judge is Allah”. The judge replied by announcing that al-Hamid’s statement of defense was an incomplete response to the charges against him and required a revised version of it be submitted to the court, along with al-Qahtani’s, the next day. He then told al-Hamid, “Don’t think that your taunting words affected me at all”.

Iman al-Qahtani pointed out that she was confused by the judge’s “changed attendance policy”, since this court session had not been open to the public to begin with. Rather, the supporters had made their way into the courtroom without permission. The restriction will likely be more strongly enforced in the next sessions, as this first one ended with supporters’ dismissal by the judge, under threat of arrest if they do not comply. Just before leaving the courtroom, however, an officer asked Iman al-Qahtani, “Why are you writing?”. She boldly answered, “Because this was an open trial – and I am a journalist”.

After being dismissed, supporters remained outside the courtroom till the activists joined them shortly after, their cellphone batteries were dying and their Twitter feeds fell silent. The rest of Saudi’s Twittersphere did not, however, as tweets flooded a hashtag titled “Trial of al-Hamid and al-Qahtani”. Most were consumed by a mix of awe at the courageous statements given by both activists, along with anger at the judge’s attitude, and disbelief at the ludicrous charges against the activists. One user in particular, Ahmed al-Massary, commented, “they may have thought only 50 people were in the courtroom, but 50 thousand of us were in attendance [online]. This is how flakes turn to snowballs”. Also, a link to a scanned copy of the activists’ official charges began circulating. This link was quickly blocked in Saudi, and users like Tariq al-Haydar found this to be truly ironic, as one of the written charges against the activists had read, “falsely accusing the Saudi government of running a police state”.

Photo Set, includes trial photo descriptions & sources.

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Republished on Jadaliyya & Muftah

Related on The Global Mail

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Saudi Feminism: Between Mama Amreeka & Baba Abdullah

The Oslo Freedom Forum in Oslo, Norway was held this past week, the Havel Prize for Creative Dissent was awarded to three dissidents, with Manal Al-Sharif as one of them. This comes shortly after Al-Sharif was at TIME’s 100 Gala in New York, being honored as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People In The World. Such events have given rise to a pattern – just as numerous pictures and videos of activists attending various conferences and receiving numerous awards surface, waves of criticism pour in. Motives are viewed with suspicion, worthiness is questioned, and a movements’ progress is reassessed.

The most prevalent criticism of Manal Al-Sharif was that she was accepting an award for political dissent when she was only, at most, a social activist. This criticism was not meant to knock her efforts, but to allocate them a bit further down the activist totem pole so to speak, removing them from the high pedestal they’d been placed on. One ought to note, however, that Manal herself stated at the Forum that, “I don’t consider myself a dissident, I had to actually ask what it was”. So, it seems, she may agree with her critics.

Well then, why was Al-Sharif being hailed as a dissident? This is what happens when women’s rights are treated as foreign rights to those of male citizens’. We now find ourselves caught in this grey area, is Manal Al-Sharif, a women’s rights advocate, a social or political activist? Is a woman driving a social act, thus allowing for the government’s claim that it’s a matter to be left to society, or is it a political act, meaning its dismissal by the government as an outright challenge to the state? To some observers, her act was political. It was in fact a challenge to the state. It is true that there was no law written that banned women driving, but governmental authority (and its established status quo) was still challenged nonetheless. What makes Al-Sharif’s critics reluctant, and perhaps rightfully so, to agree with this strictly political portrayal of her acts, is that the rhetoric she chose to accompany her actions was anything but political. Her Youtube videos had included praise to the King, emphasis on violating no laws in the Kingdom, and, more importantly, it claimed that it was a social taboo to be broken and nothing more. This sort of rhetoric maintains the established child-parent relationship that Saudi women have with the state. While talk of demanding full citizenship, a political demand, did come up in her campaign, it was still cloaked in a request that was social in nature. The campaign used the King’s face for its Facebook page, most official statements began by paying some sort of respect to the government. As a result, it is still a social issue. It was discussed in newspapers for months, opinion videos were posted, tweets were retweeted, but that was it.

The Right2Dignity campaign made an attempt to turn to the political when it filed a lawsuit against the Saudi Traffic Department for denying Manal Al-Sharif her driver’s license despite there being no written law against its issuance to a woman. Another Saudi activist, Samar Badawy, did the same. This was a head-on collision with the state; an outright demand for women’s right to drive that was already technically legal, rather than a demand for wishy-washy patrimonial supportive grants by the government. Unfortunately, the government has been skilled at bureaucratically stifling this legal maneuver. It also refused to allow any sort of legislation to pass affirming women’s right to drive, instead it entertained ridiculous studies on driving leading to loss of virginity. Yet, some might wonder why in the months to follow women were given the right to join municipal elections, work in lingerie shops, or join the Olympics? It was not contradictory of the Saudi government to make such ‘reforms’ and yet hold back on the decision to allow women to drive; it was actually being rather consistent. This is because “Baba Abdullah”, the father figure, granted those rights in the form of reforms, all as a method to reaffirm the child-parent relationship with Saudi women and discourage any efforts to make demands in a political manner.

So, does this mean Manal Al-Sharif didn’t earn her prize, was the Right2Dignity campaign a failure? In truth, I find the question itself to be posed falsely. The fact of the matter is that Manal Al-Sharif was an accidental activist. She never intended to be political. Jillian York writes of how Al-Sharif originally came up with the idea to post two Youtube videos in support of women driving in Saudi, it was simply a birthday dare she had given herself. Manal spoke of her unexpected role at the Oslo Freedom Forum in explaining, “Havel said, we never decided to be dissidents, we were transformed into them, without every quite knowing how. We sometimes ended up in prison, without ever knowing how. There are things in life, you don’t choose them, they choose you”. This sums up her story. Such unplanned action has implications, however, such as the fact that she did not start out with the vision of herself as an activist, nor was her family’s distress at her sudden arrest, and the amount of hate mail (including Shaik sermons) about her, things she had anticipated as a result of her drive. In such light, I think it’d be fair to show her a little compassion in judging the progress of her actions. She’d never intended to be a full-on activist, and so she cannot be assessed in terms of what characterizes a political dissident.

However, I sense that most of the criticism directed at Al-Sharif and her recently received award was not really about her, but about the exclusive focus media has given her. There is a deep sense of unfairness regarding its selectiveness. There is anger that the award is supposedly for dissent, when other Saudi dissenters find themselves forgotten in jail cells. There is anger for the political voices that are left unheard because they aren’t in the safe and social, preferably female and victim-looking, realm of Saudi activism. This blatantly apparent selectiveness in attention to certain types of activism can be viewed as allowing Saudis a revolt in a bubble. This bubble is what I’d labeled as ‘social’, because it never quite enters the political realm. It still operates within the child-parent relationship, rather than promote a citizen-state relation. It is the permissible revolt, the headlines that will not affect the price of oil. Unlike revolts in the Eastern Province which are far outside this bubble, and revolts after prayers in mosques that led to jail cells, revolts in opinion pieces that were written on ‘a little too much’ and soon removed from newspaper sites along with their authors being swiftly silenced, revolts in politically charged tweets whom their owner disappears shortly afterwards, revolts in stomachs that refuse to eat in protest of its arbitrary arrest. All these revolts… they are ignored. They do not receive any award. Though they deserve it more than any. And while women’s fight against discriminatory laws is also a revolt, in the specific case of Manal Al-Sharif, as I have argued, it was not that of a political dissident. Rather, it was morphed into a revolt within a state-controlled, social bubble.

Is it fair to demand more of Manal Al-Sharif? If her cause wasn’t political, does that rid it of all worth? Also, is the method a campaign chooses crucial, or should one be concerned with results alone? The answer to such questions lead to a somewhat heated discussion on Twitter among feminists, debating the implications and effectiveness of Manal’s social revolt. The different positions taken are crucial in understanding the fragmented Saudi feminist movement. I’ll loosely characterize each, simplifying their opinions somewhat, in order to show the main trains of thought I’ve observed to be adopted by most when considering feminism in the Saudi case.

Dr. Madawi Al-Rasheed is an academic; her arguments are typically based on political theory and historical fact. She views the feminist movement as lacking because it isolates women’s rights from others, and then proceeds by removing itself from the political altogether. She also views it as compromising its integrity as a local movement when it accepts awards or support in general from the West and she finds it hypocritical to do so when the West is who supports the governments who have discriminatory laws in the first place. Mona El-Tahawy is a media magnet, her words travel fast and her passion is for what is in the moment. She claims the feminist movement is successful at this point, since it has pointed to the misogyny of men and clerics towards women in Saudi Arabia. Her understanding of the fight for women’s rights consists essentially in affirming women as the Other who faces oppressive forces of misogynic readings of religion and male-dominated culture, and is in need of liberation. This liberation comes about often by the demonizing of forces that she deems oppressive and backwards, appealing to pathos and sympathy to support women’s efforts in doing so. With the ultimate end goal of liberation, Mona El-Tahawy rejects Al-Rasheed’s arguments as the ramblings of a theorist who betrays her noble objective of easing the harsh reality experienced by average Saudi women. The two debated their views on Twitter, the discussion deteriorated into a disagreement over who had lived longer in Saudi as a ‘real’ Saudi woman, and who was more compassionate despite their later privileged life abroad. At this point Ebtihal Mubarak joined the conversation; rejecting what she sensed as a desire to prioritize political rights or a belittling of Women2Drive in Al-Rasheed’s argument, but also rejecting what she viewed as El-Tahawy’s victimization of Saudi women.

I agree with Ebtihal Mubarak’s argument that rights ought not be prioritized, i.e. the demand for the right to drive ought not be dismissed as frivolous since it is still an injustice, and that this demand ought not be framed into a victim’s cry for help. But at the heart of the discussions that later erupted was, first, a question of whether Manal Al-Sharif was deserving such an award, i.e. was her campaign political and fitting to the title “dissident”, and second, a question of whether she ought to be accepting the award at all, i.e. when is outside support legitimate. I have previously addressed the issue of Manal Al-Sharif being given the award; I will now turn to the question of outside support. Madawi Al-Rasheed gave her own view on support from Western powers when she said, “the woman [i.e. the West] who honors you for calling for driving is the same one who kills the dream of women in many Arab countries”. Hutoon Al-Rasheed, a member of the Right2Dignity campaign, disagreed. The award was deserved, she claimed, because the act of a woman driving in Saudi Arabia was a sign of defiance. But, this does not answer our questions concerning outside support. It simply takes the award itself out of context. Mainly, is there a requirement to applaud every form of support given, regardless of its underlying meaning? Shouldn’t one seek to control the narrative forming around his cause as much as possible, as well as how the support received is framed?

Recently I have become painfully aware of the importance of narrative. The means any given campaign is willing to use to reach its end are of the utmost importance. And while I admire Madawi Al-Rasheed’s rejection of all things Western as part of a broader objection to governmental alliances, I view this stance as running against the fact that governments are moralless creatures, will always be self-interested, and thus it is pointless to expect of them any otherwise. Instead, the hypocrisy Al-Rasheed points to can be used to have one governmental power pressure another. But I’m also not in favor of Hutoon Al-Rasheed’s acceptance of all forms of support and outside pressure, because some support comes with a cost. This cost, or requirement, has recently been embodied in Mona Eltahawy’s last Foreign Policy article, “Why They Hate Us” (which I wrote a response to here), that basically allocates women the role of victims. It also voids injustices women face of its political nature, and solidifies her fight as one with the opposite sex, culture, and religion. And in this case I do not believe the ends, women’s civil rights, justifies the means, women’s rights becoming social issues. Not because the end is of any small value, but because it is the polar opposite of the proposed means.

Mona El-Tahawy argues that her approach is that of an opinion writer, poking in the hard places to spark conversation. And once this is done, results can be seen since it is brought to global attention. And while some enthralled with passion for results may dismiss my critique outright, I still believe a certain amount of responsibility must be assumed when writing narratives on causes. What is written today is what will be remembered tomorrow. Words narrate actions taken, and it’s crucial they do so in the most just way possible. Agitating in a manner that is void of theory is just as pointless as theorizing yourself into an isolated corner.

About a year ago, when I’d first joined twitter under Ana3rabeya, I did so after witnessing Tahrir, and being enraged at Manal Al-Sharif’s arrest. One of my feminist idols was Mona El-Tahawy; I found her fiery tweets and her countless appearances on CNN to be rather inspiring. At the time, I did not pay attention to details and my opinions were largely ridden of context. Now, how a Saudi woman’s fight in her own country is framed is crucially important to me. I simply cannot stand it turning into a sob-fest for victimized and oppressed women. I cannot stand the thought of the demand for an end to guardianship by calling on “Mama Amreeka” to save oppressed Saudi women from misogynic culture, or, conversely, calling on “Baba Abdullah” to protect Saudi women from a sexist society and extremist clerics. In both cases Saudi women remain a ‘special’ case, taking the position of a child. And if the means are carried out in such a way that coincides with the status quo, how proud are we to be of the results? When I participated in the online fervor for Manal Al-Sharif’s release during the 9 days she was in jail, I didn’t argue with people too much. I dismissed the relevance of narrative that was being created around me. My sole focus was Manal’s release. Occasionally, I would read a sexist comment or two against Saudi men, or all Muslim men, and I’d let it slide. I remember thinking: it’s sensational, but that’s what will work. Now, I see that you can’t do that. In doing so, I was using Saudi women as a means, by allowing her to play the role of victim, in order to achieve my goal. What good is a fight for dignity by first denouncing it and assuming the role of victim? What good is a fight for citizenship if it’s done against my fellow citizens?

This is how my view on feminism has changed. Agnes Heller highlights this different perspective on feminism in saying, “Women’s Studies do nothing more than put women back in the kitchen”. Meaning that, feminism which treats women as a social case of study, a feminism that is based on anything other than Pride and Power in the political realm, forever keeps her rights in the kitchen, i.e. the social realm. Thus leaving her at the mercy of those who will to care for her, rather than a citizen of the political realm who wills for herself. I realize one might argue at this point that I am a privileged woman, entertaining theory and detaching myself from the plight of ‘real’ Saudi women. But, to me, this accusation holds little in substance. I am a Saudi woman. I have experienced discrimination. I do seek change. And this is not a rejection of all outside support as a method for achieving change within. I am fully aware of the rise of social media activism and increased globalization of politics, I realize campaigns typically cannot succeed in isolation. But, this does not mean that I, or any other Saudi woman, must inevitably submit to every form of support she is offered. Nor does it mean that Saudi women must accept a narrative she does not approve of, or exploit theatrical methods of victimhood that undermine the full volume of personhood she wishes to achieve. Saudi feminism doesn’t have to be a story of “Mama Amreeka” coming to the rescue, or “Baba Abdullah” choosing to ‘grant’ her rights. Feminism based on Pride in its demand for civil rights, not Pity, is worthy of praise. Feminism based on Power in the face of an oppressive state, not timidness, is the aim.

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Republished on Jadaliyya

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Why They Don’t Hate Us: A Critique of Mona Eltahawy’s Perception of Misogyny in the Middle East

I. Introduction

The article’s title is “Why Do They Hate Us?”, where “they” refers to men, and “us” to women in the Middle East. It opens with a short story by Alifa Rifaat, which raised some red flags with me. The story essentially simplifies a woman’s quality of life and allows it to be symbolized as the pleasure she experiences, or is denied experience of, between her legs. If this is supposed to have an anti-sexism message, it does an awfully good job at fully sexualizing women in order to do so. The story concludes with the woman calmly drinking her morning coffee, after finding out her husband has died. I’m not sure how a woman’s chilling satisfaction at her husband’s death is supposed to prove that men hate women. And if I misunderstood the story, and denial of orgasms is the end-all proof of hatred, that still wouldn’t deny the fact that casually sipping coffee after her husband’s death can, at the very least, hint to some sort of equal, if not more, feelings of hatred toward him as a man.

The thesis of the article is then briefly stated,  “We have no freedoms because they hate us”, and “They hate us. It must be said”. Since this is a discussion of women’s freedoms in the Middle East, it therefore must be of political nature. As a result, the mere mention of “hatred” in the realm of politics is shallow. Why? It reduces an intricate sphere of power play into a purely expressive and personal “hatred” between “us” and “them”.

 

II. The Legitimacy of Omitting Discussion of Women’s Problems in the West 

There is no logical fallacy in dismissing injustices against women in Western countries in the article, as some have claimed. Because, simply, this article isn’t about women in Western countries, it’s about women in the Middle East. For that reason, I see nothing wrong with Mona’s only brief mention of women’s problems in the West and her decision to omit any further discussion on it. It is irrelevant to the article at hand.

 

III. The Issue of Statistics

I will not discuss the statistics given, as many already have, because frankly controversial evidence such as the statistics provided by Mona, that 90% of never-married women in Egypt have had their genitals cut, will lead to an endless debate. There will be those who demand a source, a perfectly legitimate demand to which Mona responded that its from the Egyptian government and NGOs, but even this will lead to further debate among others on the legitimacy of the sources provided. Thus, I’ll leave it to Twitterverse to quarrel about.

 

IV. Covering As A Right to Choice

A list of injustices against women in the Middle East is then given: cutting of genitals in the name of modesty, humiliating “virginity tests”, and domestic abuse-friendly criminal code in Egypt, as well as denial of travel, marriage, and divorce without a male guardian’s blessing. However, I was weary as the list went on, with the mention of “women are covered up, anchored to the home”, at that point I felt it’s important to remember that some women do in fact choose to cover their hair, some even dislike the idea of driving a car, others don’t like travelling without their husbands, such decisions made by women ought not be dismissed and likened to the decisions of a misguided victim who doesn’t know any better. Because, frankly, that’s precisely what the clerics mentioned numerously in Mona’s article claim. They claim that women who wish to have such liberties are ‘fooled’ by Western ideas, so it’d only be laughable to turn around and tell women who agree with clerics that they’re ‘fooled’ by conservative ideas. Instead, the demand ought to be for choice, rather than the Rousseauian “forced to be free” concept, where forcing women to be uncovered would somehow be better than forcing them to cover, under the justification of her being “liberated” by the “outside world” which Mona calls upon in the article to, essentially, save these poor Arab women.

I would think that Mona would agree with this, particularly since she mentioned an incident where, “in Kuwait… Islamists fought women’s enfranchisement, they hounded the four women who finally made it into parliament, demanding that the two who didn’t cover their hair wear hijabs”. Now, just imagine for a moment, if liberals were hounding four Islamist women who made it into parliament, demanding the remove their hijab, because it’s “oppressive”. Doesn’t that seem paradoxical? To oppressively and intrusively deny a woman’s decision to wear a scarf to simply cover her hair – because it’s supposedly a symbol of oppression? Both cases I’ve just mentioned are equally unjust. Freedom of choice, not freedoms forced, is what Arab women ought to want.

 

V. The Case of Saudi Arabia

The status of women in Saudi Arabia is explained with infamous cases of the gang-rape victim who was sentenced to jail, a woman being sentenced to 10 lashes after driving her car, and the like. Mona later asks, “How much does Saudi Arabia hate women?” and answers by recalling the Mecca fire incident in which 15 girls died because the moral police did not let them leave the school because they were uncovered. While all of these injustices are, obviously, horrible, they have nothing to do with hatred of women. If women were “hated”, why, as Mona mentioned, would a royal decree be issued allowing women to participate in local elections, and why would girls’ education been taken away from the grips of Salafis, for the most part, after the Mecca incident? The short answer: because women are not hated. Again, this is power-based politics, not an expressive world of feelings. The gang-rape victim was sentenced to lashes by law, not because she was raped, but because she got in a car with an unrelated man, and to the ultraconservatives this violates their agenda of no-segregation. From their political perspective, if they’d allowed her to “get away with it”, it being when she was in the company of an unrelated man, a bit of their political power would taken from them because their agenda wouldn’t be enforced. So, they seek to maintain their power by enforcing ridiculous unjust sentences such as lashes, for the sake of maintaining their figurative political power. The same can be said for the ban on women driving, though two political players feel threatened by it rather than one. First, the protest against driving began in June of 2011, when the Arab Spring was peaking; the government had perfect incentive to stop any challenge to its political power, even if it was just a woman driving her car. Additionally, ultraconservatives have an anti-liberal political agenda; women’s driving is seen as “western” and is also a part of Saudi liberals’ agenda. If ultraconservatives allowed it, Saudi liberals would “win” a political point. Thus, as I’ve demonstrated with the few examples given, it is not complete hatred of women that drives all problems women face in Saudi Arabia. It’s political players fighting for influence. And, unfortunately, women are typically used at the heart of that fight.

 

VI. In Defense of Men, aka “Human Wolves”

“Attempts to control by such regimes often stem from the suspicion that without it, a woman is just a few degrees short of sexual insatiability…Yet it’s the men who can’t control themselves in the streets”. While I am in no way denying the existence of sexual harassment in the Middle East, I cannot help but feel appalled at the apparent shift in blame that has occurred. Instead of stopping at women ought not have their genitals cut because it is unjust, Mona goes on to argue that its illogical since men are the ones with uncontrollable sex drives. I take issue with this, firstly for its Orientalist tone; to say Arab men “can’t control themselves on the streets” is to liken them to animals who are compelled to act, rather than rational beings with the ability to choose. Secondly, while I see nothing wrong with an optional women-only subway car in Egypt, there was hardly anything just about the outright ban of single Saudi men in malls. Just this past week, however, this ban has been lifted and replaced with an anti-flirting law. And while the punishment, 35 days in jail, is disproportionately harsh, and whether the law ought to be limited to a ban on sexual harassment rather than flirting can be debated, such a law at least treats men as rational beings with a choice. This is different from a ban that automatically assumes, as Mona states, that men simply can’t control themselves in public.

It is important to note that this articulation of men as unable to control themselves in public is based on the same highly sexualized conception of the male-female relationship that ultraconservative Islamists hold. Both Mona and the ultraconservatives argue from the basis of demonization of men in an effort to emphasize the need to ‘protect’ women and assure their rights. Why must demands for women’s rights be raised to the forefront of discussion by standing on the backs of men? This alienation of men, and promotion of division of genders, only serves to keep women and their rights as the Other – caught between Saudi ultraconservative claims that women will be raped if they drive a car and only ‘safe’ if driven by a driver, and Mona’s claim that women are “hated” by men and will only be ‘saved’ when they’re “liberated” and men are banned from her presence in malls and subway busses, and the like. This is not to say that rights-based laws aren’t needed, for both men and women, it is merely that I reject this demand use the same rationale that requires men to become “evil” so that women can remain the victimized “other”.

As for Mona’s claim in regard to the unfairness of hearing about men being unable to marry rather than women in discussions on Middle East’s economies, while I have nothing against women’s late marriage issues being discussed, I find it only logical for men’s inability to marry be discussed in Middle Eastern economic discussions more since often Muslim men have to pay dowries. Frankly, the inclusion of this example of yet more “hatred” of women is weak, and rather conspiracy-based in nature, as though there were some mass plot to deny women’s sex drives in the Middle East. I just don’t see it. Muslim women don’t pay dowries, Muslim men do, why wouldn’t his inability to marry because he can’t afford the dowry be a legitimate issue?

Additionally, I thought I’d offer two of my own examples of men in Saudi Arabia. Just for a little balance. Last year, a fire broke out in a girl’s school, much like what had happened in Mecca during the 1990s. Twitter was abuzz with the news, videos and pictures spread widely. What I remember vividly to this moment was a beautiful picture of young Saudi men who ran from the boy’s high school section of the school, and were climbing up barely-there ladders to help the girls who’d ended up stuck on the roof trying to escape the smoke. That isn’t hate. Those men were young, they hear the same ultraconservative rhetoric we all do in Saudi, but they still did it. They risked their lives for a few girls. That isn’t hate. Another example is found in a Saudi petition that was released this past week, its from conservative young Saudis, it holds demands like “applying Sharia more justly”, it’s not liberal. Yet, there can be found in this non-liberal petition, a section containing demands for women. They demand women who stay at home to be paid by the government, they demand laws be made to protect women from harassment, etc. And while I personally did not sign it because I do not agree with the conservative and non-secular perspectives it holds, it nonetheless shows concern for women, rather than hatred. This particular example is to show that, while the men signing that petition are mostly conservative and would probably not support women’s driving, for example, that does not mean that it is grounded in some deep hatred towards women. I was actually shown the petition before it was released by one of the men writing it, I actually confronted him with my thoughts that women being paid to stay home sounds unfair since men don’t typically have that same choice. He rejected my point of view and found it quite just to assure women are supported financially.

Yet, I also know that that same man is also against women driving and travelling alone. So, does he hate women? This ought to problematize the generalization of “Middle Eastern men hate women” and even, “Conservative Middle Eastern men hate women”. I hope it’s now clear that “men” isn’t a homogenous ‘thing’ to point blame at, nor is “conservative”. Additionally, “hate” is a very, very harsh word. And it’s a shame that ill-informed readers of Mona’s article will now assume the stereotypical portrayal of ferocious “human wolves”, aka men, who consistently hate and harass women in the Middle East.

 

VII. Do Islamists Hate Women?

Mona goes on to discuss Islamists in Kuwait, Tunisia, and Libya. The issues of women being forced to wear hijab and the lifting of a ban on polygamy are offered as evidence of the possibly not-so-bright future for women after Islamists come to power in various revolutionary Middle Eastern countries. She goes on to say, “there was a time when being an Islamist was the most vulnerable political position in Egypt and Tunisia. Understand that now it very well might be Woman. As it always has been.” So far, I have read some charges against this section of the article as being Islamophobic because; one, it shows a general fear of Islamists and places them at opposite to women. And two, due to the fact that it clumps all Islamists together, when there are actually many variations in positions Islamists take towards women. Personally, I find this to be a boring refutation. Let us be charitable in reading Mona’s article; let’s assume she is referring to the ultraconservative Islamist positions when she says “Islamists”, not moderates.

 

VIII. Cultural Relativism vs. Cultural Imperialism & the Right to Choice

Mona describes ultraconservatives as “crackpots” and Islamists in Egypt as “stuck in the seventh century”, she also criticizes Islamist women in parliament, “covered from head to toe in black and never uttering a word”. She condemns the fact that, “when fielding female candidates, Egypt’s Salafi Nour Party ran a flower in place of each woman’s face”. Such a staunch stance against Islamists is likely due to Mona’s position that we ought to “call out the hate for what it is. Resist cultural relativism… You –the outside world- will be told that it’s our ‘culture’ and ‘religion’ to do X, Y, or Z to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman”. Yet, this conflicts with Mona’s examples of women doing just that. She states that, “the woman who heads the ‘women’s committee of the Brotherhood’s political party said that women should not march or protest… let their husbands and brothers demonstrate for them”. Also, the example of women of the Salafi party “covered in head to toe in black and never uttering a word” in parliament, chose to do so. Personally, I don’t cover my hair. But I fail to see what right I, or anyone else, have to deny another woman the ability to do so. Is it because they don’t look “liberated”? Is it because, “we’re in the middle of a revolution in Egypt!” and this means that the liberal idea of women must be applied to all in order for it to be a “success”? And all else is “backwards”, from the seventh century? Regardless of what century such choices came from, they were made today. They ought to be respected. Not labeled “hatred of women” and dismissed as choices chosen by men, when some women do in fact chose them as well. Just as Mona mentioned that some activists in Egypt avoid discussing sexual harassment so as to avoid tarnishing the revolution, Mona ought not avoid the fact that some women do in fact want to make what she, and what I assume was FP’s target audience in the Western “outside world”, would consider illiberal choices. The instant dismissal these women are given in Mona’s article is unfair, hinting that they’re actually men’s choices in disguise, so as to not tarnish her own portrayal of Arab women as all wanting to be “liberated”, all unhappy due to lack of orgasms, and all needing the world to come to their rescue.

This is not an argument in support of Islamists’ dictating laws on how women (or men) ought to be, nor an argument to just settle for the status quo since some women chose to do so, but for the right to choose. Mona’s argument comes across as though the only ‘right’ choice is the “liberated” choice. So what if the Salafi party put a flower in the place of a woman’s face? If the only answer we can come up with is it makes us feel disturbed and uncomfortable, it’s important to remember that Salafis can offer the same argument against political parties that do post pictures of women’s faces. It’s all in perspective. Therefore, arguing for choice rather than a dictated choice, be it liberal or conservative, ought to be our aim. Demand for women’s rights ought to stem from this basis, the right to choice, rather than the right to be liberated from men who “hate” her.

And while some may say that Mona’s arguments were not for “liberation”, but for the halting of hatred. I’ve already argued against men’s “hatred” toward women. I will now restate my argument against Islamists “hating” women and display how Mona has actually affirmed it unknowingly. She, insightfully, points to the fact that “even in countries undergoing revolutions and uprisings, women will remain the cheapest bargaining chips”. The reason for this is because; the transitional period after revolution is typically characterized by the formation of a power vacuum, in various degrees depending on the shape of the previous government. When such vacuums appear, it is only natural for all to seek as much power and influence as possible. In the case of the Arab Spring, many Islamist parties who were once oppressed by previous leaders have come to the surface. And while Mona argues that violations of women’s rights in the Middle East are “fueled by a toxic mix of culture and religion”, this cannot be so since when both culture and religion enter the realm of the political, they become ideology. And once a political party or group has an ideology, upholding its reign over others is what assures its political power. Thus, using religion-based justifications in politics is more about the party attempting to assume the ultimate role as interpreter of that religious text, thus gaining political power, rather than about religion itself. In other words, it’s simply a political party trying to push forth its own agenda at the expense of others. This is common in politics and makes a lot more sense than simply stating that Islamists just inherently hate women.

So, when Mona points out that “the Muslim Brotherhood, with almost half the total seats in our new revolutionary parliament, does not believe women (or Christians for that matter) can be president”, we can understand this not as “hatred” of women, but an attempt to maintain their power by claiming to be the ‘correct’ interpretation of Islam, and to also prevent liberals, who support women as president, from gaining a political point and “winning” power over the Muslim Brotherhood. In conclusion, I agree with Mona that women are indeed a bargaining chip. But I believe this chip is used in the power-based game of politics, labeling it as flat-out “hatred” does not begin to explore the predicament of women in the Middle East.