Our women are finally safe, Insha’Allah?

On July 6, 2014 Middle East Online published an article that made me sit up and try to figure out my reaction to it. Typically, I am fairly forthright with my reactions but this one had me scratch my belly and my head. OK, without further ado; the MEOL reported, "Marrying women from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar and Chad is no longer permissible in Saudi Arabia." Wow, should I jump for joy or cringe at the overt racism of this action?

The article followed up with Makkah Chief of Police General Assaf al-Qurashi reiterating the new requirements for all marriages with foreign women including the following gems:

• If married, a Saudi man wishing to take a foreign woman as a second wife, he has to present proof that his first wife has cancer, is disabled or unable to have children. (Not sure if that applies for the 3^rd and 4^th wives, as having them is permitted by Law in the Kingdom. Maybe they will all have to have cancer!)
• A man should be older than 25 to be able to apply for a permit to marry a foreigner. If recently divorced, he has to wait six months before applying for the license

Normally I would dance at this news. This basically means our women may not be enslaved in one of the most oppressive and misogynistic societies in the world. But, I knew the news bothered me. Why? I think it has to do with the absolute and overt racism that is being displayed by the Neanderthals of this Police State.

They want to ban Saudi men from marrying women from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chad, and Myanmar the MEOL missive said, but not from places like England, Germany, and other places in Europe. Knowing Saudi men and the society a bit, I can only draw a conclusion that this is an expression of racism and gender superiority.

Saudi men line up to date blonde Europeans. In the clubs of Dubai the blonde Russian and Eastern European girls command the most attention and yes highest price! The Saudi men are known to display this racial preference with fanatical enthusiasm.

If you have come into contact with Saudi men in anyplace outside of Saudi Arabia you have probably seen and experienced the debauchery and sheer vulgarity of these men. I have always put it down to the fact that, they have been denied normal human contact with women in their country and once they are outside of the dark hole that is Saudi Arabia, they simply go bonkers.

Now, I think there is more to that. They are indoctrinated to think of women as objects, slaves, and their playthings. They just export that mindset with them to places they go. In their own country they simply hide the atrocities and the tales of horror. Abuse and neglect disappear into the miasma of esoteric concepts like religion, tribe, family, and honour.

So, why do I think this ban may be a good thing for Bangladeshi women? The World Economic Forum's Global Gender Report in 2013 ranked Saudi Arabia 126 out of 139 countries in terms gender equality and progress towards gender equality. There were 139 countries in total and some countries like Syria, Iraq did not have any meaningful data.

If you are curious, Bangladesh is ranked 75, below Sri Lanka but above India and Pakistan. This is the only country where women are prohibited from driving. Women will be "allowed" to vote and participate in elections starting 2015. This in a country where female literacy rate is very high, estimated to be 81.3%. For comparison the Bangladeshi female literacy rate is estimated to be 53.4%. How come the women in Saudi Arabia with all their education and wealth are systematically kept in the dark and why?

To understand the monstrosity that is the societal architecture in the Kingdom you have to understand how the regime and society exploit and conflate religion, tradition, and its sheer desire to maintain power.

All of the rights of women are defined by the state according to the Hanbali interpretation of Sunni Islam. This is a strict interpretation of tradition rather than laws. Since most of the traditions are unwritten the clerics (aka the mullahs) tend to make ruling based on their whims. A great example is this little contradiction Published by Katherine Zoef in her book about Saudi Women in 2010.

She describes, "In Saudi culture, the Sharia is interpreted according to a strict Sunni form known as the way of the Salaf (righteous predecessors). The law is mostly unwritten, leaving judges with significant discretionary power which they usually exercise in favour of tribal customs. The variation of interpretation often leads to controversy.

"For example, Sheikh Ahmad Qassim Al-Ghamdi, chief of the Mecca region's mutaween (religious police), has said prohibiting ikhtilat (gender mixing) has no basis in Sharia. Meanwhile, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Barrak, another prominent cleric, issued a fatwa (religious opinion) that proponents of ikhtilat should be killed."

So, unless you have fully tuned ears you could literally lose your head depending on who the mullah is. It is the case when there is nothing written in the Quran or precedents, the Judges and mullahs fall back on traditions that are rooted in the tribes that roamed the country some thousand years ago. The impulse is to go back to the dark, ahem, purity.

One of the most absurd rules for women is the concept of male guardianship. A male is deemed superior to any woman 45 and under to a male of any age. An UN report says, "A United Nations Special Rapporteur report states that "legal guardianship of women by a male, is practised in varying degrees and encompasses major aspects of women's lives. The system is said to emanate from social conventions, including the importance of protecting women, and from religious precepts on travel and marriage, although these requirements were arguably confined to particular situations." The bottom-line, there is no sugar coating that Saudi society is oppressive to women in the extreme.

Women need guardian permission to:

1. Marriage and divorce
2. Travel, if under 45
3. Education
4. Employment
5. Opening a bank account
6. Elective surgery

There are examples of extreme hardship caused by this nonsensical tribalism. Two that is quite prominent in the media are:

• A July 2013 case, where King Fahd hospital in Al Bahah postponed amputating a critically injured woman's hand because she had no male legal guardian to authorise the procedure. Her husband had died in the same car crash that left her and her daughter critically injured
• August 2005 a court in the northern part of Saudi Arabia ordered the divorce of a 34-year old mother of two (named Fatima Mansour) from her husband, Mansur, despite the fact that were happily married and her father (now deceased) had approved the marriage. The divorce was initiated by her half-brother using his powers as her male guardian, who alleged that his half-sister's husband was from a tribe of a low status compared to the status of her tribe, and that the husband had failed to disclose this when he first asked for Fatima's hand. If sent back to her brother's home, Fatima feared domestic violence. She spent four years in jail with her one-year-old daughter

As you can tell I do not think marrying a Saudi man should be in the agenda of a Bangladeshi woman now or ever. Yes, there will be exceptions and there will be love, but in general there will be despair, sorrow, and slavery. I say good riddance and let us welcome the ban at the expense of sounding racist and xenophobic!

Kayes Ahmed is a businessman running multi-national operations from Colorado, USA.