A Muslim woman’s reaction to King Abdullah’s interview with Barbra Walters.
A Muslim woman challenges King Abdullah: Where, in the Koran or Islamic law, is there justification for Saudi Arab men’s barbaric behavior; treating women as slaves and as a household item and property?
During King Abdullah’s interview with Barbra Walters, she questioned him about freedom for women in Saudi Arabia. She mentioned that women can’t drive or vote; calling such prohibitions astonishing for the 21st century. The King’s response, although touching, was clearly no more than a rehearsed safe answer.
Stating the obvious, he said his mother, wife and daughter are women and that he is working on changes. He said the main reason he agreed to interview with a woman was to show the West that he is trying. As a Muslim woman, I am no more impressed by his answer than was the astonished Barbra Walters. King Abdullah also said that he has to follow the will of his people. My observation is that the will of his people is another way of saying the traditions of their fathers, not Prophet Mohammad’s way of life as the Saudis keep bragging. As a Muslim woman, I look up to Prophet Mohammad’s family. (Peace upon him)
The Saudis, wealthy or poor, all pray at any time on hearing the invitation for daily prayers from the holy mosque but when it comes to basic women’s rights, all the Muslim ethics go down the drain. They walk over women, treating them with little or no respect and then claim that is what Prophet Mohammad wanted. Women are not doing any favors for one another by not speaking up publicly. As I have often said, no one will place your rights on a golden plate and present them to you. If you know something is rightfully yours, you need to demand it. By keeping their silence in following men and accepting the idiotic, outdated traditions of pre-Islamic period as Islamic law, by not demanding their rights in the streets of Saudi, they abet Saudi men in taking advantage of women, just as their fathers did.
There was a time when women were buried alive. I suppose one could argue that not being able to drive and vote is a step up but what these unenlightened men, including King Abdullah profess has no Islamic basis. He doesn’t say women can’t drive because somewhere in the Islamic rules it is declared taboo. On the other hand, he tells Barbra he must obey the law and will of the people. If the will of the people was to kill an innocent, should the King protest and order a stop or should he go along with the majority?
Not being able to vote cannot be equated to loss of life but it is a loss of dignity. It is equal to being treated as slaves and second-class citizens. King Abdullah and the other Princes better have some very good explanation for Prophet Mohamad because he hated people who treated others as second hand citizen or slaves.
As a woman, I am disgusted and angered by the lies of governments such as the Saudi’s about Islam. In the course of my constant research of Islam, I learned that the women of the Prophet’s family were outgoing, outstanding citizens as strong as their men. In a way, they were the Amazon warriors of their time. Women of the Muslim world should look up to the Prophet’s daughter, Fatimeh and her daughter, Zainab. Fatimeh lived 1400 years ago, yet she wasn’t an average woman. She wasn’t bought or sold or forced into marriage. She did not take orders or ask permission from anyone, including her holy father. That is something women of Saudi don’t know or don’t want to know. When Fatimeh was mature enough to marry, her holy father asked her if she wanted to marry and she chose her own husband. She was married as a free woman, equal to her husband and not as his slave as many women in Saudi Arabia are today. When she became a mother, she didn’t have to ask her little boys, Imam Hassan or Imam Hussein, or her holy husband, at the time the bravest man of the Arab world, for permission to teach men. She had more than 4000 students attending her seminars and classes and most of them were men.
She went into battle alongside her father and later her husband, taking care of them when they were injured and on many occasions saved lives, including her own father’s.
Fatimeh’s father asked her opinion in important matters. Her holy husband, the first Imam of Shiah, and, according to Sunni belief the fourth Khalifeh, asked her permission when he wanted to sell her land to help the poor. Although he had given the land to her, he didn’t think he should sell it without asking her. He was the governor. She was treated as his equal and Queen, even thought her life was extremely simple.
It has never been said that Her Holiness wasn’t allowed to ride a camel or a horse; as this was the only means of transportation at the time. Saudi women still don’t have the right to drive their own cars and King Abdullah says he is working on it. Working on what? The recent confrontation of Karen Hughes by a few elite Saudi women who are privileged to be driven when and where they please and defended the status quo, are not representative of the masses. Recall that twenty years ago, African Muslim women, in resentment and embarrassment, walked out of a conference that addressed the subject of female circumcision. Ten years later they were leading the charge against the barbaric practice. One hopes Saudi women experience the same enlightment.
Equality for women is a given because every Muslim man that prays to Allah, or God, must obey the will of God. True Islam is based on equality for everyone; men and women of all colors, nations and religions. No one, not even a king, is better than any other person. When the king says his mother, wife, sister or any other woman, although respected in his eyes, are not equal to a man to be permitted to drive a car, he is not following Prophet Mohamad. He is simply pretending to be a Muslim.
Although Imam Ali, according to the laws and customs of the time, could have multiple wives, he didn’t marry another woman until after his enemies killed Fatimeh in a night raid. He buried her himself and sobbed for days. She wasn’t just a number as many women in Saudi Arabia are today. The King says he will try. That is not a good enough answer for Muslim women.
King Abdullah also said he can’t allow public worship by other faiths in the birthplace of Islam because it is an insult to Islam, comparing it to building a mosque in the Vatican. As a Muslim I do not agree. When his holiness, Prophet Mohamad, came into his prophecy, he did not say other religions must leave Mecca because he came along. In fact, when he won the war against the Arabs, there were places of worship that didn’t believe in God. He didn’t force them to remove their idols from the Holy Kaba. Kaba is the heart of Islam and when God doesn’t force people to worship him in public or private in a certain way, why does a kingdom interpret Islam to fit its own agenda? What works for them is for women to be slaves and baby makers. And, other faiths must not pray publicly because it is an insult. Insult to whom? To the king? To the kingdom or to God? Isn’t it true that God created all of us equally? Isn’t it true that he brought great leaders, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad to guide us? If he wanted all of us to have one religion, wouldn’t he be able to force us? He gave us a choice. Saudi Arabia proclaims that it is the birthplace of Islam. If Prophet Mohamad were in Saudi today, I guarantee he would not like what he would see.
What Barbra Walters didn’t ask or wasn’t supposed to ask was: If the kingdom is so worried about its “Muslim” image, why do 5000 princes each receive almost 5 million dollars per year while ordinary people make no more than 10,000 per year. Why are there dirt-poor people in a country that broadcasts Islam? Why do the princes get away with crimes so horrific to Islam that they should be beheaded? They party on their private jets and yachts, consort with European prostitutes and traffic in drugs while a poor person looses a hand or his life for stealing money for food. While they tour around the world, drinking and partying, a commoner caught with a beer in his hand will pay by loosing his hand. Is this what King Abdullah boasts of as the “Islamic State”? Is a prince’s life worth more than that of a regular person? Five thousand wealthy princes live in happiness and luxury off the nation’s money while the rest of the Saudi people live a marginal existence. Is this what the King calls his religious duties? Which religion is this? In the Islam I know, the Allah, or God, we worship doesn’t accept one over another. There is no preference, certainly no VIP treatment. Is this what these people think Prophet Mohamad taught us? The truth is, what we see in Saudi Arabia dates back to barbaric times, prior to Prophet Mohamad. The Prophet himself was sick of this injustice. Unfortunately, the evil he fought is taking place in the holy land to which he brought his pure religion. And, unfortunately, many extremists dress modestly to trick people into believing that their behavior is based on the Holy Koran.
A good Muslim is not just someone who has a big beard, dresses modestly and constantly counts beads in his hands. Closing one’s eyes and ears to injustice, sticking one’s head in the sand, pretending not to hear or see anything does not a good Muslim make. If we see an injustice, it is our Muslim duty to stand up. This is what Prophet Mohamad taught us. He didn’t teach that we could be indifferent to the suffering of the poor and naïve and that if we just fast for 30 days and pray we can assume we will be on the next flight to heaven. A good Muslim doesn’t dream of heaven or how many virgins he will receive. He will stand up to ignorance practiced in the name of God because this is a godly thing to do. A safe Muslim might as well not be a Muslim at all. King Abdullah, chose your side; being safe is not going to save you.
Prophet Mohamad had a very frank saying, “I was born as an Arab but the Arab is not from my family tree” What he meant was: He was born in the Arab nation and spoke Arabic but not he is not linked to their idiotic traditions being practiced as his religion. These words describe what is going on in the Arab world today. I guarantee he would have hated the Bin Ladens.
King Abdullah is either very naive about true Islam or is just filling a job. Whichever, he should know that he will answer to
A frustrated Muslim woman.
God, just as any other person. Regardless of his excuses and his respect for tra
ditions, God could not care less about kings, their man made rules and political answers.
Ghazal Omid www.livinginhell.com
mardi 10 juillet 2007
From Manila Bulletin's book shelf - Moudifa ! Culture Shock from the top
MOUDIFA. Book author Margarita Marquis comes from a middle class family in the Philippines. She’s quite pretty and together with her three sisters, all became flight attendants. When she applied for the job flying in an airline based in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, she had to compete in a field of 50 ladies from 32 countries.
She made the grade and in her early 20’s, still a naive virgin in the late 70s, she plunged into the heady world of international travel. She would soon discover in training what it was like for women to live in the Kingdom. First of all, she had to wear the veil, the abaya, as an article of modesty in public or risk outright assault. She was shocked to discover what it was like to be a woman in the Kingdom. To her it meant, "Freedom is a stranger there."
Moudifa, means airhostess, that is how they are called in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where she worked for almost 10 years. But they look down at them like they were "whores."
This and a long string of experiences afterwards which she kept deep in her heart and those other countries working in the Kingdom tell of ordeals of rape and physical abuse, of men jailed or flogged or worse, beheaded, for crimes they were accused of.
The book is available at Central Books at 927 Phoenix Bldg., Quezon Avenue corner Roosevelt Avenue or call 372 3550 Loc. 31 and at Glorietta, inside Goodwill Bookstore is Central Books Supply or call 892 7050. It costs P275.00. * * * * *
She made the grade and in her early 20’s, still a naive virgin in the late 70s, she plunged into the heady world of international travel. She would soon discover in training what it was like for women to live in the Kingdom. First of all, she had to wear the veil, the abaya, as an article of modesty in public or risk outright assault. She was shocked to discover what it was like to be a woman in the Kingdom. To her it meant, "Freedom is a stranger there."
Moudifa, means airhostess, that is how they are called in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where she worked for almost 10 years. But they look down at them like they were "whores."
This and a long string of experiences afterwards which she kept deep in her heart and those other countries working in the Kingdom tell of ordeals of rape and physical abuse, of men jailed or flogged or worse, beheaded, for crimes they were accused of.
The book is available at Central Books at 927 Phoenix Bldg., Quezon Avenue corner Roosevelt Avenue or call 372 3550 Loc. 31 and at Glorietta, inside Goodwill Bookstore is Central Books Supply or call 892 7050. It costs P275.00. * * * * *
One woman's experiences in Saudi Arabia
One woman’s experiences in Saudi Arabia
Margie comes from a middle class family in the Philippines. Like her two other sisters, she became a flight attendant. When she applied for the job in an airline based in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, she had to compete in a field of 50 ladies from 32 countries.
Only in her 20s when she made the grade in the late 70s, she plunged into the heady world of international travel. She would soon discover in training what it was like for women to live in Saudi Arabia. First of all, she had to wear the veil, the abaya, as an article of modesty in public or be subject to outright assault. She was shocked to discover what it was like to be a woman in the Kingdom. To her it meant, "Freedom is a stranger there."
"Moudifa," the title of the book Margie wrote means air hostess, that is how they are called in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where she worked for almost 10 years. But they were looked down upon and considered as "whores."
It is a small book, a very quick read. "That is my intention," Margarita Marquis states. "Overseas foreign workers from the Philippines planning to work in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, can go through this book even as they sit in the lounge waiting to depart. Then they are better prepared to deal with realities over there." The book is available at Central Books at 927 Phoenix Bldg., Quezon Avenue corner Roosevelt Avenue or call 372 3550 Loc. 31 and at Goodwill Bookstore in Glorietta.
In teh book, the author also discusses the sharia, or Muslim laws, and the mutawa or religious police, who enforce the sharia. "People from the Philippines keep on looking for jobs in the Kingdom and they get jailed, or worse, beheaded, because they don’t know much about the sharia and the mutawa who watches out for all infractions.
In the book "Moudifa! Culture Shock from the Top," Marge described a broad range of experiences resulting from her career as an air hostess in the Kingdom. Hers is a truthful retelling of a decade of life and love, hurts and disappointments, but Marquis in this book relinquishes any feelings of bitterness.
"I risked speaking out because I want the Filipino people not to go blindly into places and even lose their lives and honor, simply because they did not know better. This is why I wrote "Moudifa." This book is for them," she says
Margie comes from a middle class family in the Philippines. Like her two other sisters, she became a flight attendant. When she applied for the job in an airline based in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, she had to compete in a field of 50 ladies from 32 countries.
Only in her 20s when she made the grade in the late 70s, she plunged into the heady world of international travel. She would soon discover in training what it was like for women to live in Saudi Arabia. First of all, she had to wear the veil, the abaya, as an article of modesty in public or be subject to outright assault. She was shocked to discover what it was like to be a woman in the Kingdom. To her it meant, "Freedom is a stranger there."
"Moudifa," the title of the book Margie wrote means air hostess, that is how they are called in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where she worked for almost 10 years. But they were looked down upon and considered as "whores."
It is a small book, a very quick read. "That is my intention," Margarita Marquis states. "Overseas foreign workers from the Philippines planning to work in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, can go through this book even as they sit in the lounge waiting to depart. Then they are better prepared to deal with realities over there." The book is available at Central Books at 927 Phoenix Bldg., Quezon Avenue corner Roosevelt Avenue or call 372 3550 Loc. 31 and at Goodwill Bookstore in Glorietta.
In teh book, the author also discusses the sharia, or Muslim laws, and the mutawa or religious police, who enforce the sharia. "People from the Philippines keep on looking for jobs in the Kingdom and they get jailed, or worse, beheaded, because they don’t know much about the sharia and the mutawa who watches out for all infractions.
In the book "Moudifa! Culture Shock from the Top," Marge described a broad range of experiences resulting from her career as an air hostess in the Kingdom. Hers is a truthful retelling of a decade of life and love, hurts and disappointments, but Marquis in this book relinquishes any feelings of bitterness.
"I risked speaking out because I want the Filipino people not to go blindly into places and even lose their lives and honor, simply because they did not know better. This is why I wrote "Moudifa." This book is for them," she says
Sally Williams meets the taboo-breaking author Rajaa Alsanea's is a Saudi-style Sex and the City'
Sex and the Saudi
A story of love, lust and shopping in the lives of four privileged young women is nothing new... but set in the conservative Islamic bastion of Riyadh it becomes a recipe for sensation and scandal. Sally Williams meets the taboo-breaking author Rajaa Alsanea
By Sally Williams for The TelegraphJuly 5, 2007
Rajaa Alsanea's novel is a 'Saudi-style Sex and the City'There are certain difficulties inherent in publishing a book in Saudi Arabia, as Rajaa Alsanea - dentist and writer - has discovered with the rumpus caused by her debut novel, Girls of Riyadh, an exposé of life behind the veil. 'One of my friends called from Mecca and said, "Rajaa, the imam is saying bad stuff about you, and I want to get up and kick his arse." I said, "It's OK. Let it go.'' ' She has also received death threats and her inbox is filled with 'exploding e-mails'. To underline the headaches, Alsanea will later inform me that if I were a male journalist interviewing her in Riyadh, I would probably be pounced on by men with long beards and black robes from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the religious police), and led off to be interrogated for being out in public with a woman who is not family.
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So it is with some relief that we meet at the Ritz Hotel in Chicago, where Alsanea erupts from the lift, a whirlwind of designer labels, perfect manicure and lipgloss, consulting her Gerald Genta watch (a white saucer, inset with diamonds). She looks fabulously glitzy, as you would expect from the writer of a novel widely hyped as 'Saudi-style Sex and the City'. The image is complete when she opens her Louis Vuitton handbag to itemise her three mobile phones. 'This one is for my American chip. See, it has two cameras! This one is for my Saudi chip; this one is a pocket PC.' At 25, she is confident and outspoken and has the hauteur of someone who grew up with two maids and drivers. 'Very painful,' she says of the photoshoot that morning. The shoes? I volunteer, pointing at her high heels. 'Not just the shoes. She [the photographer] is trying to make me kick up my legs. I say, I am a writer, a grade-A student and a dentist, so I should be a little bit formal.' But she is also hard to pin down. The daughter of liberal parents, she took to wearing the hijab (headscarf) three years ago (Louis Vuitton is among her favourites) and says she was late for our interview because she had to pray. But then she breaks off our conversation at one point to say, 'Nice dress!' when she sees a woman wearing a micro-mini with deep cleavage. I assume she is being ironic. But no: 'I'm going to buy it!' Moreover, she is set to be a literary star, with rights to Girls of Riyadh sold throughout the Arab world, and in 11 countries in the West. And yet, she is emphatic: teeth are her career. A dentistry graduate from Riyadh, she is doing a two-year postgraduate course at the University of Illinois, and plans to set up in private practice in Saudi Arabia. 'Being an author is not as respected [in Saudi],' she explains. 'It is not a proper job. It doesn't pay.' It is precisely these contradictions that make Girls of Riyadh so absorbing. Set among the city's elite 'velvet class', the novel chronicles the loves and dreams of four privileged young women and their tug-of-war between obedience and rebellion in a land of conservative Islam and glitzy shopping malls. Relayed by an anonymous narrator via weekly e-mails to an internet chatroom, we encounter the various Riyadh types. Gamrah is traditional and naive ('the majority of girls at my school were like Gamrah,' Alsanea says, 'happy for their families to choose who they marry and thinking that once married, they're going to have a pink, happy life'). advertisementMetropolitan Sadeem (she jets off to London for the summer where she eats sushi at Itsu) has everything except what she really wants - to marry the man she loves. Michelle is Westernised (her mother is American), sceptical and ends up working in the media. Lamees is popular, cool, clever and 'gym-toned', but not a pure-bred - her grandmother is Egyptian, so under Saudi's strict laws governing which class and tribe can marry each other, she also finds love treacherous terrain. Most of the girls look like rock-solid citizens in this stronghold of Islam, but in the privacy of their homes (often vast sprawling affairs with home cinemas and swimming-pools) they throw parties (women only, of course), eat Burger King, watch cable television (Sex and the City is a big favourite), and live an undercover life that is an extraordinary 'pot-pourri' of West and East. They flirt with boys on the internet in Arabish (a mix of Arabic and English), send their drivers to pick up Frappuccinos from Starbucks, talk about 'front bumpers' and 'back bumpers' (breasts and bottoms) and reveal a world where women hide more than their desires under their long black abayas. Gamrah's treat after her divorce is to go to Lebanon for a cheering 'tinsmithing' session: a makeover procedure that begins with a nose job and ends with a chemical peel. 'Cosmetic surgery is forbidden in Islam, but everyone does it,' Alsanea says. 'Girls have nose jobs and boob jobs and older women get facelifts.' In Saudi Arabia women are not permitted to drive, divorcees are social outcasts and brides are not even expected to sign their name on marriage certificates - a thumbprint will do. 'Saudi is where Islam started,' Alsanea observes. 'It is the country that has Mecca, the country where all Muslims go when they are on pilgrimage, so we're always going to be the number-one country in Islam. We want to be the best Muslims in the whole world, and sometimes we carry it to extremes.' She is most annoyed by the strict rules that govern marriage. 'In Saudi, girls are not free to pick their own partners. The family chooses.' Only one of the four girls in the novel marries happily. 'I would say it was even less than 25 per cent in real life,' Alsanea adds. 'I want people to know these are issues we go through, and we never talk openly, just because we're raised in a way that everything brings shame. I used to get so angry with all the books that didn't write about how we were feeling, how we're living our life in Saudi nowadays. Most novels describe Saudi 50 years ago. They talk about when girls were not educated: there are no cell phones, no internet, no description of what modern life is really like. 'What you have in Saudi now is a society that is changing. I'm talking about a life that starts in 1999 - when the internet arrived. It exposed young people to what is happening outside Saudi, not just what you're taught at home or at school. You have a whole world to learn from and you tend to compare what you have with what others have.' The book struck an immediate chord. First published in Lebanon two years ago - 'all Saudi books that are controversial start in Lebanon, just because we have censorship for books in Saudi' - it became a cult hit. Within days, black-market copies started appearing in Saudi. The trickle turned to a flood, and three or four months later Alsanea approached the Ministry of Information in Riyadh for official permission to publish there. 'I got it a few days later.' As well as now being available throughout the Arab world, the book has picked up a high-profile endorsement (Ghazi Al-Quasaibi, the celebrated Saudi author and former ambassador to the UK, wrote the prologue and praised it as 'worth reading') and secured a place in the top 10 of the German bestseller list. It is now poised to slice through the rest of Europe and the States. 'It is a book that shed light on what was going on,' explains Khaled Al-Maeena, the editor of Arab News, who thinks that novelty is what lies behind the success. 'It is a very important book,' echoes Fana Halasa, 44, a former banker with Citibank who lives in Jordan, where Girls of Riyadh caused a furore. 'We knew deep inside that in Saudi Arabia women are living a different lifestyle, especially the girls,' she says. 'They do everything undercover, so we were not shocked about that, but we were shocked about the detail. They have the money, they can go anywhere they want in the world, but when they want to come back home, they have to behave a certain way because society is asking them to do this. In Jordan women are freer. We can choose our mates and have the freedom to go out.' Alsanea was born in Kuwait, the youngest of six children, into a family of relatively modest means. Her father was an editor and a journalist who worked for the Ministry of Information. 'He always said, "I don't have any money to give you. Your inheritance will be your education." My father wanted us to be different. He wanted us to be more open-minded than others. He raised us to be very strong and independent.' When he died from a heart attack the family moved to Saudi to be near their relatives. Alsanea remembers that on the plane her sister Rasha was forced to put on the abaya and the hijab. 'I was still a child, so it was easier for me, but Rasha underwent an enormous culture shock. It took her a long time to resign herself to the idea that, for women, covering up is a fact of life in Saudi.' Her eldest brother, 18 years her senior, who had just graduated from medical school, took over the role of supporting the family, and that is the way it has stayed ever since. 'My brothers raised and supported me and so now anything I earn isn't just for me, it's for all of us. My brothers put a lot of effort into me and my sister because they knew that it takes courage for a girl in Saudi to be confident.' Alsanea says she has always written. 'My father used to say I was his little author. I used to enter writing contests and win, so I always knew I was gifted and I had this dream of writing my own book.' But the medical profession is high status in Saudi and the gene is rampant among her siblings: three are doctors, two are dentists. 'I wanted to make my mum proud and all writers in the Arab world are broke, so I thought I'd become a dentist and do writing on the side.' She is well read and Girls of Riyadh shows the encyclopaedic spread of her interests: she quotes Balzac, Helen Keller, Socrates and Mark Twain, as well as Arab poets and authors. The strongest voice that rises from the pages is that of the character Cher, the Hollywood rich kid played by Alicia Silverstone in the film Clueless. 'A big influence! It was my teenager movie.' A greater influence came with her enrolment at King Saud University in Riyadh. 'I was suddenly exposed to this bigger world of girls from other cities in Saudi. I saw Shi'ite girls, poor girls, it was just an eye-opening experience. I thought that girls' society in Saudi Arabia would be something really interesting to write about.' The book took her six years to complete; she wrote mostly in the evening and during the summer break. At one point she lost interest, and wrote nothing for a year. 'My sister, she is like my soulmate, my best friend, she read a chapter and said, "Rajaa, you have got to finish this! Believe me, no one has written anything like this!" I said I was too busy at school and she said, "I'll help you!" ' Already a qualified dentist herself, Rasha took on the burden of Alsanea's course work to enable her sister to write. Is the novel autobiographical? 'I'm not as crazy as those girls,' she says. 'I'm not like, I must go and party every day. Everything happening around me was material for the book. I would write down stuff I heard on Post-It notes and stick them by my bed.' If pressed and asked to name the character she is most like, she says Lamees. 'She is the funniest, good at dancing. I am a very good dancer - belly dancing...' One of the intriguing things about Girls of Riyadh is that despite the men being absolute shits - two, for example, drop their girls for being 'the wrong sort', while Sadeem's husband-in-waiting pushes her to offer 'more of her femininity' than ever before and then promptly dumps her the next day ('he was testing her limits,' Alsanea explains, 'and she failed') - the book is shot through with a very romantic view of relationships (with some rather sickly touches: Faisal's present for Michelle on Valentine's Day - a Western import banned by the religious police - is a teddy bear with diamond earrings that plays Barry Manilow). The girls yearn with an intensity that can come only from denial. 'We're separated from boys for such a long time,' Alsanea confirms. 'We're not raised to be friends or classmates and often are only exposed to each other after the age of 25.' But she is quick to defend Saudi men. 'They are victims just as much as women. They are ruled by traditions that were set for them by their great-great-grandparents. It's not like we're suppressed because of men. We're suppressed because the whole society is suppressed and that is very, very sad.' She admits that she is very romantic: her heart's desire is to marry the man of her dreams. What would he be like? 'I don't think I will ever find him,' she sighs. 'He has to be dark - men from Jeddah or the west coast have fairer skin with a pinky hue.' She finds this utterly repellent. Ditto men with ponytails, a style of growing dominance back home. 'It's like, "No, no, no, don't get that from West!" He has to be very funny, very smart and very witty. He has to be very different and supportive of me. He would be tall, because I'm short [5ft 2in]. He would look good in a suit, wear nice shoes and nice socks.' Nice socks? 'Not white cotton. Silk, maybe Gucci or CK. Navy-blue towards blackish, because if you're wearing a thobe [men's traditional white robe] and you sit down, your socks are always on show.' She groans. 'I'm being so shallow!' Since last year, Alsanea has been living in a house in downtown Chicago with her sister and brother (both doing Masters in dentistry, too - 'they're doing braces, I'm doing root canal. Very painful!') and her brother's wife. Next summer she plans to move back to Saudi, open up a private practice and carry on writing. Of course, far away here in Chicago, she must feel more liberated? Surprisingly, the answer is no. 'Society is built in a way that gives females some freedom in Saudi,' she frowns, listing all the things she can't do here: get her hair done, because there are no women-only salons and 'I can't take off my scarf without worrying there is some guy around'; sunbathe (because the few friends she has here do not live in apartments with private pools, or have private beaches, like at home); or glam up in dresses by Elie Saab and dance at friends' houses. 'So, I feel bad because here I don't get to wear everything I would like to wear just because there is no segregation.' Segregation, she insists, is not all bad. 'You have your girlfriends and you're partying and having dinner parties, doing what you want, it's just that it's all female.' There are compensations: Macy's, the department store where she bought the zebra-print kaftan she is wearing today ($400), and McDonald's. 'I put on 20lb when I moved here. It's the lifestyle! I come home, I'm very tired. I just want to go and buy something ready-made and yummy.' The upshot? 'I am appreciating what I had at home more than ever before. I'm not saying I want mixed bathing or dancing because now I wear the hijab, I like it this way. But I want to give a message to Saudi that it's not as bad as they think for females to drive or have careers or be divorced. And that most of all, families shouldn't be involved with marriages as much as they are. I feel I have this gift of knowing how to talk about things and I am not an outsider. I'm one of them. I feel what they're feeling. I want them to change. ' And with that she heads off to watch a DVD, pick up a McDonald's, and pray to Allah the Mighty. 'I have the prayer times flagged up on my computer.'
A story of love, lust and shopping in the lives of four privileged young women is nothing new... but set in the conservative Islamic bastion of Riyadh it becomes a recipe for sensation and scandal. Sally Williams meets the taboo-breaking author Rajaa Alsanea
By Sally Williams for The TelegraphJuly 5, 2007
Rajaa Alsanea's novel is a 'Saudi-style Sex and the City'There are certain difficulties inherent in publishing a book in Saudi Arabia, as Rajaa Alsanea - dentist and writer - has discovered with the rumpus caused by her debut novel, Girls of Riyadh, an exposé of life behind the veil. 'One of my friends called from Mecca and said, "Rajaa, the imam is saying bad stuff about you, and I want to get up and kick his arse." I said, "It's OK. Let it go.'' ' She has also received death threats and her inbox is filled with 'exploding e-mails'. To underline the headaches, Alsanea will later inform me that if I were a male journalist interviewing her in Riyadh, I would probably be pounced on by men with long beards and black robes from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the religious police), and led off to be interrogated for being out in public with a woman who is not family.
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So it is with some relief that we meet at the Ritz Hotel in Chicago, where Alsanea erupts from the lift, a whirlwind of designer labels, perfect manicure and lipgloss, consulting her Gerald Genta watch (a white saucer, inset with diamonds). She looks fabulously glitzy, as you would expect from the writer of a novel widely hyped as 'Saudi-style Sex and the City'. The image is complete when she opens her Louis Vuitton handbag to itemise her three mobile phones. 'This one is for my American chip. See, it has two cameras! This one is for my Saudi chip; this one is a pocket PC.' At 25, she is confident and outspoken and has the hauteur of someone who grew up with two maids and drivers. 'Very painful,' she says of the photoshoot that morning. The shoes? I volunteer, pointing at her high heels. 'Not just the shoes. She [the photographer] is trying to make me kick up my legs. I say, I am a writer, a grade-A student and a dentist, so I should be a little bit formal.' But she is also hard to pin down. The daughter of liberal parents, she took to wearing the hijab (headscarf) three years ago (Louis Vuitton is among her favourites) and says she was late for our interview because she had to pray. But then she breaks off our conversation at one point to say, 'Nice dress!' when she sees a woman wearing a micro-mini with deep cleavage. I assume she is being ironic. But no: 'I'm going to buy it!' Moreover, she is set to be a literary star, with rights to Girls of Riyadh sold throughout the Arab world, and in 11 countries in the West. And yet, she is emphatic: teeth are her career. A dentistry graduate from Riyadh, she is doing a two-year postgraduate course at the University of Illinois, and plans to set up in private practice in Saudi Arabia. 'Being an author is not as respected [in Saudi],' she explains. 'It is not a proper job. It doesn't pay.' It is precisely these contradictions that make Girls of Riyadh so absorbing. Set among the city's elite 'velvet class', the novel chronicles the loves and dreams of four privileged young women and their tug-of-war between obedience and rebellion in a land of conservative Islam and glitzy shopping malls. Relayed by an anonymous narrator via weekly e-mails to an internet chatroom, we encounter the various Riyadh types. Gamrah is traditional and naive ('the majority of girls at my school were like Gamrah,' Alsanea says, 'happy for their families to choose who they marry and thinking that once married, they're going to have a pink, happy life'). advertisementMetropolitan Sadeem (she jets off to London for the summer where she eats sushi at Itsu) has everything except what she really wants - to marry the man she loves. Michelle is Westernised (her mother is American), sceptical and ends up working in the media. Lamees is popular, cool, clever and 'gym-toned', but not a pure-bred - her grandmother is Egyptian, so under Saudi's strict laws governing which class and tribe can marry each other, she also finds love treacherous terrain. Most of the girls look like rock-solid citizens in this stronghold of Islam, but in the privacy of their homes (often vast sprawling affairs with home cinemas and swimming-pools) they throw parties (women only, of course), eat Burger King, watch cable television (Sex and the City is a big favourite), and live an undercover life that is an extraordinary 'pot-pourri' of West and East. They flirt with boys on the internet in Arabish (a mix of Arabic and English), send their drivers to pick up Frappuccinos from Starbucks, talk about 'front bumpers' and 'back bumpers' (breasts and bottoms) and reveal a world where women hide more than their desires under their long black abayas. Gamrah's treat after her divorce is to go to Lebanon for a cheering 'tinsmithing' session: a makeover procedure that begins with a nose job and ends with a chemical peel. 'Cosmetic surgery is forbidden in Islam, but everyone does it,' Alsanea says. 'Girls have nose jobs and boob jobs and older women get facelifts.' In Saudi Arabia women are not permitted to drive, divorcees are social outcasts and brides are not even expected to sign their name on marriage certificates - a thumbprint will do. 'Saudi is where Islam started,' Alsanea observes. 'It is the country that has Mecca, the country where all Muslims go when they are on pilgrimage, so we're always going to be the number-one country in Islam. We want to be the best Muslims in the whole world, and sometimes we carry it to extremes.' She is most annoyed by the strict rules that govern marriage. 'In Saudi, girls are not free to pick their own partners. The family chooses.' Only one of the four girls in the novel marries happily. 'I would say it was even less than 25 per cent in real life,' Alsanea adds. 'I want people to know these are issues we go through, and we never talk openly, just because we're raised in a way that everything brings shame. I used to get so angry with all the books that didn't write about how we were feeling, how we're living our life in Saudi nowadays. Most novels describe Saudi 50 years ago. They talk about when girls were not educated: there are no cell phones, no internet, no description of what modern life is really like. 'What you have in Saudi now is a society that is changing. I'm talking about a life that starts in 1999 - when the internet arrived. It exposed young people to what is happening outside Saudi, not just what you're taught at home or at school. You have a whole world to learn from and you tend to compare what you have with what others have.' The book struck an immediate chord. First published in Lebanon two years ago - 'all Saudi books that are controversial start in Lebanon, just because we have censorship for books in Saudi' - it became a cult hit. Within days, black-market copies started appearing in Saudi. The trickle turned to a flood, and three or four months later Alsanea approached the Ministry of Information in Riyadh for official permission to publish there. 'I got it a few days later.' As well as now being available throughout the Arab world, the book has picked up a high-profile endorsement (Ghazi Al-Quasaibi, the celebrated Saudi author and former ambassador to the UK, wrote the prologue and praised it as 'worth reading') and secured a place in the top 10 of the German bestseller list. It is now poised to slice through the rest of Europe and the States. 'It is a book that shed light on what was going on,' explains Khaled Al-Maeena, the editor of Arab News, who thinks that novelty is what lies behind the success. 'It is a very important book,' echoes Fana Halasa, 44, a former banker with Citibank who lives in Jordan, where Girls of Riyadh caused a furore. 'We knew deep inside that in Saudi Arabia women are living a different lifestyle, especially the girls,' she says. 'They do everything undercover, so we were not shocked about that, but we were shocked about the detail. They have the money, they can go anywhere they want in the world, but when they want to come back home, they have to behave a certain way because society is asking them to do this. In Jordan women are freer. We can choose our mates and have the freedom to go out.' Alsanea was born in Kuwait, the youngest of six children, into a family of relatively modest means. Her father was an editor and a journalist who worked for the Ministry of Information. 'He always said, "I don't have any money to give you. Your inheritance will be your education." My father wanted us to be different. He wanted us to be more open-minded than others. He raised us to be very strong and independent.' When he died from a heart attack the family moved to Saudi to be near their relatives. Alsanea remembers that on the plane her sister Rasha was forced to put on the abaya and the hijab. 'I was still a child, so it was easier for me, but Rasha underwent an enormous culture shock. It took her a long time to resign herself to the idea that, for women, covering up is a fact of life in Saudi.' Her eldest brother, 18 years her senior, who had just graduated from medical school, took over the role of supporting the family, and that is the way it has stayed ever since. 'My brothers raised and supported me and so now anything I earn isn't just for me, it's for all of us. My brothers put a lot of effort into me and my sister because they knew that it takes courage for a girl in Saudi to be confident.' Alsanea says she has always written. 'My father used to say I was his little author. I used to enter writing contests and win, so I always knew I was gifted and I had this dream of writing my own book.' But the medical profession is high status in Saudi and the gene is rampant among her siblings: three are doctors, two are dentists. 'I wanted to make my mum proud and all writers in the Arab world are broke, so I thought I'd become a dentist and do writing on the side.' She is well read and Girls of Riyadh shows the encyclopaedic spread of her interests: she quotes Balzac, Helen Keller, Socrates and Mark Twain, as well as Arab poets and authors. The strongest voice that rises from the pages is that of the character Cher, the Hollywood rich kid played by Alicia Silverstone in the film Clueless. 'A big influence! It was my teenager movie.' A greater influence came with her enrolment at King Saud University in Riyadh. 'I was suddenly exposed to this bigger world of girls from other cities in Saudi. I saw Shi'ite girls, poor girls, it was just an eye-opening experience. I thought that girls' society in Saudi Arabia would be something really interesting to write about.' The book took her six years to complete; she wrote mostly in the evening and during the summer break. At one point she lost interest, and wrote nothing for a year. 'My sister, she is like my soulmate, my best friend, she read a chapter and said, "Rajaa, you have got to finish this! Believe me, no one has written anything like this!" I said I was too busy at school and she said, "I'll help you!" ' Already a qualified dentist herself, Rasha took on the burden of Alsanea's course work to enable her sister to write. Is the novel autobiographical? 'I'm not as crazy as those girls,' she says. 'I'm not like, I must go and party every day. Everything happening around me was material for the book. I would write down stuff I heard on Post-It notes and stick them by my bed.' If pressed and asked to name the character she is most like, she says Lamees. 'She is the funniest, good at dancing. I am a very good dancer - belly dancing...' One of the intriguing things about Girls of Riyadh is that despite the men being absolute shits - two, for example, drop their girls for being 'the wrong sort', while Sadeem's husband-in-waiting pushes her to offer 'more of her femininity' than ever before and then promptly dumps her the next day ('he was testing her limits,' Alsanea explains, 'and she failed') - the book is shot through with a very romantic view of relationships (with some rather sickly touches: Faisal's present for Michelle on Valentine's Day - a Western import banned by the religious police - is a teddy bear with diamond earrings that plays Barry Manilow). The girls yearn with an intensity that can come only from denial. 'We're separated from boys for such a long time,' Alsanea confirms. 'We're not raised to be friends or classmates and often are only exposed to each other after the age of 25.' But she is quick to defend Saudi men. 'They are victims just as much as women. They are ruled by traditions that were set for them by their great-great-grandparents. It's not like we're suppressed because of men. We're suppressed because the whole society is suppressed and that is very, very sad.' She admits that she is very romantic: her heart's desire is to marry the man of her dreams. What would he be like? 'I don't think I will ever find him,' she sighs. 'He has to be dark - men from Jeddah or the west coast have fairer skin with a pinky hue.' She finds this utterly repellent. Ditto men with ponytails, a style of growing dominance back home. 'It's like, "No, no, no, don't get that from West!" He has to be very funny, very smart and very witty. He has to be very different and supportive of me. He would be tall, because I'm short [5ft 2in]. He would look good in a suit, wear nice shoes and nice socks.' Nice socks? 'Not white cotton. Silk, maybe Gucci or CK. Navy-blue towards blackish, because if you're wearing a thobe [men's traditional white robe] and you sit down, your socks are always on show.' She groans. 'I'm being so shallow!' Since last year, Alsanea has been living in a house in downtown Chicago with her sister and brother (both doing Masters in dentistry, too - 'they're doing braces, I'm doing root canal. Very painful!') and her brother's wife. Next summer she plans to move back to Saudi, open up a private practice and carry on writing. Of course, far away here in Chicago, she must feel more liberated? Surprisingly, the answer is no. 'Society is built in a way that gives females some freedom in Saudi,' she frowns, listing all the things she can't do here: get her hair done, because there are no women-only salons and 'I can't take off my scarf without worrying there is some guy around'; sunbathe (because the few friends she has here do not live in apartments with private pools, or have private beaches, like at home); or glam up in dresses by Elie Saab and dance at friends' houses. 'So, I feel bad because here I don't get to wear everything I would like to wear just because there is no segregation.' Segregation, she insists, is not all bad. 'You have your girlfriends and you're partying and having dinner parties, doing what you want, it's just that it's all female.' There are compensations: Macy's, the department store where she bought the zebra-print kaftan she is wearing today ($400), and McDonald's. 'I put on 20lb when I moved here. It's the lifestyle! I come home, I'm very tired. I just want to go and buy something ready-made and yummy.' The upshot? 'I am appreciating what I had at home more than ever before. I'm not saying I want mixed bathing or dancing because now I wear the hijab, I like it this way. But I want to give a message to Saudi that it's not as bad as they think for females to drive or have careers or be divorced. And that most of all, families shouldn't be involved with marriages as much as they are. I feel I have this gift of knowing how to talk about things and I am not an outsider. I'm one of them. I feel what they're feeling. I want them to change. ' And with that she heads off to watch a DVD, pick up a McDonald's, and pray to Allah the Mighty. 'I have the prayer times flagged up on my computer.'
Terror and Tribulations; Looking for peace in the land of the Abu Sayyaf.
Terror and Tribulations: Looking for peace in the land of the Abu Sayyaf
Jul 8, '07 6:07 AMfor everyone
PART 1: The doctor's albumUS troops are standing "shoulder-to-shoulder" with the Philippine military in combating the Abu Sayyaf bandit-cum-terrorist group. But nothing is straightforward on the country's racked southern islands, except the hatred - whether of a kidnap victim for the terrorists, of locals for the military, or of Christians for Muslims. In this series of vignettes, horror and hope are given a human face. PART 2: Nostalgic garden
Jul 8, '07 6:07 AMfor everyone
PART 1: The doctor's albumUS troops are standing "shoulder-to-shoulder" with the Philippine military in combating the Abu Sayyaf bandit-cum-terrorist group. But nothing is straightforward on the country's racked southern islands, except the hatred - whether of a kidnap victim for the terrorists, of locals for the military, or of Christians for Muslims. In this series of vignettes, horror and hope are given a human face. PART 2: Nostalgic garden
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