Salem 1692 to Quraiyat 2008 and Some Supernatural Zina

On July 19th, 1692 a 71 year-old widowed matriarch of Salem Village was led to Gallows Hill and executed for her crimes against Christianity and for the practice of witchcraft. Her name was Rebecca Nurse.

For two years now, Saudi police have held Fawza Falih captive accusing her of witchraft. The charges include: “having sex with the djinn“, for making a local man impotent, and such ludicrous claims as having a white robe and knots tied in cloth nearby. She was coerced into making a confession and after being found innocent of her crimes, the ruling has been overturned and she has been sentenced to death.

Like Nurse, Falih is single, living alone, and elderly, all of the classic “symptoms” of a woman capable of bewitchment. Also like Nurse, she was dragged away from her home on the Jordanian border by the religious authorities, put on trial, found innocent and then her verdict was overturned in favour of a guilty verdict and an execution that might expunge the community of the devil.

The Saudi authorities are evidently taking a cue from Reverend Parrish, Judge Hathorne, and the mad girls of Salem Village in their accusations against Ms. Falih.

Saudi Arabia prides itself on its links to its Bedouin origins, but apparently it seeks to eradicate the undesirable elements of indigenous “Bedouinism” of the Islam of the peninsula. Islam itself is a religion of myth and wonder with the fire spirits of the djinn, the evil eye, the Hand of Fatimah, the veneration of saints: yet all of these things have been selectively erased by the influence and enforcement of the draconian Wahhabi doctrine on the Arabian Peninsula, despite being deemed permissible by Hanbali scholars like Ibn Taymiyya. What is perhaps most frightening about the orthodoxy is their belief in this notion of witchcraft and its inherent evilness, that such a thing exists in the 21st century and can be at all threatening to Saudi society.

There is no definition for witchcraft or sorcery in the Saudi penal code, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, this means then, that in the Hanbali Shari’a there is nothing that delineates how a witch is identified, tried, and punished. Accordingly, as mentioned above, Ibn Taymiyya, one of the most prolific of the Hanbali legal scholars permitted the use of amulets and talismans in the practice of Islam, issuing a fatwa on the subject. Unfortunately, Salafi and Wahhabi doctrines overrule even the established legal code of Saudi Arabia… even when witchcraft is not a discernable part of that code.

You cannot feasibly prove the act of bewitchment, especially in this age of skepticism and science: a man is impotent? In the logic of the Saudis he must have been a victim of witchcraft. Too bad we’re not in Iran, where popular mythology holds that sex with a menstruating woman would lead to your penis falling off. Unfortunately, we don’t have the option of a zina crime here, although the Saudi authorities have found Ms. Falih guilty of some supernatural zina!

Having grown-up in the shadow of Salem Village, as a child I was a well-indoctrinated in the horrors of those trials and the knowledge that my own ancestors stood by and watched the ropes swing and their neighbours hang. An innocent, elderly, illiterate Bedouin woman is being accused of a crime that I never in my lifetime thought I would see a woman so fiercely and seriously accused of committing! G-d help us all… Astagifirallah.

Saudi Arabia and Women Behind the Wheel (Part 2)

Saudi women are going to get the right to drive within the next year. According to some sources, the government is lifting the ban on women drivers in an effort to curb the suffragette movement that is gaining momentum inside the Kingdom. The logic of this defies my mini mind, since women will have (1) keys (2) a license and (3) the ability to drive themselves to their suffragette meetings.

Hooray for Saudi women proving that grassroots activism still works and change for women can still happen with a slow and steady push from inside. I continue to be inspired by my Saudi colleagues and am beyond thrilled for them.

Pass me the keys to the family car and let the fitna begin!

Saudi Arabia and Women Behind the Wheel

Why does every discussion of Saudi Arabia and women bring-up the fact that women cannot drive?

Okay, I admit that in a lecture last week on Islam to my class I shared this fact with them and they seemed less than surprised because evidently for my students, there is the pervasive idea that Saudi women do nothing except sit in locked boxes all day and occasionally shop for Chanel. I explained to them one of the reasons I had been given for it, relating to A’isha’s role at the Battle of the Camel and of course, only my Muslimah student made any acknowledgment of understanding, everyone else sort of looked at me with a vague expression of, “Well, don’t they like ride around on camels anyway?”

I definitely take driving for granted. It gives me an incredible freedom to just get in the car, pop in a CD and drive and think. Driving gives you a sense of control, it’s your own little portable bubble, a misanthrope’s dream and given that I’m originally from Boston, well, let’s just say it’s a means of exploring one’s creativity while hurtling around on four wheels. I cannot imagine not being able to drive and when I’ve been out of the country for long periods of time, the first thing I want to do is get in my car, drive on the “right side of the road” and get my mobility back. That’s something Saudi women don’t have for whatever reason, I can think of at least five off of the top of my head (the least of which involves issues of peripheral vision, I nearly fell into my fair share of potholes in Cairo practicing niqaab) that are a little more reasonable than A’isha’s riding on a camel. Frankly, I think that A’isha was pretty amazing to get on the camel in the first place (after riding one myself, I have no plans to get on another) and then to lead her allies into battle, well, that’s girl power, people! But I digress…

I’m fascinated by discussions of Saudi women. They’re educated, dynamic, activist-women, yet in every article and op-ed that I read, someone has to drag up the fact that they cannot drive, which is fine, I understand that in terms of the general public, most people are not aware of this fact, but it does not need to punctuate every. single. article. on. Saudi. Arabia. I just read an op-ed on Saudi women’s rights in light of the recent court ruling on the Shi’a rape victim there and about three paragraphs are spent discussing Saudi women’s driving. Um, hello?

That’s nice, we know by now that Saudi women are not permitted to drive. Maybe if the woman who is about to be ravaged was able to drive she would not have been in the car of a man who was not related to her and thus not raped? It’s a possibility. I’m not sure that I would use that line of reasoning as a reason for giving women the right to drive, but it certainly speaks for giving women some sense of independence, protection (automatic locks, the accelerator), and more importantly: trust.

This year, on Saudi Arabia’s national day, Saudi Feminist Wajeha Al-Huweidar and other women representing the League of Demanders of Women’s Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia presented a petition to Saudi King Abdullah demanding that women be given the right to drive. My friend sent me a copy of the petition and asked me to sign, so of course I did, not that my signature will be worth much, but I got a wonderful e-mail from the League which I have saved. Hopefully the League will be able to convince the old guard of Saudi Arabia that women are capable of being citizens active in all spheres of public and private life, not unlike Khadijah, ‘Aisha, Fatimah, Zahra, and Zaynab and that there will be no fitna if given the keys to the family car.

Saudi Gang Rape Sentence

Judges in Saudi Arabia have sentenced a 19 year-old Shi’a woman to 200 lashes for being gang-raped. It is claimed that although her rapists have received actual prison sentences, she is being punished for using the media to try and get her sentence reduced. The judge says it’s because she was in the car of an unrelated man, but really I’ve never heard of such a thing coming out of Saudi ever from friends or colleagues, so I’m skeptical. I see ***HONOR CRIME*** in big flashing Vegas ***GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS*** lights over this ruling. I love this legalized honor crime garbage that comes floating along through the Islamic court system. It’s such a bastardization of the Shari’a. Suddenly Shari’a is suspended in favor of some kind of patriarchal blood lust. Oh you know what it smells like, we can smell it in non-Muslim societies, too…

What we have here is two things: the first is a woman who is brutally raped 14 times and almost killed in the process and a judge who feels that his power was somehow undermined, and thus this girl has to be punished further. Why doesn’t he just rape her, too? She’s already getting 100 lashes for the first 14 rapes, why not just throw her away? Treat her like a prostitute? Throw her out like a dirty rag. The men who ravaged her spend 1-5 years in a Saudi jail, they’ll get out. She’ll be nearly beaten to death and once they’re done and she’s conscious again, she’ll never be able to get the scars off of her back: no surgeon will be able to remove them. No one will be able to get the scars of a gang rape from her mind. And what about her femininity? How has that been destroyed? Mentally and physically?

If they want to punish her, hasn’t she been punished? If we think like her judges, her gang-rape was her punishment. The total destruction of her self, her honor, her body, was her punishment.

Nowhere in the Shari’a does it say that a woman who is gang-raped 14 times should be the one who is punished. Punishment for a zina crime requires four witnesses, and of course, what man is going to admit to rape? In addition, the Shari’a makes allowances, that no hadd punishments should be carried out if there is any element of doubt (i.e. coercion).

Rape = coercion

Being raped 14 times is not a zina crime.

I’m so completely confused as to how this woman managed to be responsible for getting herself raped not just once, but 14 times, but that is apparently the astounding logic of the Saudi courts. This is also the law of the land where 15 girls died in a fire in Mecca after the religious police would not let them into the streets without their abayyas. I’m fairly confident in thinking that not even Wahhabism in it is austere sense of justice would not rule that a woman being raped, brutalized, and almost murdered is her responsibility.

I’m so confused. I’m so angry. I’m just so…

Astagfirallah.

Nancy Pelosi Wants More Arab Women in Politics

Did you hear? On her recent trip to the Middle East, Nancy Pelosi privately pressed for Arab Women to be more active in politics. Oh I’m sorry, she said this to Syrian and most especially Saudi lawmakers while she plopped down into the chair of the head of Saudi’s Shura council.

A colleague of mine is doing research on Saudi women’s role in contemporary politics within the kingdom, including their political activism and their relationship with the Shura Council. She found through her research a dynamic group of women in business and academia, who, contrary to popular belief, have their own political microcosms that operate in tandem to the male ruling class. None of her conclusions or observations parallel or for that matter, seem to necessitate Pelosi’s championing the rights of Arab Women, and do you know why?

To put it colloquially and in a pop cultural context, sisters are doing it for themselves.

Pelosi, along with a lot of other women in power who feel that once they claw their way to the top of the food chain feel that other women locally and globally need their help and assistance, so they blindly charge ahead, touting women’s liberation under a new brand name. To me, Pelosi’s comments to the Chief of the Shura Council are insulting because it is demonstrative of Pelosi’s lack of awareness of the changing landscape of the Kingdom, of the dynamic of Arab (and Muslim) society, and basic discourse on feminism and neo-colonialism in the region and amongst Saudi women and scholars.

It just bothers me that Pelosi feels that its part of her niche as a woman in power to jab at other governments about the participation of women when the United States has never even elected a woman president; we have only one female speaker of the house; and 13 women serve in Congress, that’s just a little over a tenth of the entire congress. Other countries, like Afghanistan, have a legislated number of women who must be elected to parliament and a Ministry of Women’s Affairs. Benazir Bhutto was elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, Indira Ghandi was Prime Minister of India, and in the Arab world, Queens Rania and Noor lead the way against honor killings, education, and female empowerment in an Islamic context. Women in Iran outnumber men in university positions and applicants, there is a woman Prime Minister of Iran, as well, so really, explain to me again, Nancy what the problem is?

There’s enough meddling in the Middle East by Americans. There’s a suspicion of “Western” feminism and feminism in general as it is associated with being something Western. There is no word for “feminism” in Arabic, because it is an almost exclusively “Western” notion. Pelosi shoots from the hip without any broader understanding of Islamic or Arab feminism, about the changing dynamic of the political landscape in the Middle East. All that she and other women critical of the Kingdom and its regime see are faceless women who can’t drive a car.

So they wear a veil and they can’t drive a car? They’re wearing a veil and driving change on their own terms, in a way that is best for the Kingdom and not a way that is best for Pelosi and her pundits in the US.