The Gulf blog

Reform in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? 8, October 2009

This is an article that was published in Infinity Journal at the start of this year.

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For those studying the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and attempting to discern its future directions, there are two broad schools of thought into which opinions fall. One says that the Kingdom is slowly but surely reforming; that the elite — or at least enough of the elite — believe that reforms are critical to the future of Saudi society. This line of thinking usually endows King Abdullah with relatively liberal values and a desire to open up the Kingdom. The other school suggests that the real heart of the elite is true-blue conservative with a very large C. Concessions for greater rights and freedoms, where they have been made, were grudgingly employed because of international (or indeed domestic) pressure to do so. The protagonist for this side of the argument is usually referred to as Prince Naif, the head of the Ministry of the Interior. Deciding which camp is closer to the truth is made all the more difficult by there being ample evidence for both sides.

In the months around the turn of 2008 there were a myriad of confusing, contradictory and disheartening reports on women’s rights. In November 2007 the Saudi appeal court doubled the sentence of a 19-year-old Saudi woman who was gang raped 14 times from three to six months in jail and from 100 to 200 lashes. Her initial ‘crime’ was sitting in a car with a man who was not related to her and her sentence was upped because she spoke out against the lenient sentences handed to her attackers. This understandably created international opprobrium and led – over a month later – to King Abdullah pardoning the woman for the crime and thus sparing her the punishment. Despite the barbarism of the initial sentencing and the inhumanity and callousness of the appeal, in the end, some kind of sense prevailed.

In January this year there was another small step forward for women’s rights when it was decreed that women could now stay in hotel rooms by themselves. True, there were draconian caveats on this, but again it is one milestone – albeit a small one — in the right direction. More importantly, however, the very next day it was reported that women in Saudi Arabia would be able to drive ‘by the end of the year.’ This would be a massive (if unlikely) step forward. The fact that a woman could drive is more or less incidental: it is the fact that this has become the symbol of the battle over Saudi women’s rights which makes this so important.

Back in 1990 a group of women drove through the streets of Riyadh hoping to capitalise on the presence of so many foreign reporters in the Kingdom owing to the Gulf War, only to be arrested and have their jobs taken away. The time was, it seems, not right. However, that is all it is: timing. It is agreed that there is nothing whatsoever in the Quran which forbids women to drive. Indeed, two prominent Saudi scholars including one of Saudi’s most senior religious figures, Abdel-Mohsin al-Obaikan, have recently reaffirmed this widespread belief. However, aside from practical issues (is it safe for women to wear the mandatory Niqab when driving?), problems lie in the fact that many of those against allowing such a practice see this as making it easier for men and women to fraternise. Moreover, they see women driving as the first great step towards a more liberal and permissive society.

In recent years, there have been other smaller but still significant improvements in women’s rights, which could be seen as softening up the ground for the decisive decision over women driving. For example, women may now travel abroad without a male companion (though his permission is still needed), own companies and seek a divorce. Further sign of progress was seen at the end of January when the Saudi Ministry of Social Affairs allowed the creation of a women’s charity – ‘Ansar Al Marrah’ (supporters of women). Its stated goal is to help women improve their social, educational, and cultural levels. The degree to which it will be able to help is, however, entirely dependent on the level of support that it receives from the authorities. Nevertheless, this is another positive sign.

On a more negative note, at the start of February a woman was arrested for having a coffee with a work colleague in a Starbucks. She was put in jail, denied the right to call her husband, and forced to thumbprint (sign) a prewritten confession. It was only when her husband found out about this and managed to pull some strings that she was released. There have been suggestions that she might seek legal advice against the religious police that arrested her and the Ansar Al Marrah has offered their help.

The arrest was carried out by the Committee to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, who used to be a feared organisation in the Kingdom and were highlighted in a recent UN report as “reportedly often act[ing] independently and are accountable only to the governor…[and thus] said to be responsible for serious human rights abuses in harassing, threatening and arresting women who ‘deviate from accepted norms.’” Their powers today are as wide-ranging today as they have ever been, but, tellingly, in 2006 [the last year for which there are records available] there were record numbers of attacks on the religious police by angry citizens in addition to a number of high-profile incidents highlighting the seemingly growing trend against the police in more recent years. This could suggest that the Saudi population is turning a corner.

A number of factors appear to cause or support such changing attitudes. The explosion of blogging has been a well-documented phenomenon in Saudi Arabia. Whilst the police have been cracking down on this, including the arrest (for no official reason) and eventual release of one of the country’s most famous bloggers, Fouad Al Farhan, it is still a massively popular means for Saudis to discuss social and political issues. Additionally, the slow but sure encroachment of Western values via American soft power (i.e. through television, films, music, education in America, etc.) could finally be having an effect.

However, the religious police are not giving up easily, as shown by the arrest of large numbers of Saudi young men for the outrageous, scandalous, and reprehensible, moral, legal and ethical crime of allegedly “flirting” with a group of girls covered head to toe in a shopping mall in the Kingdom. Not to mention the arrest and sentencing of a lecturer at a Saudi university to flogging for meeting with a female student and the death sentence passed down to an illiterate woman who was accused of being a witch.

Reform is coming, even if at times it comes at a glacial pace. The only question is how well the country can manage this transformation. There is worrying scope for destabilisation, which King Abdullah is all too aware of. Indeed, maybe one ought to fall back on the trite, unhelpful, clichéd — but nevertheless true — fact that it took the Western world significantly longer than 150 years to give equality to the sexes. Saudi Arabia is a young country: all we can hope is that it is a quick learner.