Don’t get too excited about Jeddah’s new aquarium

The column appeared originally in Arab News dated 24/1/2013

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 hate to be a wet blanket, but I wonder how long it will take before someone decides that the SR 250 million aquarium on Jeddah’s Corniche is not in public interest and needs to be closed to make sure no families engage in hanky panky.

The Fakieh Aquarium is a wonderful, long overdue project that will be home to an estimated 7,000 marine animals consisting of more than 200 species. Imagine exposing thousands of Saudi and expat children to sharks, dolphins, sea lions and an up close and personal look at reefs.

But as with many good things designed to provide entertainment and education for families, there are elements in Saudi society that deem these kinds of attractions as moral corruption.

A case in point is the small dinosaur exhibit recently shut down at the Al-Othaim Mall in Dammam. Scores of families flocked to the exhibit. But according to several social media websites, sometime during the day some people burst into the exhibit area and turned off the lights. They sent panicked children and mothers racing for the exits. Some children became separated from their parents and were traumatized during the chaos. These people were alleged to be officials of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia).

The Haia later released a statement denying they closed down the exhibit, yet plenty of images and eyewitness accounts posted online told a different story. It seems the conservatives truly believe that having fun on a family day out can be too much of a good thing.

It’s come to the point that we as a society find ways to deprive families of having places to have fun together.

Now, wives with husbands, and mothers with fathers and their children can’t spend the day at a dinosaur exhibit without being harassed. The behavior of the some people — if indeed they are guilty of what the exhibit attendees allege — diminishes the concept of the family.

The motives for shutting down the dinosaur exhibits are murky. It could be the whole mixing thing. It also could be the exhibit covered prehistory, which sends the ultra-conservatives into a tizzy. Whatever the reasons, certain individuals in positions of religious authority treat Saudis and expats as if they are children who have no brain of their own.

It’s kind of like the silly notion that the new female members of the Shoura Council must be segregated from the men to prevent immoral behavior. Really now. The Shoura Council consists of the top minds in Saudi Arabia. Professional men and women in their 40s, 50s and 60s and possessing postgraduate degrees apparently can’t be trusted to be morally upright. When women are selected for council committees, will they be segregated as well?

Should all interaction between male and female council members be conducted via closed circuit television? It pretty much defeats the purpose of giving women an active role in Saudi society.

It’s this kind of thinking that puts public educational exhibits in jeopardy. Once moms and dads walk through the Fakieh Aquarium hand in hand with their kids in tow, someone will find it objectionable and recommend the facility’s closure.

Not long ago, it was announced that 56 Saudi children and young people won awards in eight international mathematics competitions in 2012. The children competed against the giants in science and technology: Germany, France and Italy. The kids won the first Arabic medal in physics and won distinction for solving medical and technical problems. They also performed well in international scientific and engineering forums. They competed in such prestigious competitions as the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and the International Exchange of North America.

Those children are the result of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah’s dream of a new generation of Saudis possessing knowledge. It was accomplished by dragging those kids out of the dark ages and into the 21st century.

By closing down dinosaur exhibits, and other events like book fairs and literary club readings, the more crude actors in Saudi society are simply dragging Saudis back to the dark ages.

I’m sure those so-called guardians of morality find it attractive that entire families sit in front of the television or video games getting fatter and dumber by the day instead of learning about the origins of birds, the migratory habits of dolphins or the writings of contemporary authors.

Keeping us brain-dead is the ultimate weapon of control.

New SAFF chief best man to help female athletes

The column appeared originally in Arab News dated 10/1/2013

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My good friend Ahmed Eid Al-Harbi was elected last month as president of the General Assembly of the Saudi Arabian Football Federation (SAFF).

In a 32-30 vote, he beat out Khalid bin Mohammed Al-Muammar in SAFF’s first-ever election for a four-year term.

Sepp Blatter, president of the International Federation of Association Football, also known as FIFA, which supervises SAFF, said Ahmed’s election was an “achievement and an example to other Gulf states” and a “wonderful example” of how “democracy can work in the Kingdom.”

I can’t think of a better person than Ahmed to run SAFF. And I am less enamored with this moderate exercise in democracy and more impressed with the quality of the man elected to the post.

Ahmed was a top athlete in his playing days as a goalkeeper for Al-Ahli SC and served as the team’s president in 1987. He was never one of those testosterone-fueled guys strutting their stuff on the pitch, but humble, quiet and who always talked about his family first. With Ahmed, there was no tunnel vision of football as the one and only in his life. He had an expansive view of the world and what it could not only offer to athletes in general, but specifically women athletes.

Some people in the world of football see Ahmed as a reformer, but I don’t think the label does him justice. I see him as a visionary.

He is probably the single most important male ally that Saudi female athletes have to get a women’s football team up and running, and competing against international teams.

Ahmed recognizes that SAFF is much more than the umbrella group for football leagues, but can be an agent of change in Saudi society. And what I like most about these efforts to change the way the sport is played and perceived by football fans throughout the Kingdom is that the new president does it all under the radar.

His habit is to respond to any invitation to visit female universities in Saudi Arabia and help them develop women’s football teams.

He taught university administrators and instructors how to qualify for trainer positions with big-name football unions in the United States, England, Brazil and Germany. While vice president of SAFF’s player status committee, he had the federation help establish women’s physical education curriculum as an early step to combat obesity and provide a comprehensive physical education training program that will be beneficial to future athletes.

He told my husband in 2011 that he helped a female basketball and volleyball group at a Jeddah college. And by organizing women’s football teams, universities can organize leagues with an eye toward future competition in the Olympic Games.

This is real progress. While women are a long way from FIFA recognition or even hitting the playing field against a team from another country, I see the shelf life of underground female training and games having an expiration date. There will be a time when women’s leagues will be competitive, Teams like the King’s United Football Club in Jeddah will no longer play in the shadows.

Ahmed is faced with a tough sell with religious conservatives to get Saudi recognition for women’s football that will ultimately lead to international recognition. He believes the infrastructure needs to be in place to make it practical for women to play. That means new playgrounds and stadiums equipped to handle the requirements of a segregated society. The Ministry of Education should also participate to protect women’s sports while at the same time maintain our Islamic principles.

These are the obvious paths to take to ensure that women get a crack at participating in sports. But as a practical matter, women still must contend with attitudes among some Saudis that they should not be playing in front of male audiences and certainly not on television.

Ahmed recognizes these obstacles and possesses the diplomatic skills to negotiate with various parties to reach a compromise, while at the same time do not offend the sensibilities of the more conservative elements of our society. This does not come as a surprise to me or to those who are close to him because he is a strong believer in the Prince Abdullah Al-Faisal’s philosophy of sport and wisdom.

Ahmed has a full plate. Perhaps developing women’s sports programs at the SAFF level is not his priority. But if anybody can effect change, it’s Ahmed.

Prison education programs show inmates the way back into society

The column appeared originally  in Arab News dated 3/1/2013

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At a recent graduation ceremony in Qassim this week, 13 individuals received their community college diplomas in human resources and information technology (IT).

Ordinarily, this type of event doesn’t generate much interest in the media. But what made the graduation ceremony unusual was the 13 graduates were prisoners incarcerated by the General Administration of Prisons (GPA).

The lucky 13 are part of a growing trend to provide higher education for convicted Saudi criminals in an effort to re-integrate them into society once they are released. This is not a particularly novel program since prisons in North America and Europe have been offering university degrees through correspondence to prisoners for decades. Yet, for Saudi Arabia, prison education programs mark significant efforts to change the path for prisoners who otherwise would be released without clear goals to lead productive lives in Saudi society.

The GPA has called on prison directors across the Kingdom to coordinate with universities to allow prisoners to pursue an education. The director of the Qassim facility said the program opens new horizons for prisoners in science, knowledge and IT as full-time university accredited courses. The director of the community college in Buraidah told a Saudi newspaper recently that college-level courses are taught in human resources and Internet technology. These are top specialties vacancies that employers routinely need to fill. College studies prepare prisoners for the outside world, and with a degree in hand transition from prisoner to a member of the Saudi labor force could be smooth. Further, it provides the prisoners’ families with a safety net that provides the opportunity to earn an income. Without an income, the potential to re-offend and return to prison is greater.

The education programs are geared for Saudis, who account for just under half of the prison population Kingdom-wide. There are 40 permanent prisons and about 60 transitional facilities housing an estimated 44,500 prisoners. Although incarcerated expatriates are not generally barred from participating in education programs, a great many are deported following their convictions and not eligible for these programs.

The education scheme is part of a continuing effort by the GPA to develop a codified system that also includes adult education programs for individuals that never finished high school, and community service and work-release programs. A relatively new program is community service, which allows prisoners to serve their sentencing by working in the community, such as cleaning mosques, aiding the elderly or volunteering to work for local traffic departments.

In addition to 11 factories that employ 2,029 prisoners for vocational training, the GPA also has 38 adult education facilities, 42 intermediate schools, 43 high schools and four schools for women. The GPA now has 296 Saudi prisoners enrolled in high education studies with 3,626 prisoners enrolled in general education courses. The GPA has 642 teachers in its ranks.

To some, especially the victims of crimes, the idea of allowing criminals to obtain a free education may seem like a reward for bad behavior. Certainly the concept of prison is punishment for bad deeds, but at the end of the day these individuals remain members of society and upon release there must be a place for them.

My father worked in the Saudi prison system for many years, and as a child he often told my brothers, sisters and I stories about the men behind bars. He warned us, of course, to consider prisoners’ stories as object lessons of what could occur if my brothers and I chose the wrong path. But the lesson I learned is that deviating from the right path was often the result of lack of education.

It is never too late to embrace education as a means to rise above unfortunate circumstances and contribute in some small way to our country. Perhaps a good example is the story of my two cousins. Both were born into difficult family circumstances and education was not necessarily a priority in their family. One cousin became involved in drugs and was lost forever. The other found a way to not only attend school, but also to go on to a university to obtain a degree. It was education that shaped my successful cousin’s destiny.

My experiences as a journalist covering the prison system over the past several years has afforded me a first-hand look at how the GPA implements its philosophy of transforming convicted criminals to productive members of society. Much of the credit goes to Maj. Gen. Ali bin Hussein Al-Harithy, director-general of the GPA, and his staff who recognize that, yes, incarceration is a means to punish offenders and protect society. But the GPA also recognizes warehousing thousands of men and women also harms society and is a terrible waste of human resources.

By investing in education, even for adults deemed by the courts as morally corrupt, we can save a great many lives. Perhaps if a higher education program was available when my cousin was in the throes of his addiction and incarceration, he might have been saved.

We can see the change, but it leaves a lot to be desired

The column appeared in Arab News 27/12/2012

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A Saudi Arabia continues its reform process at a snail’s pace and granting women more rights, we hit a milestone in 2013 with 10 percent of the 150 seats in the Shoura Council going to women.

Whether this is a window dressing remains to be seen, but I have my doubts that the road to equality will suddenly be paved with gold with men throwing rose petals at our feet as we march to a greater tomorrow.

The battle to join Saudi society — really, women stand on the margins of our society and more or less wait politely to become full-fledged members — is in its infancy. Female representation in the Shoura Council will not matter much if the male chorus drowns out our right to bring up social issues that affect not only women but also the supposed core of Saudi society: The family.

Despite my doubts, I am optimistic that women will achieve a high degree of equality. I cannot bring myself to say complete equality as advocated by the West, nor do I necessarily believe that complete equality is the right thing for Saudi Arabia. What I do believe in women’s equality as defined in Islam. That means the right to work, seek an education, have the rights guaranteed under Shariah and much, much more.

Since King Abdullah implemented his reforms beginning in 2005, Saudi Arabia has much to be proud of in addition to having women on the Shoura Council.

Consider the positives:

• Women will have the right to vote and run for office in municipal elections. Whether women will vote in large numbers remains to be seen, given the sway husbands, fathers and brothers have on the women in their families. That said, what boxes someone checks off once in the voting booth will remain between the voter and her conscience.

• Saudi women can attend law schools, earn a juris doctorate, work in law firms and meet with clients. As of this moment, female lawyers are not representing men, nor are they appearing in courts before judges. I see this changing, especially in the field of family law where women face harsh discrimination.

• The Ministry of Labor has paved the way for women to be fully integrated in the retail sector. We see Saudi women working in restaurants as servers and hostesses, and in shopping malls selling cosmetics, lingerie, abayas and jewelry. They are also often the sole operators of mall kiosks.

• The Ministry of Higher Education has done a commendable job of implementing King Abdullah’s scholarship program to see that Saudis earn a graduate and postgraduate degree from universities throughout the world. Many Saudi women have taken advantage of studying in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. The success rate has been nothing short of extraordinary. At least 60 percent of the university graduates are Saudi women.

• The Ministry of Social Affairs is poised to issue licenses to Saudi women to open daycare centers. This is a huge leap in helping women provide the necessary childcare for working mothers.

• The Saudi government granted nearly 2,000 Saudi women permission in 2011 to marry non-Saudis, including a handful of Westerners. This provides a glimpse of the shifting attitudes of the government to encourage marriage among Saudi women who will not succumb to societal pressure to marry another Saudi. Two-thousand marriages do not sound like much, and it isn’t, but a significant change from just a decade ago.

These are achievements that I thought I would never see in my lifetime. When examined in its totality, the King’s reforms are real and have had a tremendous impact on thousands of Saudi women.

Yet obstacles remain on many levels. Most notable is the religious establishment that exploits Saudis’ weaknesses on all things Islamic. By playing on our fears that we might be less of a Muslim that they are, some religious leaders use threats and intimidation in an attempt to keep the status quo.

Consider the negatives:

• Some sheikhs routinely cast aspersions on women and the men in their family if women choose to work outside the home. Religious scholars appeal directly to the Ministry of Labor to revoke its decisions to grant women access to the workplace.

• Women are often deemed as corrupted if they study at Western universities.

• Saudi women are unable to find suitable employment after earning their university degrees. They often look outside Saudi Arabia for jobs. Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman, and even some Western countries are now benefiting from the talent of educated Saudi women, especially those in the medical field.

• Domestic law courts continue to be a minefield for Saudi women. Despite years of promises that codified laws will be in place, Saudi courts remain extremely favorable to Saudi men. Court rulings are still based on a mixture of tribal experiences and Shariah knowledge of judges. The rule of law often does not apply in divorce, custody, alimony and inheritance cases. This is a direct violation of Shariah.

• Saudi women are denied the right to drive a vehicle in urban areas. Much of this is due to the reluctance of women possessing international driving licenses to get behind the wheel and challenge society by simply driving. So they share some responsibility in their failure to achieve driving rights. However, the sorry state of public transportation and the hypocrisy of some religious leaders to insist we share a car with a driver who is an unrelated male make relative independence, not to mention finding meaningful employment, elusive.

Saudi society is in a profound state of flux, but it’s positive change. Our society cannot survive without change and without introducing half the population to the full benefits of the society we live in. The Kingdom is diversifying its economy by placing less emphasis on oil production and more on alternative energy, petrochemicals, and auto and auto parts production. At the same time, our country must also recognize that diversification means educating and employing its female population. Without the participation of women, Saudi Arabia will only achieve half its goals.

Discouraging working women

The column appeared originally in Arab News dated 20/12/2012

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A couple of weeks ago Saudi women were treated to the wisdom of a man who calls himself a sheikh when he announced on social media that female fast-food workers were prostitutes.

This week another man who holds the same title said that any man who allows the women in his family to work in the health care profession is a duyooth.

Duyooth means “cuckold” and refers to weak men who allow their wives to commit adultery in front of them. And in Islam, these men will never see heaven.

It is not enough that these so-called sheikhs defame hardworking women who want to help support their families. Now they are going after their husbands, fathers and brothers who encourage and support the women in their families to work as nurses.

It’s an affront to any human being to have religious men in a position of trust and authority defame individuals simply because they need financial support from female members of their families or want their women to take advantage of opportunities available to them.

This recent social media diatribe comes from a so-called sheikh who wrote that no man with honor or a sense of pride would allow his daughter to work in a mixed environment in the health sector.

What makes these statements so heinous is this guy has thousands of followers on Twitter. Many followers, I assume, imagine this individual as a role model. Do his followers see through this alleged sheikh’s (I can’t bring myself to call him a religious man) nonsense? The unfortunate answer is no. It’s likely some of his followers are uneducated, and their response is to follow his tweet to the letter and make the lives of the women in their families a living hell.

This obscene attitude toward nursing is personally offensive to me since I teach nursing students at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Nursing College. His assessment that weak men allow their daughters to work in medical facilities that he considers no more than brothels reminds me of an incident that affected us all at the university.

A father had come to the university campus and asked to speak to our dean. He identified himself as the father of one of the nursing students. He wanted to take her out of the university because he believed that working in a mixed environment in a hospital was sinful. The dean replied that the man’s daughter was one of her best and brightest students. She reminded the father that it was up to the student to submit a formal resignation from the program.

The father, who was not living with his family, left the campus. A few days later he brought dinner to the family home. The daughter was excited to see her father. She brought him to the guest room and served the dinner. The father asked for a knife to cut lemons. When he was alone with her, he locked the door of the guest room and attacked her with the knife. The girl attempted to escape through a window while her mother and uncle heard her screams and attempted to break down the door. The father repeatedly stabbed his daughter, who died a short while later in the hospital.

We don’t know who the followers are of this so-called sheikh. Some could very well be troubled individuals like the father who murdered his daughter. The sheikh, in essence by condemning the nursing profession, is giving license to those troubled individuals to do as they please. The sheikh is making statements without understanding or thinking about the consequences of his remarks and the impact it would have on troubled individuals.

The Saudi government and educators are attempting to change the taboo of working in the nursing profession. The government has acknowledged the country is in desperate need of nursing professionals in the health care industry. The government is spending billions of riyals to develop this field. Yet the very men who should support the government’s efforts are sending a message that Saudi women are corrupted and the government is running a brothel, not an institution to give care to the ill, infirm and dying.

Dr. Sabah Abu Zinadah, a nursing consultant, recently filed a complaint against the sheikh who posted on the social media defaming and stigmatizing the nursing profession. It is now in the government’s hands whether to punish defamers who insist on labeling dedicated women as having loose morals by enforcing the Kingdom’s new cyber crime prevention act. If the new law truly has teeth, then the defamers must face the consequences of their actions.

Curriculum must match infrastructure growth

The column appeared originally in Arab News dated 13/12/2012

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The other day a group of us from the Nursing College at the King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences left our little campus in Jeddah for a day trip to our new university about an hour away.

The new university building was not finalized, but its vastness left most of us speechless. It was a sprawling campus with state-of-the-art classrooms and on-campus residential accommodation for university personnel. To say we were awestruck by the potential this university offered to women nursing students is an understatement. There is no comparison to the ill-suited building we currently occupy not far from the Palestine Street in the heart of Jeddah.

Saudi Arabia has been on a construction-spending spree. Construction by 2009 had grown by about 5 per cent. In 2010, about SR 260 billion had been set aside to build new infrastructure and upgrade existing projects that include transportation and power generation.

Particular attention has been paid to the development of the Princess Nora bint Abdulrahman University that consists of 32 colleges, with its own College of Nursing, in and around Riyadh. And, of course, there is the King Abdulaziz University of Science and Technology outside of Jeddah that has gained considerable attention for its emphasis on its Western-style campus.

Last April, Dr. Khaled bin Muhammad Al-Anqari, the minister of higher education, inked contracts valued at about SR 1 billion to build more universities throughout Kingdom. These new projects will include construction at Shaqra and Al-Majmah universities and an applied medical science building in Jizan. Administrative facilities at Salman bin Abdulaziz University in Al-Kharj and Tabuk University are also on the agenda for improvements under the new construction contracts.

It’s admirable that the Saudi government has devoted so much since 2005 to invest in the country’s academic infrastructure. When combined with the King Abdullah’s scholarship program, our country is finally making significant progress to produce graduates to enter the workforce and contribute to bettering the Kingdom.

At the same time the Saudi higher education officials signed off on contracts that bring high-tech classrooms to rural areas, Prince Saud bin Abdulmohsen, the emir of Hail, questioned whether the amount of money spent on infrastructure matches the commitment to university curriculum. Prince Saud pointed out that education inside Saudi Arabia was mired in “traditional roles” that left students bored and unengaged.

Prince Saud brings up valid criticism about the way we go about educating our young people. Western critics have long complained that high-school level curriculum is not only inadequate, but teaches the more violent aspects of our nation’s history at the expense of more social and scientific subjects. However, these critics are missing out the big picture. Curriculum at the high-school level is turning itself around. And while giving high school student a broader view of the world is vital to prepare them for universities, the more important issue is just what kind of education is waiting for these young people in Saudi universities. And this is where I despair.

The Saudi government has done its part by providing the infrastructure and the environment to teach students. Now it’s up to the educationists to stand up and perform their duty. Education is not just new buildings, but a commitment to develop the country. Education is a belief in development and research.

Unfortunately, when we examine our commitment to standardized curriculum, I find it wanting when compared to what the rest of the world is demanding of its students.

There is a disconnect between the so-called experts who develop the curriculum and the professors and lecturers who teach it and the students who absorb it. Most university professors take it for granted that these experts — experts in which we have no idea of their credentials and whether they really have the expertise in their field — are giving our young people the best education necessary to be competitive outside Saudi Arabia. Most university faculty members can’t say who designs the curriculum for our students and what credentials they possess to provide such a service.

If we really compare ourselves to the international community, we are not up to their standards. We are not taking the proper steps to meet those international education standards, but instead we are developing curriculum that pleases some people in some education circles. For example, we must review our education philosophy, an area that university faculty members — at least to my knowledge — never discuss. Instead, there is a tendency among some educators to underestimate the ability of students by teaching to the lowest common denominator instead of demanding more. We still don’t take incorporating technology into education seriously. Some universities don’t provide the students with wireless Internet connection or even enough computer clusters. Above all, critical thought is a skill that is totally absent from our curriculum. Faculty members do not enjoy any type of freedom especially when it comes to what to teach.

The disproportionate amount of money we are spending on infrastructure compared to efforts we are making to ensure our curriculum is rigorous and up to the international standards. This leaves us with impressive buildings but students unprepared for the real world.

When outrage over a changing Saudi society turns ugly

The column appeared originally in Arab News dated 6/12/2013

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As someone who has been on the receiving end of hundreds of hate postings on the Internet because I dared to show my face on television during a news interview, I sympathize with the women workers at the Jeddah fast-food restaurant who have been libeled with the worst name.

Saudis are heavy users of Twitter, Facebook and other social media. And with the prolific dialogue throughout the blogosphere people can pretty much say what we feel with few consequences.

Now we have a “sheikh” no less who whines that women workers at the Jeddah Hardee’s fast-food restaurant will end their shift as prostitutes. Why? Because they serve men. Apparently if a woman serves a man a meal, a conversation ensues, and, well, seclusion and bad behavior will follow.

I have lived in England, which is probably one of the most uninhibited countries on the planet, and often frequented McDonald’s and the occasional Burger King. These places are packed with men and women. The women at the counter take guys’ money and hand bags of burgers to them. In all the time I frequented these places, I have never seen anyone engage in the oldest profession either at the counter or on a dining table. I can’t speak for the kitchen area, though.

Yet women restaurant workers in Saudi Arabia are far more likely to engage in that dirty business, according to our so-called sheikh friend. Oh, ye of little faith in the Kingdom’s women.

Our friend is calling for a boycott of Hardee’s, noting on a social media website that, “At the beginning of her shift she’s a waitress. When her shift ends she becomes a prostitute. The more she’s around men the easier it becomes to get closer to her.”

Hey, buddy, they are not waitresses. They are counter clerks. They stand behind a counter wearing a loose white smock and a niqab and ask you if you want Number 1, Number 2 or Number 3 and do you want to supersize that for an extra SR 10. Waitresses go out to your dining table, take your order, refill your coffee and make sure the kids have high chairs or booster seats. At the end of the meal she may even give you a take away box for that piece of chicken you are going to give the cat.

So the question is, how does the briefest of conversations taking place over a countertop and the exchange of money make a woman as bad as this man’s definition? Does every women possess loose morals who stands in the female line at a mall food court and transacts business with a male clerk? How does our friend feel about the female companions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) buying and selling goods in the marketplace at the time of the Prophet?

The real issue is not whether this so-called sheikh and his 5,000 twitter followers believe a fast-food job will lead to moral corruption, but instead the rage over the fact that some women want to leave home for part-time work.

Like most Saudis I firmly believe in the family. But as my brother said to me the other night, we spend our time with our families cooped up in our apartments. Children are raised in apartments with few places in the neighborhood to play. Daughters, sisters and wives feel as claustrophobic as the children inside the home with few opportunities to exercise their bodies and brains, let alone provide income for the household.

The anger and slander stem from the threat that women want to achieve something that doesn’t limit to the house. Saudi society is changing with it new roles for women.

The so-called sheikh’s outrage represents a minority in Saudi society. When women first went to work in supermarkets, there was an outcry in conservative circles. Complaints prompted one supermarket to initially stop hiring women checkout clerks. The crisis blew over and now many supermarkets employ female clerks as do now the cosmetic shops. Soon, women will staff the perfume and abaya shops.

And guess what? The sky didn’t fall. Moral corruption hasn’t run rampant. 

There will always be people like our friend who feel the need to belittle and condemn hardworking women. But the reality is that families — the backbone of Saudi society — support it. They see the need for the extra income. They see the need for their daughters lead fulfilling lives. 

Women who choose to stay at home and raise children and act as caregivers to the entire family are the most important element of any household. However, it’s up to the family whether women should work outside the home. Not outraged men. 

Criticism of interfaith center not valid

The column appeared originally in Arab News dated 29/11/2012

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ANY skepticism surrounding Saudi Arabia’s lead role as the architect of an interfaith dialogue center to promote religious tolerance is irrelevant.

Some critics have complained the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID), which opened this week in Vienna, is led by a country that is 100 percent Muslim and has no places of public worship for non-Muslims.

However, those critics are perhaps unaware that non-Muslims are not prohibited from privately practicing their religion in Saudi Arabia and face no harassment from Saudi authorities.

I acknowledge the complaints up front because it’s not as if Saudis hadn’t thought about the implications of establishing an interreligious dialogue center, nor are we blind to our shortcomings. But the very nature of a country like Saudi Arabia developing a venue that brings all religions together under one roof to create a single voice of tolerance is a clear statement that our country is not the isolationist backwater nation many critics believe it to be.

Recent conflicts, 9/11, the growth of religious hate organizations and the freewheeling denigration of the Prophets (peace be upon them) have given urgency to the formation of an interfaith center. While there are a great many Christian, Muslim, Jewish and secular organizations doing fine work to promote tolerance, a well-funded facility brings international credibility to solving issues affecting all religions. And often those issues involve self-examination.

Some political leaders have complained that by leading the cause of interreligious tolerance, Saudi Arabia can deflect attention from its own policies regarding other faiths.

Yet Saudi Arabia is prepared because expectations are high.

Speaking at the center’s opening ceremonies, Jean-Louis Tauran, a French cardinal and president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, acknowledged the challenges.

“This center presents another opportunity for open dialogue on many issues including those related to fundamental human rights, in particular religious freedom,” he said. “In all its aspects, for everybody, for every community, everywhere.”

Tauran cautioned that, “We are being watched. Everyone is expecting from the initiative ... honesty, vision and credibility.”

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said during the center’s opening that, “Too many religious leaders have stoked intolerance, supported extremism and propagated hate ... Yet we know that blaming ‘the other’ is not a political strategy for a healthy country, continent or world.”

He added that, “Religious leaders have immense influence. They can be powerful forces for cooperation and learning. They can set an example of interfaith dialogue.”

And although the doubters say that Saudi Arabia is in no position to lead the center’s goals of promoting interreligious dialogue, the Kingdom has the support of Spain and Austria as the center’s co-founders, and the Vatican serving as a “founding observer.”

In fact, it was King Abdullah’s 2007 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican that helped shape the king’s desire for Christians and Muslims to reach common ground.

The credibility of the center is further strengthened by what I see as the who’s who of the international religious community present at the center’s opening. There is Chief Rabbi of Moscow Pinchas Goldschmidt, the head of the rabbinical court of the Commonwealth of Independent States and leader of the Moscow Choral Synagogue. There are also Patriarch Bartholomew of the Church of Constantinople, Eastern Orthodox Church, and Abdullah Al-Turki, president of the Muslim World League.

On the center’s board of directors is Israeli Orthodox Rabbi David Rosen, who also serves as international director of interreligious affairs of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and an adviser on interreligious affairs to Israel’s Chief Rabbinate.

The Church of England, Sunni and Shiite Islam, Buddhist, Hindu and Shinto are also represented.

At the end of the day, the skeptics’ position on KAICIID doesn’t hold water. There are enough checks and balances in the center’s operation to guarantee that all participants are held accountable for the promotion of tolerance across the board on all religious issues.

And no one can deny the center is the first of its kind developed during a most critical period when it's essential that religious extremism in the West and Middle East must be dealt with in a deliberate, unemotional manner. This is something that has so far eluded the international community.

It’s time to bring tough love back to Israel

BACK in the early days of the Obama administration, when the world was bright and shiny and anything was possible, the new president broke ranks with his predecessors and embarked on a tough love campaign with Israel.

Knowing that the United States and Israel shared a special relationship that neither nation sought to jeopardize, Obama rightly felt that he had some political capital in which he wanted more, and indeed, expected more from Israel to negotiate peace with the Palestinians.

That didn’t work out so well. Benjamin Netanyahu got all huffy, words were said, and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank continued. That special relationship cooled like a young married couple arguing over whose mom gave better Eid parties: stony silence and separate bedrooms.

Then Netanyahu got a little full of himself and all but endorsed Mitt Romney for president. He received a standing ovation on Capitol Hill from Republicans great and small and pretty much snubbed Obama on his trip to Washington. Then the unthinkable happened. Obama won the presidential election and the Israeli public is a little peeved that the special relationship is frayed at the seams. There is nothing worse in Israel than having your special friend — with all that money and military might — say he has your back, but mumbles it.

It’s not unexpected that Obama would say that Israel has a right to defend itself from missile attacks. But on this occasion he didn’t even bother, with his renewed political capital, to remind Israel to keep its bombings proportionate to Hamas’ attacks and not the “for every dead Israeli, we will kill 20 Palestinian children” route.

The Middle East political landscape is vastly different than it was in 2009 and the grasp the United States holds on its role as mediator is quickly slipping away. Hamas has growing support of its people as the Palestinian Authority’s power wanes. Syria is falling ever deeper in a potential decade-long civil war. Turkey has lost its edge as a Middle East powerbroker. And the Muslim Brotherhood, with its victory in Egypt, is carrying the new big stick in the region.

In all of these new developments, the United States has been sidelined as a spectator. Misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and drone attacks in Pakistan will do that to a powerful nation. Add to that the perception in the Muslim world that Obama is a weak sister, the US might as well take its good intentions and go home to quibble about important things like the definition of rape and whether women are qualified to hold leadership positions.

Sure, there is a lot of antagonism among Muslims toward the United States, but for some reason we can’t quit them.

But I wonder whether the US has quit us. This week, Obama took his three-country tour of Asia, with a stop in Myanmar and meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, the former opposition leader. In Yangon, there was no discussion reported about the plight of persecuted Muslims in the western part of the country.

Obama’s visit to Asia at the expense of the Middle East was not without some thought. He is thinking long-term and building a relationship with Asian countries to buttress the influence of China that will help protect the financial interests of the US.

But belatedly sending Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Jerusalem to speak to Netanyahu smacks of an afterthought. Israel has ruled the West Bank and Gaza as it pleases without interruption for the past 20 years and it hasn’t made the effort to shift its policy toward its neighbors despite the Arab Spring and its impact on the region.

Instead, Israel has buckled down and employed the same heavy-handed military tactics at a time that delicacy and nuance are needed most. With the exchange of gunfire between Syria and Israel in the Golan Heights and the instability in Lebanon, Israel needs to reconsider its options that don’t necessarily include military incursions.

At the same time, the US needs to use neutral language that will inflame neither side. When Clinton arrived in Israel, she told reporters, “It is essential to de-escalate the situation in Gaza. The rocket attacks from terrorist organizations inside Gaza on Israeli cities and towns must end and a broader calm restored.”

The onus should not be placed entirely on Hamas, although I often think nitwits run this group. To label Hamas, a democratically elected group supported by the Palestinian population, as a “terrorist organization” is disingenuous. It makes the US less a mediator and more of an advocate for Israel.
Obama and Clinton need to return to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with some of that tough love that Obama embraced at the beginning of his first term. They need to convince the now chastened Netanyahu to take the bold step to back down and reach across the table to the Palestinians. Hamas needs to agree to a cease-fire and allow Obama, Clinton and Muhammad Mursi to speak for them.
Obama may be in a better position with Israel than he was in 2009 to exert some pressure to put an end to Israel’s military aggression in Gaza.

The US has Netanyahu where they want him. The Israeli public wants the prime minister to behave and keep Israel’s special relationship intact. If Obama can exploit that, it will go a long way to repairing the relations with the Muslim world.