Saudi Blogs: Undermining the Wahhabis, one post at a time . .
NAH
Blogging Saudi Arabia.
Undermining the Wahhabis, one post at a time.
Weekly standard
1/30/06
Stephen Schwartz
ON OCTOBER 21, A new message came out of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia,
the land of Wahhabi Islam, with its commitment to financing jihad, its
public beheadings, and its total subordination of women. But rather
than the usual extremist preaching, promoting the bloody terrorist
acts of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq or inciting hate against
non-Wahhabi Muslims, Jews, Christians, and others around the world,
the message was a call, in imperfect English, for "the first Saudi
bloggers meet up." And with it, Saudi Arabia passed a milestone.
The announcement on the website "Saudi Blogs"
[saudiblogs.blogspot.com] came from "Ahmed" and was not without its
contradictions. It noted obtusely that "according to the Saudi style,
[the meeting] will be for males only."
Within four hours, the first reply to Ahmed declared, "Both sex[es]
must b[e] involved in this"--that is, the improvement of Saudi
blogging. Confusingly, however, the author of that comment, "Super
MO," conceded that coeducational blogging might best be limited to the
net. Within a few more hours, however, a female blogger said she would
love to attend the proposed meeting.
Men and women blogging together, of course, represents a total
flouting of Saudi rules mandating sex segregation. And there can be no
turning back. Saudi authorities cannot confiscate all the computers,
Blackberrys, and cell phones in the kingdom. Nor can they forbid the
use of the English language.
Saudi Blogs inventories more than 80 active sites, 67 of them in
English or English and Arabic. Saudi women produce some of the most
interesting sites. They are so daring in their freedom of expression
that one congressional staffer who reads them regularly expressed
complete bewilderment, asking, "How can this happen?" The
globalization of American culture obviously has a lot to do with it,
since many blog entries are written in the hip-hop, text-message idiom
of Western teenagers.
The most startling and thought-provoking Saudi blog is "Farah's
Sowaleef" [farahssowaleef.blogspot.com], sowaleef meaning "chitchat."
The site advertises itself as "The Everyday Natterings of an
Exhausted, Repressed, and Bored 'Saudi' Arabian Chick." Writing in a
generally readable mélange of English and occasional Arabic, the
author, Farah Aziz, alias "Farooha," reveals herself to be a student
at "KSU"--King Saud University (not Kansas State), the kingdom's
oldest university. Farooha is a "spoiled jingoistic" resident of the
capital, Riyadh, as well as of Najd, the desert province from which
Wahhabi radicalism and the royal house of Saud emerged.
Farooha has a lot to complain about, and she is unafraid to do so.
When she chooses, her English is perfect. She also posts color
photographs, obviously taken on a cameraphone, on her blog. Some of
the images are banal in the extreme--piles of candy in the city at the
end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, for example--but one, in
the entry dated October 26, seems unsurpassable in its expression of
the Saudi regime's pathology.
The photo shows an interactive panel installed on a wall at KSU, where
women students are requested to indicate their choice of a destiny
after death by choosing between two pictures. On the left a woman is
shown dressed in a head and neck covering, a full body hijab
resembling a raincoat, and a floor-length dress. She carries a
handbag. Next to her is a depiction of flames. This woman, despite her
extremely modest attire, is headed for the fires of hell. On the right
a woman is shown outfitted in the recommended female dress: a black
abaya, covering the head, face, and entire body, whose contours cannot
be distinguished. The woman dressed this way is headed for paradise,
depicted as a park in which, strangely enough, only black-abaya-clad
women are gathered.
The message is almost beyond belief: Eternal damnation awaits a Saudi
woman who carries a handbag, exposes her eyes, or allows her female
form to be even faintly discernible. For those who obediently wear the
abaya, God's reward in paradise will include continued concealment and
sex segregation.
This interactive gimmick is pure, unadulterated Wahhabism. Farooha
comments, "Bulletin boards in universities are usually put up for
academic purposes . . . in KSU, this is what you would expect to
find."
Farooha's blog entry for October 13 includes her English translation
of an essay entitled "Imagine Being A Woman," written and posted in
Arabic by a Saudi female writer, Badria Al-Bisher. The article is a
manifesto for a Saudi women's protest movement. "Imagine being a
woman," writes Al-Bisher, "and this guardian of yours is your 15 year
old son." Sure enough, under the strictures of Saudi Wahhabism, a
woman cannot make any decisions on her own, and must defer to a
teenage son if she has no older male relative. She must get permission
from him to obtain an education or work.
The text continues, "Imagine being a woman and needing to take
constant taxi rides just to run your everyday errands [because women
are not allowed to drive]. Imagine having to be patient with a driver
who does not understand you and having to bear with the cultural
differences, just to get where you want. Imagine having to wait for
your kid brother everyday, just so he can take you to work [because
women are not allowed to go out without a male escort]. Imagine hiring
countless drivers who learn how to drive using the car you own, who
practice at your expense, and whom you coach for months and months
until you exhaustedly sigh 'what kinda life is this???' All this
because you are a woman, and thus are not permitted to drive."
The same article condemns Saudi-Wahhabi incitement to rape non-Wahhabi
women: "Imagine that women in the 21st century follow fatwas of
scholars who at one point start to discuss the viability of capturing
the enemy's women, and then having sexual relations with them. Some
even go on to discuss the capturing of this enemy's women at time of
peace, as well; and all the while, you do not even know who the enemy
in question is."
Blogging has also become a major phenomenon in theocratic Iran. But in
Saudi Arabia, the sudden explosion of blogging coincides with evidence
of a very real move toward openness in religious thinking, guided by
the new king, the octogenarian Abdullah. At a global Islamic summit at
the end of 2005, Abdullah proclaimed the need for "moderation that
embodies the Islamic concept of tolerance," adding, "I look forward to
Muslim inventors and industrialists, to an advanced Muslim technology,
and Muslim youth who work for their life just as they work for the
Hereafter, without excess or negligence, without any kind of
extremism."
That vision sharply conflicts with the obsessions of al Qaeda and
Hamas, which exalt death over life. The same summit meeting heard a
message from Jordan's King Abdullah II calling for an end to takfir,
the practice of a Muslim's accusing another Muslim of unbelief on the
basis of his opinions alone. Forbidden by the prophet, takfir has
become common since the rise of Wahhabism. Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab,
founder of the sect, declared all Shias and Sufis--for that matter,
all who would not profess his interpretation of the
faith--unbelievers. All who have been thus excommunicated are subject
to murder and despoilment. Takfir underpins the pernicious ideology
holding that only radical Muslims are real Muslims, and binds young
terrorists together by conferring on them the spurious status of an
elite in what is actually a criminal conspiracy. The Jordanian king's
denunciation of takfir recognizes Shias as Muslims, specifically
negating the religious argument of the Sunni terrorists in Iraq--not
to mention the Wahhabi Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan--who
describe Shias as heretics.
Residents of the Saudi kingdom confirm to American friends that a new
atmosphere has become perceptible since Abdullah took the throne.
Fatima al-Hejazi, a young Saudi researcher, notes that at a National
Dialogue Forum in the city of Abha in December 2005, a representative
of the grossly oppressed Shia minority in Saudi Arabia called for
equal religious rights. Al-Hejazi suggests this action was inspired by
the anti-takfir declaration from Jordan.
In another important development, four Saudi women have been elevated
to the board of directors of the chamber of commerce of Jeddah, the
country's commercial capital. Elsewhere such an act might seem
trivial; in Saudi Arabia it is revolutionary--and especially
significant because it involves the business class, the probable
leaders of a Saudi transition to normality.
"Saudi Blogs": For all its simplicity, the phrase has a revolutionary
ring, like "Continental Congress" or "Polish Solidarity." Poland and
the other Soviet-bloc Communist dictatorships were liberated with the
help of the mimeograph and Xerox machines. Saudi Arabia and Iran may
be freed by blogs and camera phones, perhaps giving Saudi King
Abdullah more than he bargained for in the way of "an advanced Muslim
technology." For now, the Saudi authorities continue to block
conventional websites maintained by reformists, like tuwaa.com, while
permitting infamous Wahhabi hate sites, like alsaha.com, to operate.
But the tyrants are falling behind and losing control of events. The
spirits of the pamphleteer Benjamin Franklin and the great
communicator Ronald Reagan must be tickled.
Stephen Schwartz, a frequent contributor, is the author of The Two
Faces of Islam.
--
"Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons."
- President George W. Bush, 2004
Alpha
for iraq and iran that makes saudi super rich with oil prices and why
you still support such a dumb plan that is shooting your country in the
foot and making it poorer and making your arch enemy stronger and
richer? It seems God is not exactly on your side...You seem to be
"underming" yourself pretty well.
gumby - the muslim deprogrammer
Saudi currency going to be like when the oil is gone? :D What is the
Middle East going to be worth when they run out of oil? :D Only a
matter of time.... :D :D :D
>
Sucks when the only thing you produce is terrorist and oil.... :D :D :D
Joking You
"Alpha" <newsgro...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1137911096.1...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>i was wondering why it is your president is so dumb as to devise a plan
> for iraq and iran that makes saudi super rich with oil prices and why
> you still support such a dumb plan that is shooting your country in the
> foot and making it poorer and making your arch enemy stronger and
> "underming" yourself pretty well.
>
newspapers. It's a very large picture but as a beer swilling drunk cannot
understand abstract art, it appears you cannot understand that each of those
individual trees make up a forest. You attempt to run from point A to point
B by bypassing the one tree which you see and cannot understand why you ran
into a different tree.