Imagine you’re a 14-year-old girl who wakes up one morning and is told you are leaving to meet your future husband. He is 50 years old and has other wives. But because you have reached puberty, it is your duty to marry him, have his children and obey every order he gives you for the rest of his life.
Welcome to womanhood in Saudi Arabia, a rentier country that touts a religion they do not reflect. Welcome to a life of confinement, where women are considered half the worth of men. Their most basic fundamental rights are forbidden under “guardianship laws,” and religious laws brutally enforced by the muttawa. Welcome to absolute monarchy and the best pal of oil giants and favored partner of the United States.
Ibrahim Alloush, a political analyst and a university lecturer in Jordan concluded that “Riyadh is far from the ideology it preaches.” In the Quran, women have equality to men, making Islam the only Abrahamic religion that does. Women are to be educated, respected and have full responsibility of their life and marital choices.
So why are Saudi Arabia’s practices contrary to their own claimed faith? The simple answer is money, and a lot of it. And the Saudi family, hence the kingdom, is deeply corrupt.
Last year a well-known Saudi preacher Fayhan al-Ghamdi beat and raped his five-year-old daughter Lama because he questioned her virginity. After he finished, he burned her open wounds in attempt to melt the flesh back together. She later died in the hospital. He had to spend a few months in jail and pay a fine.
In 2002, 15 young girls died in a school fire in Mecca. The muttawa caught them running out of the school without their heads and faces fully covered, so they were sent back in to burn to death. Immigrant workers, essentially slaves, are abused, raped and killed on a regular basis.
The paradox presented within the Saudi-American relationship is a double edged sword. The United States, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, can not accept, let alone condone, a trade partner with such horrific abuse to human rights without being morbidly hypocritical. Saudi Arabia should be sanctioned not excused. Moreover, the U.S. is supplying the Saudi mercenaries with state-of-the-art weaponry, which they use against their own people to quell protest and to supply Sunni extremists all over the Asian continent.
Saudi Arabia is the only country where it is illegal for women to drive. There is no minimum age for girls to be married, as long as they have started their menstrual cycle, which could be as young as nine. King Abdullah did decide to allow women to vote. However, when they went to do so, they discovered they needed a driver’s licence to cast their ballot, which is illegal for them to have.
Saudi men are allowed to beat their wives and keep them captive inside the home as much and for as long as they choose. And they are rarely punished for killing their wives or daughters.
When men or women violate religious laws — such as a man and woman walking close together in public, a wife seen talking to a man that is not her husband or family, same-sex attraction and suspicion of adultery — the punishment is public execution. They could be beheaded, with the severed head displayed for several hours, crucified or hung.
So while the Saudi muttawa are whipping, jailing and beheading women who accidentally show too much nose, get caught practicing a sport, try to open a bank account or dare walk out of their house without an escort, the U.S. turns a blind eye.
In 2011, journalist Wajeha al-Huwaider and activist Manal al-Sharif picked up the camera and filmed themselves driving. Al-Sharif was arrested. After the arrest, other Saudi women protested, which is a brave and dangerous thing to do in the kingdom.
The other Saudi malfeasance, repressing and brutalizing the Shi’a minority, where hundreds have died from Saudi attacks with American weapons has gained international support. By throwing the spotlight on the kingdom, other egregious actions are being exposed. But then, so are the smiling photos casting members of the administrations under the last six U.S. presidents arm in arm with the Saudi King. Even better are those of U.S. officials posing by the full-size white marble U.S. White House built in the center of Riyadh.
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