- Arab News is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. To commemorate the occasion, the newspaper has published a supplement that carried articles by many people, including one by Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi ambassador to the US and the UK. In his article, Prince Turki reveals that both Arab News and Asharq al-Awsat, the flagship publications of SRMG, were actually the brainchildren of himself, Kamal Adham, and Hisham Ali Hafiz. In other words, both newspapers were born at the offices of the Saudi intelligence agency.
- A study on co-education at university level has been recently conducted. The study sample was comprised of 440 med students from KSU and KAU. 71% of them said they support co-education, compared to 29% who were against it. Makes you wonder about all those ‘majority’arguments that some people like to bring up when discussing controversial issues in the country.
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10 Comments
thank you for the post, but regarding the study I’m hesitant to consider it reliable study (though I got a gut feeling that is true), for many reasons, first the methodology doesn’t present what variable he measured neither he attached a copy of the questionerre, therefore I’m not sure how he made most of his conclusions & recommendations. plus the Master’s student seems to study in Yemen but his study is conducted in KSU & KAU, so I’m expecting to see facility approval. Plus you can’t conclude Saudi is with co-education there is the red-necks south and north who god know they’ll go nuts in majority if co-education allowed to exist.
I would like to publish such study to my Facebook but most of my friends are intelligent and they’ll raise these points.
These are all fair points to raise. I was hesitant to link to it, but I found that it was recently quoted by a professor in KSU. I’m of course not jumping to any conclusions, but I think it is interesting nevertheless. Also, the study only asked medical students. You can imagine how different the results could be if the study was conducted university-wide.
I am glad the study was linked here. I was only able to access the abstract, so if there is a link to the whole thesis I would appreciate it.
It is an important study, and unless the problems mentioned by Talal are characteristic of the whole thesis it seems well done (high n), and acknowledges that the results are valid for those universities only.
Talal–nice analysis! Someone knows his clinical epidemiology, qualitative-quantitative research methods, and medical research ethics well! :)
Your closing comment on the origin of Arab News was laugh-out-loud funny.
I also think the inclusion of the somewhat more liberal KAU might have skewed the results a bit.
Still, I’d like to see this survey go around university wide and over several universities. Should be interesting.
I agree. It would be interesting to get more studies and compare. One conclusion might be that increased mixing results in religiously appropriate mixing! :)
about the co-ed study, i had a copy of that questionnaire somewhere (truth is, i lost it. not so proud of my document organising skills)
the general outlook on co-ed in medical school is different than the rest of college. sure we had some girls suddenly show up to the vice dean telling him that they only want to be taught by female doctors, but most know that working with men doesn’t mean letting go of your Islamic and moral code. I don’t know about the rest of KAU, never been on the non-medical campus.
would be nice to start considering more than half of the society as people and not “pieces of meat”, “lollipops that attract flies”, “a pearl to be kept safe in it’s oyster” or “an egg” =_=”
If you find it let me know!
Interesting epithets. “Piece of meat” I was familiar with, and “Marie couche-toi là” and “Tout le monde a passé dessus sauf le train” come to mind (from a friend’s mother and grandmother). :(
all those epithets were used at least once to describe why girls must be kept safe.
and yeah, those are exactly their thoughts on the matter, sadly. but when their wife/daughter/mother gets ill, they go looking for a lady doctor et tout le monde n’existe plus!
Asmaa–the same age old dichotomy.