Category Libs and Cons

Women in Municipal Councils

While the municipal elections have been indefinitely postponed, much to the dismay of many reform-minded Saudis, al-Hayat daily published a story today about an interesting development. According to the paper, the municipal councils have been secretly discussing a request by the ministry seeking the councils’ opinion on opening the doors to women to become members of the councils.

Unsurprisingly, councilmen are divided on the matter. While some of them welcome the inclusion of women in their chambers, other councilmen have their reservations. Abdulmuhsen Al al-Shiekh who heads Makka’s municipal council said he is against having women in the council, whether they were elected or appointed. He, however, is not against having women as voters.

This position might seem odd, but it’s actually similar to the position taken by some Islamists in Kuwait when the government there decided to give women their political rights and allow them to vote and run in the parliamentary elections.

Today’s Links

  • AP says that security forces has confiscated books of Abdullah al-Hamed, a well-known reformer, from stalls at Riyadh Book Fair. MOCI, unsurprisingly, denied that they know anything about it.
  • Speaking of security and censorship, rumor has it that starting this Tuesday BBM service will be disabled in Saudi Arabia. CITC has asked RIM to let them monitor the network but it seems unlikely that the Canadian company would allow it.

Today’s Links

  • Shoura Council finally decided to open its doors to citizens. Shoura said it is ready now to hear the voices of concerned citizens through its Human Rights and Petitions Committee. The King is scheduled to deliver the annual royal speech launching the second year of the the Council’s fifth term Sunday. Unlike Saudi Gazette, I don’t think it would be anything like the State of the Union address.
  • In other news, the King has received the Jeddah Investigation report. I’m eager to hear the news of some heads rolling. I’m also curious to read the report but I doubt it will be made public.
  • Okay, so Fox News published a story on Saudi bloggers, but as SUSRIS blog correctly notes, the story has some holes. No surprise here, I guess.
  • I disagree with almost everything published in Lojainiat, but blocking the website is simply something that I’m not okay with. CITC should stop acting as policemen on our brains.
  • Typical case of Saudi flirting using text messages. A pretty lame attempt if you ask me. But hey, I never been into this kind of thing so maybe you don’t want to take my word for it.

Today’s Links

  • Saudi novelist Abdo Khal has won the International Prize for Arab Fiction, aka the Arabic Booker, for his novel ‘Tarmi Besharar’ or ‘Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles.’ The novel was withdrawn from Riyadh Book Fair yesterday by the censorship committee, but half an hour later was returned to the publisher. An official from MOCI said the book was withdrawn “for inspection.”
  • King Abdulaziz University (KAU) students launched an online campaign against a number of university’s regulations, including a ban on electronic equipment that have cameras and wearing pants or on abayas on the women’s part of the campus. Way to go. I wonder what the kids at KSU think about this…

Today’s Links

  • This is awful: after Michael reposted the abaya pictures, he received death threats via his BlackBerry. The phone calls did not shake him, but later he later received an email with a link to an extremist website that had his images. He had to take the pictures down, again. That’s a real shame, but I can’t blame him. I recently received some hate mail as well after my post on al-Barrak’s fatwa.
  • As I said before, Maureen Dowd was here. I don’t know what to say about her column. Today I don’t feel particularly optimistic. Hell, I don’t feel optimistic at all, actually. It seems that Dowd met only the fancy people. Also, what’s up with this: “He has encouraged housing developments with architecture that allows families, and boys and girls within families, to communicate more freely.”?

Today’s Links

  • CITC has blocked islamlight.net, the website which hosted the infamous fatwa by Shaikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak. Although the fatwa can be considered hate speech and a call to violence, I’m generally against such censorship. CITC should stop this practice of making decisions on our behalf on what we should, or rather should not, read on the web.
  • Corinne Martin is an artist who lives in Saudi Arabia and makes these awesome paintings based on vintage pop culture icons.
  • Music concerts are rare in this country. Music concerts in universities are super rare. But hey, what do you know? Jeddah Legends, the band of which Qusay is the lead singer, have recently performed a concert in KAUST. Why oh why KSU never hosted any concerts?

Kill Me Now

For someone who would probably enjoy the lifestyle of a caveman, Shaikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak has an impressive ability to occasionally make news headlines with his ridiculous, albeit dangerous, fatwas. His latest fatwa called for opponents of the kingdom’s strict segregation of men and women to be put to death if they refuse to abandon their ideas.

Some people think the best way to deal with this fatwa is to simply ignore it, because the more media attention it gets the more weight it will carry. I disagree. It might be true that al-Barrak is an old man who is still living in the past, but failing to address his fatwa might lead to serious consequences. This guy has a loyal following who admire him and regard his opinions highly.

What if one of his enthusiastic fans decided to act upon this fatwa and killed somebody? What if someone from those who spoke in favor of mixing like justice minister Shaikh Mohammed al-Eisa, Shaikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi, or Shaikh Ahmed Bin Baz got killed over this?

That is unlikely to happen, but it remains a possibility nevertheless. As Ebtihal Mubarak tweeted earlier today, “there is a huge number of unemployed men who are agitated, and it’s easy to rally them using the argument that the government is focusing on women and mixing of genders while ignoring them.”

I think all those concerned should speak out against this fatwa and denounce al-Barrak. The official religious establishment, namely the Council of Senior Ulema, should take a stand and make a statement here. But based on their recent history with the mixing at KAUST drama, I’m pretty sure they won’t say a single word about this.

I hate to repeat myself, but here is what I said two years ago when al-Barrak released another one of his insane fatwas:

I can imagine that neither the government nor the official religious establishment would speak out on this issue, but if they fail to address this properly then they should stop whining about extremism and how terrorists are simply a “misguided group.” It is this kind of dangerous messages that feed extremism and donate fuel to terrorists to continue their lethal destructive acts. Keeping silent and later blaming “external influences” for what happens here will be a hard sell…