Samar

Samar Badawi has always struggled with her father. He abused her verbally and physically, and even after she got married and had a son of her own, he kept interfering with her life. She got divorced, and decided to live with her brother. The father tried to sue his son and daughter, who was taken to a women’s shelter thanks to an order from Prince Mishal bin Majed, the mayor of Jeddah.

The father did not stop there. He tried to sue Samar again, but the case was dismissed. After staying in the shelter for sixteen months, she sent a letter to the mayor asking for permission to live with her son. The mayor accepted her request, and asked the police to protect her from the father.

Samar filed a lawsuit to lift her father’s guardianship, and the court ruled in her favor. The father filed a “filial ingratitude” complaint against her. When she went to challenge the complaint, “the judge pledged to teach her obedience and flog her himself.” Despite the previous court rulings and her father’s documented abuse, and even a royal order from Prince Khalid al-Faisal, governor of Makkah, to send her back to the shelter, the judge sent her to prison.

Samar told the Financial Times that the judge thinks a woman must submit to her father, regardless of how abusive he is. “Conservative judges hate the government’s women’s shelters because they empower women. They call them brothels,” she said.

This was six months ago. It was only last week that Samar and her lawyer decided to go public with the case. Since the local newspapers won’t pick up a sensitive story like this one, they went online. With help of fellow blogger Fouad al-Farhan, they set up a blog where they told Samar’s story and uploaded all the documents of her case. The case was also heavily discussed on Twitter, where users in Saudi Arabia used the hashtag #samar to denote their tweets about it.

While Samar enjoyed a lot of support from most users on Twitter, there have been some people who defended the judge, saying the case is being used to attack the Saudi judicial system. Moreover, a blog was to “basically show how the people responsible for the news breakout are not credible, liberal westernizers,” according Lou K.

Earlier today, Samar’s lawyer Waleed Abu Alkhair tweeted that the Supreme Judicial Council has opened an investigation into the case, anticipating a resolution in the next few days.

Samar’s story is undoubtedly a disturbing, heartbreaking one. It’s surely nor over yet, but now that the case is — I hope — moving forward, let me take a moment to say two of things about this:

The case shows that despite all the promises and the billions of riyals allocated to reform the judiciary system, we are still so far away from anywhere near a true reform for this institution. It’s been three years, and we are yet to see any tangible progress.
While many people still like to question the power of web and social media to make a difference to our society, this case offers a good evidence that the influence of online tools can be effective. Remember, the story was not picked up by any newspaper in Saudi Arabia so far.

I salute Fouad, Waleed and the others who supported this case. It fills my heart with hope to see many of my countrymen and women speak up and refuse to ignore injustice. Our nation deserves better than this, and we should never settle for less.

Illusive reform, Swedish TV interview

Neil Patrick says, “All in all, substantive Saudi reform is largely illusive.” That’s debatable. What is not debatable is that many of the changes made since 2005 lack an institutional basis and have not captured our imagination, mine at least.
I was interviewed by Swedish television a while I ago. I said things. Jameel al-Theyabi, editor of the Saudi edition of al-Hayat daily, said things, too. I don’t think that Moroccan journalist Mohammed al-Jama’ai wears a suit to work everyday. That’s not my laptop, I’m a Mac. I hate the adjective ‘absolutely.’ What else? Oh, I’m not religious.

Identity and social change, women’s rights movements, US diplomat in henna

Qusay ponders the questions of identity and social change: “I am a product of that change, along with many others, just take a look at the Saudi’s writing in English. English is almost our first language, we grew up watching American shows and we dressed like the cool people we saw on TV. When we went out we ate fast food, and listened to American music, and watched Hollywood movies (not in theatres of course).” I wonder if I’m one the bloggers he is talking about. I don’t think that I’m one of them. I think my view of our society has more to do with our past, which I believe was better, than with what Western media sell as their lifestyle vs ours.
The Philosophy Cube writes about the women’s rights movement in Saudi Arabia. Or rather the lack thereof. I think many of us agree that the economic factor is one of the strongest catalysts for change. “In light of all the social intricacies within the society, I am sure that it is poverty alone and the struggles of the lower classes that will bring Women’s Rights to the country.”
Today’s picture:

Cynthia Cook sits down to have her hands adorned with henna in a local summer festival here in Hofuf, east of Saudi Arabia. Cook is the Public Affairs Officer at the US Consulate in Dhahran, and she was part of an American delegation that visited the festival earlier this week. You know, public diplomacy and stuff :P

Pop culture, funny lawyer, summer festivals

Saudi Dawn aka the Eternal Philosopher thinks Saudis are brainwashed with a certain pop culture that “is filled with half-truths and out of context religious information that is promoted to control the masses.” I agree.
Lawyer Ahmad Al-Rashid said he will sue Riyadh’s summary court after it refused to consider his lawsuit against MBC for what he called “encouraging deviant behavior in Saudi society.” The court told him to contact the Ministry of Culture and Information’s media violations committee, but he said he won’t. Funny. As a lawyer he should be well aware of this. Citing the example of Mazen Abdul Jawad case doesn’t make much sense here. That case was against Abdul Jawad not LBC, although the channel later got punished for operating without a permission (which is also funny because none of the other non-Saudi channels working in the Kingdom have such permission).
Lou K has another good post. This time about so-called Saudi tourism and its so-called summer festivals. “Basically, our summer festivals are nothing but shopping festivals.. There’s nothing more to it..” he says. There is a lot of truth in what he says, but there are also exceptions. The local summer festival here in Al-Ahsa, known as Hasana Falla, tries to mix culture (folklore, arts, traditional crafts, etc.) with entertainment and some shopping. I made a short visit last night to the event, ironically to meet some American visitors, and I thought it was okay. In the words of a Hassawi girl on Twitter, it’s “not half-bad, but nothing much to do.”

Abdullah al-Eyaf, Ahmed Bin Baz

If you enjoyed reading about Abdulmohsen al Mutairi and young Saudi filmmakers, you probably want to read this interview with director Abdullah Al-Eyaf. His latest film, “Ayesh,” has been well received and won the first award of the Gulf Film Festival that was recently held in Dubai.
In the second part of a series on Saudi Arabia, GlobalPost runs this piece by Caryle Murphy who profiles the upstart scholar Ahmed Bin Baz. I have been reading for the young Bin Baz for a while now, so I’m not surprised by the opinions he offers in this interview. However, I’m a bit surprised to see Dr. Mohammed al-Hodaif, father of the late Hadeel al-Hodaif, likens Bin Baz to Paris Helton in the sense that he is using his father’s name to become famous. Totally uncalled for.

Female ref, Lou visits KAUST

The Saudi football league champions Al Hilal are currently in Austria preparing for the new season. Playing a friendly match against a Romanian team there, the Saudi players experienced something they won’t see in the local stadiums anytime soon: a female referee. Al Hilal lost 0-3. You think we can blame her for this defeat? :P
Lou visit KAUST for the third time, and he comes back with a bunch of interesting thoughts. I agree with most of what he has to say, and I think many citizens share his sentiments. At the end of his very long rant, he writes a letter to the Saudi government: “You managed to force a new open campus, with a different take on what a Saudi culture should be.. Please, tell me that you’re doing this just to test how it works, and then later implement it all around the kingdom as a Social Module.”

KSA joins the first world, marketing to Muslims in Riyadh

Prince Khaled al-Faisal, the Governor of Mecca, has repeatedly said that our country is on its way to join the first world. Fouad al-Farhan says he would like to join the Prince in his optimism, and has some ideas on what it would take to move Saudi Arabia from the third world to the first world.
My good friend Abdulmohsen al-Madani will be joined by Roy Haddad, Chairman & CEO of JWT MENA, for a presentation called “Marketing to Muslims – Unseen Opportunities.” The presentation will be given today, July 6th, at 7PM. The venue is Riyadh Chamber of Commerce on Dhabab St. It should be interesting. Unfortunately I won’t be able to make it because I’m in the EP, but if you are in Riyadh and you care about marketing, advertisement and content creation then you probably want to be there.

Saudi Jeans

Category Libs and Cons