Fear and Fitna

Sometimes I am a chicken. And frankly, sometimes I hate that about myself.

I bring this up because of a recent posting of the video, Fitna, which Carol over American Bedu recently (bravely) put up.

I watched the video. I watched it again.

And my reaction?

My reaction was outrage!

Even as I was watching this incredibly disturbing video, I was composing posts and comments and rants and speeches and – well lots and lots of words. It’s what I do.

But then the oddest thing happened – I started self-editing.

Now, as a writer, I often self-edit for clarity, but this time I was self-editing for political correctness.

I hate political correctness.

Political correctness is code word for giving into fear.

And that’s exactly why I was self-editing.

I wanted to say that this video needs to be seen by everyone who thinks that Islam is a religion of peace.

I wanted to say that this video is real, that the thoughts and beliefs expressed in it are real and alive and well and living here in Saudi Arabia.

I wanted to say that the global funding of mosques and imams by Saudis means that the thoughts and beliefs expressed in this video are spreading across the world like a deadly, inoperable cancer.

But I was afraid of the consequences.

I was afraid of negative comments and hurt feelings.

I was afraid of being called racist and hateful and politically incorrect.

I was afraid of losing readers and losing face.

I was afraid of becoming a target.

I  was afraid of jeopardizing everything.

And as fear started to take over, I had an epiphany.

The reason minority thoughts and beliefs like those expressed in the video are spreading like a cancer in places far and near is because people just like me are afraid to say anything. And when enough of us are afraid, our silence allows the voices on this video to become deafening.

Don't let it happen.

Watch the video.

React to it. Be outraged. Be afraid. Be whatever this video does to you.

Then push any fear you might have aside and say something.

I wish I had!

Guest Post - Saudi Arabia's Epidemic: Tribalism

A Note from SGIME: This guest post on the genetic fallout of cousin marriage previously appeared over at Blue Abaya. Laylah has generously agreed to let me repost it here.
--------
Tribalism is alive and deeply rooted in the Saudi culture. In my opinion tribalism can have some positive aspects to it. It creates close family ties and high respect of elders. Knowing ones roots and the names of ancestors hundreds or even thousands of years back can be educational and inspiring.

However tribalism should NOT create such pride and arrogance in people that they begin feeling supreme to others based solely on lineage. It should NOT cause the society to become racist and hateful. Tribe should NOT determine marriage suitability. Tribalism should NOT effect negatively the health of a whole nation.

But in Saudi-Arabia, unfortunately it does.

Ironic perhaps that tribalism is against the teachings of Islam, yet it seems to be what the national identity is based on.

Islam teaches that all human beings are equal in the eyes of the Creator as far as their status of human beings is considered.

"O Mankind, We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other (not that you may despise each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of God is he who is the most righteous of you" (Quran 49:13).

Tribalism was practised before and during the times of the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh). Interestingly he belonged to a very prominent tribal family called Quraysh which at the time ruled Mecca.
Despite his high status Prophet Muhammed tried to eradicate this backward and racist practice.

The Prophet used to say about Asabiyah: "Leave it. It is Rotten " narrated Bukhari & Muslim.

On pride and boasting of lineage:

"There are indeed people who boast of their dead ancestors; but in the sight of God they are more contemptible than the black beetle that rolls a piece of dung with its nose. Behold, God has removed from you the arrogance of the Time of Jahiliyyah (Ignorance) with its boast of ancestral glories. Man is but an God-fearing believer or an unfortunate sinner. All people are the children of Adam, and Adam was created out of dust." narrated by At-Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud.

So according to this Hadith, these proud tribalists are worse than dung beetles in the eyes of God?

Interesting.

In his final sermon the Prophet stressed the importance of equality among all humans which in modern day Saudi-Arabia has been long forgotten:

"O people, Remember that your Lord is One. An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a black has no superiority over white, nor a white has any superiority over black, except by piety and good action (Taqwa). Indeed the best among you is the one with the best character."

Many more examples of anti-racial and anti-tribal Hadith exist. So why do the Saudis continue this practise? I guess you can call it pride, keeping the "goods" in the family, racism, prejudice, closed-mindedness..Somehow I can understand the uneducated Bedouins being tribal since they know of nothing else let alone ever heard of genetics. That said I've never met a single proud or arrogant Bedouin, on the contrary they seem humble and never discriminate or look down upon others of different races.

However the educated, rich Saudis including the Royal family are very engaged in tribalism. Despite surely being aware of the above Hadith, as well as the consequences of inbreeding and impact of hereditary diseases. Generally speaking I've noted the richer the Saudi family is, the more they will have a sense of supremacy toward others.

In tribal families marriages between cousins are very common. I was aware it's common to marry first cousins, but after recently attending a "Hereditary Disease Workshop" I learned the rate is a staggering 60%. Inbreeding like this causes alarming rates of hereditary diseases. Some disorders are 20 times more common in Saudi-Arabia compared to the rest of the world. There are tribes that have distinctive malformations that are recognizable from their appearance.

So what is the impact of this disease "tribalismitis" on the nation? In short, it is making Saudis more sick by every generation and slowly weakening the their gene pool. Previously those born with metabolic diseases and blood disorders would die soon after birth, or never reach reproductive age. Modern medicine has enabled most of them making it to adulthood, only to be married off to a cousin and producing a new even sicker generation.

Saudis infected with "tribalismitis" present with congenital disorders, malformed babies, high infant mortality rates, high prevalence of mental retardation and hereditary diseases that significantly lessen the quality of life and are a huge financial burden for the government to treat.

Everyday in my work I encounter patients that are admitted to the hospital either directly or indirectly because of an inherited condition. Some of them need expensive medical care frequently, not being able to live normal lives. Many patients require blood transfusions every month to survive. Some face death without a set of new lungs.

Perhaps hereditary diseases and genetic disorders are a sign from God to stop this madness nonsense. It might be a punishment for arrogance and pride and going against what God teaches humans.

There is unfortunately a high prevalence of babies born with congenital malformations in Saudi-Arabia. These innocent children suffer because of the ignorance of their parents.


Tribalism is so deeply rooted that some families have even taken things into their own hands and turned to the courts. Here's an example of a Saudi tribal marriage that was nullified by a judge based on to tribal incompatibility. I wonder how did they back this one up by law?

Alhamdulillah after 4 yrs the Supreme Judiciary Council in Riyadh overruled the decision and ordered that the couple be reunited in matrimony.

Not all Saudis are brainwashed and fall into trap of tribalism. Here's an insipiring article from Saudi Gazette about two very brave Saudi men Hussein Abdullah Al-Mansour and Ali Hadi Al-Hamzan, who embarked on an extraordinary road trip throughout the Kingdom to promote the message "No to racism. No to tribalism."

Maashallah may Allah reward them and may their mission be a success.

Saudi health officials have become more concerned about all this and a few years ago launched a premarital screening programme for the most common hereditary diseases (thalassemia and sickle cell anemia). Couples now have to go through mandatory screening. This sounds promising, but tribalism still effects peoples minds so much that 90 % of the screened high risk couples get married anyway.

I know couples that had seven effected children. These poor children were very sick all their lives and sadly passed away, yet the mother was pregnant again.

I will write a post on Saudi-Arabia's hereditary diseases, what are they, how are they treated and what measures are being taken by the government to prevent them. Also more on the workshop I attended later inshallah.

Saudi "johns" leave 900 kids behind in Egypt

I’m on the record more than a few times when it comes to the Saudi practice of so-called misyar marriage. Plain and simple, I believe it is religiously sanctioned prostitution.

Here’s how it works. A Saudi guy – usually already a family man with a wife or two to his name – decides he wants to satisfy himself with a woman who isn’t his wife. Since s*x outside of marriage is a no-no, the guy marries the object of his lust, only instead of a real and permanent marriage with obligations and responsibilities, this one is fake and temporary and without any obligations or responsibilities.

All the s*x, and none of the sin.

Well, at least for the Saudi men.

Turns out the sins of these father are often visited on the children.

And, according to a recent Arab News piece, there are a whole lotta sinful fathers in Saudi Arabia.

About 900 children born to Egyptian women and Saudi men in what is commonly known as “misfar” or “tourist” marriages are abandoned by their fathers, said an Egyptian activist at a recent forum on human trafficking.

And remember, that’s just arrangements with Egyptian women. The same scam is going on in Malaysia and Indonesia, Morocco and just about any place else these guys can get by with it. Oh and here in Saudi too, of course.

Speaking at the conference in Egypt, Aiman Abu Akeel, chairman of the board of trustees of the Maat Foundation for Peace and Development, said that the majority of men who visit Egypt looking for misfar marriages tend to be Saudi, followed by Iraqis, and that the women they marry are predominantly younger than them.

Younger, as in under the age of 16!

Let's take a quick inventory, shall we? Paying for s*x. Check. Marriage scam. Check. S*x with minors. Check. Deadbeat dads. Check.

Altho nothing is mentioned about these girls – other than a Saudi lawyer saying they should have registered their marriages (which I’m sure would have really made their Saudi johns happy!) – quoted officials do have a few things to say about the children of these unions.

For one thing, things could be a lot worse, as in “their suffering is less than that experienced by children born in non-Arab countries.” I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t like saying getting beheaded is better than getting stoned…

The officials also point out that these kids are “smart and get educated,” and that not all of them turn to a life of crime. Some, apparently, “have become models and actors.”

And in case anyone was worried, “these children are not in need of financial aid nor do they want to come to the Kingdom.”

No, I’m sure not. After all, poor teenage girls who agree to have s*x with old Saudi guys for money obviously have trust funds set aside in case they get knocked up.

Anyway, the same lawyer made it clear that the women and their illegitimate children are way better off than the Saudi deadbeat dads who “could be punished” for violating the Saudi law which says men can’t marry foreign women without prior permission.

Glad he straightened that out.

The relationship between rights and decency

I'm not a fan of the Tea Party, but this woman - a psychotherapist involved in a recent 9/11 tribute in LA who just happens to be a founding member of that group- has a lot of good advise when it comes to the American reaction - and the Muslim response - to terrorism.

"Rights give us authority," she notes, "but decency requires respect and love."

Amen to that!

The cats of Khobar

“It’s a dog’s life” is a common expression of the good life, at least in America.

It implies long naps in the sunshine, lazy afternoons of fetch with an adoring master and maybe an occasional belly tickle or two.

Here in Saudi, my kids and I have a different kind of expression, one we use when we start feeling like life in Saudi sucks. The expression?

“I could be a cat in Khobar”.

Khobar, and every other urban area I’ve visited here in Saudi, is over run with feral cats. Thousands of them. And the life of a cat in Khobar is anything but the good life.

It’s not uncommon while walking around Khobar, to come across cats with tails or ears or even eyes missing, the result, I assume, of fights over food and territory wars. Some are literally skin and bones, others appear to be just bones with large swaths of matted hair attached.

I’ve seen some with gaping wounds and missing limbs, and some barely able to walk straight, whether due to disease of impending death.

No matter how they look, all have a half-crazed look to their eyes, a look that – despite their diminutive size – suggests they’re so hungry they’re eyeing you up as a possible lunch item.

I’ve often wondered why there are so many cats, why so many of them are in such bad shape, why so few of them are properly cared for, why nothing seems to be done about them, and what they say about this society.

According to the American Humane Society, there is a credible link between the way a people treat animals and other forms of societal violence. Specifically their research (as well as the research of others) has found that in homes where animals are abused or neglected, children and other family members are more likely to be abused and neglected, as well.

In other words, how someone treats animals, is a fairly good measure of how they treat humans. If someone is kind to a cat, for instance, they will likely be kind to a housemaid, for instance. And if they abuse the cat, well. I’m guessing my point is well taken on that.

The funny thing is, the (mis)treatment of cats, like just about everything else here in Saudi, is tied up with religion.

The story goes that Mohammed was a big fan of cats, so much so much so that he often drank from the same bowl of water as his favorite cat, Muezza, and even used that water to cleanse himself before prayers. As with other things - including child brides - a lot of folks around here follow his example when it comes to cats.

There’s even an oral tradition that says cats must be given away and not sold, and must be treated well, and provided with enough water and food as well as “roaming time”.

I don’t know about the selling versus giving away thing, but I sure can make an observation about the lives and treatment of cats in Khobar.

It’s pretty obvious most of these cats are not being treated well, unless you consider anything short of killing them, good treatment.

They aren’t cared for in the traditional Western sense – they don’t receive affection from humans, aren’t groomed, or vaccinated or otherwise looked after. No one plays with them or bonds with them, no one watches out for their health, wellness and best interest. They receive no protection.

The cats of Khobar basically live in dumpsters, eating there, sleeping there, giving birth there and probably dying early deaths there. (If they’re not run over in traffic, of course.)

I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty warped interpretation of treating something well!

I suppose you could stretch it to say that anytime someone throws food on the ground (nearly always) or in the dumpster (very rarely), the cats are being “fed”. And since most of the a/c units down town leak water, I suppose the watering provision might be covered, as well.

And, of course, the “roaming time” could be interpreted to include just letting them roam around the streets. That seems to be followed in abundance!

But still, I’m not buying it.

 I look at all the cats in Khobar, and the words that comes to mind aren’t “good treatment” but rather inhumane treatment, neglect and abuse.

And when looked at from that perspective, the cats of Khobar start to make more sense. They quickly become a metaphor for the local definition of taking care of something which ought to be cherished - including life.

Calling a spade a spade

A pedophile is an adult who has s*x with a child. The resulting act is considered child abuse and rape. The mental disorder is called pedophilia.

Most experts regard pedophilia as resulting from psychosocial factors rather than biological characteristics. Some think that pedophilia is the result of having been s*xually abused as a child. Still others think that it derives from the person's interactions with parents during their early years of life. Some researchers attribute pedophilia to arrested emotional development; that is, the pedophile is attracted to children because he or she has never matured psychologically. Some regard pedophilia as the result of a distorted need to dominate a s*xual partner. Since children are smaller and usually weaker than adults, they may be regarded as nonthreatening potential partners. This drive for domination is sometimes thought to explain why most pedophiles are males.

In Saudi Arabia, a man who has sex with a little girl is not considered a pedophile. He is considered a husband – even if he has bought and paid for his so-called wife.

And the resulting act is not considered child abuse or rape, but consummating a marriage.

Experts in mental disorders say that, “some pedophiles offer rationalizations or excuses that enable them to avoid assuming responsibility for their actions. They may blame the children for being too attractive or sexually provocative. They may also maintain that they are "teaching" the child about "the facts of life" or "love".

In Saudi Arabia, pedophiles also offer rationalizations or excuses that enable them to avoid assuming responsibility for their actions. They may say the little girl was mature for her age. They may also maintain that it is better for a little girl to learn about s*x within marriage when she is a child than outside marriage when she is mature enough to understand it – and thus be prone to experimentation. They may say they were saving her from a life of spinsterhood, helping her family makes ends meet or just following the example of their religious leader.

Or they might say that they were forced into having s*x with a little girl because their mommy told them to.

One difficulty with the diagnosis of the disorder is that persons with pedophilia rarely seek help voluntarily from mental health professionals. Instead, counseling and treatment is often the result of a court order.

One difficulty with the diagnosis of the disorder in Saudi Arabia is that persons with pedophilia rarely seek help voluntarily from mental health professionals. Instead, counseling and treatment is often carried out by religious leaders, and family members – many whom themselves married little girls, so are in denial about their own disorder. When the issue comes to the courts – which is rare – the pedophiles are usually vindicated and allowed to indulge in their disorder. Sometimes they are even paid off.

The main method for preventing pedophilia is avoiding situations that may promote pedophilic acts.

The main method for preventing pedophilia in Saudi Arabia is to no longer allow men to marry little girls.

Saudi Arabia needs to start calling a spade a spade.

It needs to stop suggesting that men who marry little girls are anything but what they are – pedophiles.

And start giving them what they deserve before more little girls are destroyed.

Surgical castration is sometimes offered as a treatment to pedophiles…

What it means to be a child bride

Have you ever stopped to think about what a child bride goes through? I mean really think about it?

I haven’t. Or at least I hadn’t until I read this piece by L. Lewis Wall, professor of obstetrics/gynecology in the School of Medicine and professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

It’s pretty obvious Wall has spent a lot of time thinking about what a child bride goes through.

And let me warn you, it is torturous and ugly, heart breaking and painful to even read, but less live.

But it is also the reality for child brides, and I think making it emotional – visceral – provides a powerful and immediate incentive for change.

You are a 14-year-old girl. You've never been to school. You were married to a man in a neighboring village at age 13—before your first menstrual period—and six months later, you became pregnant. Now you are in labor with your first child.

Labor has already lasted for three days, but still the baby has not come. You are exhausted. You have lost a lot of blood and are running a fever. You haven't passed urine in over two days, and your genitals are horribly swollen and bruised from the constant pushing. Why won't the baby come out? you wonder. You dread the long, bony fingers of the old woman who is attending your birth. Nothing she does brings relief.

Soon the sun is rising on the morning of your fourth day of labor. At midday, with agony, you manage to pass the child from your body. The baby is stillborn. It has been dead for nearly three days and has started to decay. The softening of its tissues finally allowed it to pass through your vagina.

Thank God, you sigh. It's finally over. But it's not.

On the morning of the fifth day, you pass more dead tissue. And then it starts. Urine is running out of your vagina, onto your thighs, onto the floor. What is going on? The urine does not stop. You find some rags and stuff them between your thighs.

There, that ought to take care of it, you think. But it doesn't.

In an hour or two, the rags are soaked. In six hours, you have run out of rags. In 12 hours you notice—to your horror—that feces are also coming out. No matter how much you try, no matter how much you wash, you cannot get rid of it.

The odor and wetness are constant. Your husband is disgusted. He cannot stand to have you around. Your presence is unendurable.

"What has happened to you? What did you do?" he demands. You were supposed to have become a woman, the mother of his first-born son, but instead you have turned into a human cesspit. This all must be punishment for something you did.

He turns you out of the house. Your family takes you back, but you are not fit to live in their dwelling, so they put you in a shack on the edge of the family compound, where you sit day after day—alone, wretched, and stinking—until your family finally has had enough of you and casts you out.

You are 14. You are illiterate and have no money. You have no skills with which to earn a livelihood. 

You reek of urine and feces. And you want to die.

Child brides who make it through the horrors of their wedding night – and not all of them do – will likely end up pregnant before their young bodies are prepared for childbirth. Some will die because of it.

Others will live but wish they hadn’t because of obstetric fistula – the condition Wall described.

People - myself included - often think about the horror a little girl experiences when her "marriage" to an old man is consummated. But we rarely go to that next step, and wonder what her life is like nine months or a year later when she has been impregnated and her young body hasn't yet developed enough to make the transition from "woman" to "mother".

Maybe if more of us did take that next step, we could end the tradition of child brides once and for all.

The moot question of the veil in Saudi

Discussing whether or not the veil is Islamic or cultural seems to be a favorite pastime in these parts. I have to admit, the whole discussion is pretty darn confusing – especially in Saudi where everyday life is a mishmash of culture and religion and tradition and tribalism and whatever else the locals can dream up.

So, it was with interest that I found a recent article by Pamela Taylor which addresses the question – do Muslim women veil because of culture or religion.

Taylor begins by quoting Egyptian cleric Abdel Muti al-Bayyumi, who insists that the veil has no place in Islam:

“It is from an era before Islam, when both men and women wore it in the desert. Now, people are attempting to argue it is from Islam, but it is not. The veil is an erroneous covering that has been usurped by scholars and men who want to have their women covered. There is no mention of this in the Quran."

Not being a religious scholar, this is in line with my understanding of things. It's a fact that veiling predates Islam and was alive and well as a custom in both Christian and Jewish culture as well as the pagan cultures of Arabia.

There are also some vague references to not making eye contact with others, as well as something about covering your goods – for both men and women. But, like Bayyumi, I’ve always been confused as to how those references evolved into “Black Moving Objects” here in Kingdom.

Of course, Bayyumi’s insistence – and others who believe as he does - holds little sway here in Saudi, but outside this place…well Taylor, at least, remains guardedly optimistic that change will come.

“I doubt anyone who currently wears a face veil will stop wearing it as a result of the pronouncements, but they will give others food for thought, and perhaps help slow down what seems to be a tidal trend to ever more conservative expressions of faith in the greater Muslim community.”

I admire her optimism, but have serious doubts that even the crumbs of change will ever fall here in Saudi when it comes to the veil.

Why? Well because Men decide what is culture and what is religion – and for whom here in Saudi.

Guys, for example, can wear anything they want – they can saran wrap their package in skin-tight running shorts while eyeing up every woman who walks by and no one questions their modesty, reprimands them for not averting their gaze, or even suggests they aren’t pious believers! There is a clear consensus that male clothing is cultural while female clothing is religious.

You think not? What would happen if a boss told male employees they had to wear “western” clothing to the office? What if that same boss gave the same exact directive to female employees?

Yeah. That’s what I thought!

Saudi men have twisted things to the point where what they wear says nothing about faith. What Saudi women wear, on the other hand, says everything about theirs. To defy this manipulation is defy religion.

Beyond that, and in the absence of male self-control and discipline here in Saudi, women have been told they are responsible for the behavior of men – specifically the sexual behavior of men. And they believe it. Imagine how terrifying not being covered would be if you’d been told all your life that you were raw meat, and men were feral cats, and that the only thing keeping them away from you – keeping them off you - was a thin piece of black invisibility!

I can tell you, if I’d been fed that line all my life, I’d keep every visible inch of myself covered!

Which, of course, gets back to the moot question of whether the veil is Islamic or cultural or something else. Moot, because it doesn’t really matter as long as men are in charge and women are scared.

And that, as we know, isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Taking fathers to task on the marriage issue

In Saudi Arabia, a father will force his 10-year old little girl to marry an 80-year old man but will refuse to let his grown daughter marry a man of her own choosing, and many times any man at all.

The reasons, of course, are many.

Some fathers want to keep the income their educated daughters earn in the family. Others want to improve their own social clout through tribal marriages. Still others have promised their daughters to family members since birth.

Regardless of the reasons, these male guardians have been given total control over a woman’s life, future and happiness in terms of marital status.

Recently, however, women have been fighting back.

Faced with a lifetime of being forced to remain single, an increasing number of Saudi women, many of them university graduates with good jobs, are going to court to dispute their fathers' refusal to sign off on their marriages.

The numbers aren’t huge – just 86 in the past six years – but they are growing.

This year alone 13 women have taken their guardians to court.

Sadly – but no big surprise - the courts have yet to support women in this area, coming down on the side of the guardian in every case.

But at least women are trying.

Women like 39-year old university professor Amal Saleh, whose father has refused to allow her to marry anyone at all - ever.  She notes that “prevailing ignorance of religious teachings in society," is the primary reason guardians like her father are allowed to prevent grown women like her from marrying.

"We want to eliminate this phenomenon of ignorance," says Saleh. "In pre-Islamic times they would just kill an unwanted daughter. Now it is killing her as an adult.”

An altho she didn't say it, I bet she was thinking it. The end result is the same.

What passes for religious tolerance in KSA

I am a real nag when it comes to online discretion for those of us living here in Saudi Arabia. Much of what we are allowed to do is contingent on a good deal of winking and nodding, as they say. Technology sometimes makes us feel like we are in another world - a world where we have total freedom of speech and expression without consequences. But that's not the case.

So when I see people on FB talking about huge parties they've attended, or bloggers bragging about the many things they've been able to sneak in across the border, I tend to get a little hypersensitive. Their careless words might just have a huge impact on my life and the lives of other expats here in Kingdom.

Here's a case in point. Last Friday, the PVPV broke into a Catholic mass in Riyadh, hauling away the priest and a dozen leaders of the congregation. They are being charged with proselytizing.

To proselytize is to is to induce someone to convert one's faith.

Despite every increasingly loud shouts (primarily from the West) that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, there is no religious tolerance here in Saudi Arabia, the very cradle of Islam.

If convicted, these 12 people could, at least notionally, be put to death.

Now, there's really no knowing how the PVPV was alerted to this underground congregation. And, chances are, it had been up and running discreetly and under the radar for years without problem.

But now it is not. For them, at least, the never-ending game of wink and nod has ended.

Some will, no doubt, say that the response of the PVPV was justified, after all, this is their country and they must be allowed to do what they feel is necessary to protect the future of their religion.

Others will point to the response - all 12 were released on the equivalent of bail - as a sign that there actually is hope for religious tolerance here. They could still be sitting in jail, those folks will say.

But the fact remains that religious tolerance here - I dare say any form of tolerance - is more about looking the other way than the actual recognition of differences and the rights of others to live differently.

The many "problems" of housemaids in Saudi

Whether you call it an unfortunate coincidence or a calculated effort to sweep ugly under the rug, it seems the face of domestic help here in Kingdom is about to change.

Citing contractual problems, and lack of cultural awareness and fit, restrictions have recently been put in place – or are being considered – regarding the recruitment of housemaids and other female domestic workers from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Other nations, including India,  Nepal, and Indonesia are urging bans from their side, stating as their reasons on-going, horrific and unpunished abuse of their countrywomen by their Saudi employers.

The Saudi stand is that “problems associated with housemaids from these countries are on the rise.”

Yep. You could say that.

There was the “problem” of the Sri Lankan housemaid who had 24 nails hammered into various parts of her body by her Saudi employers.

There was the ”problem” of Nepalese maids being sold and trafficking across Saudi borders by Saudi human traffickers.

There was the ”problem” of the Indian maid who was locked up by her Saudi sponsor for nine months.

There was the ”problem” of two Indonesia maids being beaten to death by their Saudi employer.

And, although not listed by Saudi on the problematic list, following the torture and murder of a Fillipino maid last month – the woman was found in her employer’s kitchen with knife wounds in her neck, abdomen, and wrist as well as acid burns on her face, arms and legs – the Philippine embassy has announced they will be seeking justice .

Sounds pretty problematic to me.

The recycled answer to all these “problems” is to get rid of the “trouble makers” and bring in housemaids from other places, places which haven’t yet had the full-on Saudi experience.

Last March, those places included Nepal and Vietnam, two countries which have or are now urging their women to “just say no” to working in Saudi.

This October, those places include newcomers Mali and Cote d' Ivore, as well as Cambodia, which is apparently willing to give Saudi employers another chance.

The “new” official stand? Women from these countries will not have as many difficulties in adapting to Saudi habits and traditions.


I can't help but be reminded of the sage advise of my grandma at this point, who once told me, "If everyone keeps having problems with you, maybe it's not them but you."

Yeah...that could be the problem!