Saudi Writer Says That Men Should Sexually Molest “Women Who Work”
In America, workplace sexual harassment is a very big deal. Businesses can be financially destroyed by a sexual harassment lawsuit. This explains why, depending on the size of the business, American businesses spend hundreds to hundreds-of-thousands of dollars training their employees to see away from anything that could even remotely be interpreted as harassment.Things are a bit different in Saudi Arabia. Back in 2011, as part of its move to put some life into its flabby non-oil-producing private sector, the Saudi government loosened up on its restrictions against women working. To protect these women, the legislature is now contemplating a law that would protect women from sexual harassment.
Although the number of women workers in Saudi Arabia is still extremely small, there are enough women to have upset Abdullah Mohammed Al Dawood, who writes self-help books and has almost 100,000 Twitter followers. This past week, Al Dawood took to Twitter and, using the hashtag “harass_female_cashiers,” encouraged his followers to sexually harass female store clerks.
Al Dawood justified his position by pointing to an old Islamic fable about Al Zubair, a famous warrior who did not want his wife to go alone to pray in the mosque. One night, when she went out, he hid on the streets and molested in her the dark. She never realized that her attacker was her husband. Rushing home after the assault, she promised never to stray again, saying that “there is no safer place than home and the world out there is corrupt.”
While logical minds would say that the only corrupt person in the story is the husband, hardliners immediately applauded Al Dawood’s tweet. Those supporting him believe that the new Saudi laws run counter to God’s laws. As one said, “It is a man-made law and it can’t be accepted in a kingdom ruled by God’s law. They had better ban mingling of the sexes, not protect it.”
Khalid Ebrahim Al Saqabi, a conservative cleric, saw using harassment as a way to drive women out of the workforce as an excellent antidote to the risks of have a co-ed business environment. To him, mixed sex offices are “only meant to encourage consensual debauchery.” Another commentator, however, responding to Al Dawood’s tweet, accused Al Dawood himself of contributing to debauchery. Thus, Waleeed Al Khawaji asked “What kind of person urges the youth to commit debauchery.”
Women in the Muslim Middle East have a long haul ahead of them before they can achieve security and respect. Women end up in jail if they’re raped; clerics encourage men to beat their wives and rape them if the wives refuse sex; clerics specifically tell soldiers that the enemy’s women should be raped; and non-Muslim women in the Western countries in which Muslims live are deemed fair game for gang rapes. Because by-the-book Islam is extremely hostile to women, the Saudi government’s tentative steps at granting Saudi women even some human rights are going to run into bitter resistance from the men who learned their fundamentalist beliefs in Saudi schools.
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