From Saudi Arabia Corespondent Eman Al Nafjan…

I’ve been wanting to write this post all day but I just couldn’t get myself to do it. I wanted to write about how frustrated and sad I am, but what does it matter how I feel standing as a helpless onlooker, reading these horror stories about 10, 12 and 13 year olds being legally and openly married (read sold off) to men decades their seniors. I’ve gone through all the emotions and now I’m weary of the nightmare scenarios going through my head as I imagine what these poor children are going through. So let me just state the facts:

In Najran, a city in the south of Saudi a thirteen year old girl was married off to a man in his fifties. Everyone in the family opposed the marriage including the girl’s grandfather and uncle but nothing could be done to stop it. According to a family member, the father went through with is because he wanted to use her a dowry for a new car.

In another case, a sheikh, Saeed Al Jaleel, has come out saying that a couple of years back he was asked to marry a 10 year old girl to a 34 year old man. He tried to stop the marriage. He spoke to the girl’s mother to try to get her to object, he tried to convince the father not to go through with it but they both insisted. His hands were tied since there are no regulations, and he married them.

And finally you have this story in Arab News:

NAJRAN: A marriage official (mazoun) in the southern city of Najran has told a local Arabic daily that he had married a minor girl who is barely 12 years old and consummated their marriage after only two and a half months….”When my mother insisted I consummate my marriage, I had to summon up the courage for two weeks before I was able to have sex with her,” he said. He said when he first saw her, he was shocked by her fragility and added that he spent a long time trying to understand how to treat her.”

Since reforms have started the only thing that has been implemented is that women can book into a hotel without a male guardian’s permission. A small step but now the time is ripe for criminalizing wedlock pedophilia. And don’t give me that line that the prophet PBUH married Aisha when she was 9 years old. That’s disputed and historians have shown that she was actually 19.

So many Saudis tired and upset about these stories, including members of the royal family. A huge campaign and petition organized by one of the biggest women magazines in the Middle East, Sayidaty, and signed by icons and leaders, all this and nothing to show for it.

Women are still considered legally minors no matter how old they are, banned from driving, and at the mercy of their guardians when it comes to education, work, marriage, divorce and child custody.

We need laws to instate our rights as human beings and protect our daughters from these horrors.

From Saudi Arabia Corespondent Eman Al Nafjan…

I occasionally get Emails and comments from non-Arab people asking what they can do to help. Generally there isn’t much that can be done by outsiders as it’s my belief that sustainable change is only change that happens from within. However in areas where West collides with East there are things that can be done to either hurt moderate Muslims or help us.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an area that has a lot of impact on the growth and recruitment of terrorist Islamic movements. This is a previous post on how young Saudis come to hate the West as a result of it.

Now with the Park51 Mosque, things have come to a head. This is an area where you can help. To lump Islam as one single ideology and 23% of the world population as terrorists is a grave mistake. To fight Islam in general is the single best backing position for the West to take in aiding fundamental Islamists. When you don’t support people like Imam Rauf and Tariq Ramadan, then in effect you are supporting people like Osama Bin Laden.

When outsiders  lump Islam into this one narrow interpretation that must be fought, they are playing their part in Osama Bin Laden’s world stage. Fundamental Islamists, from the nonviolent to terrorists all use the same effective argument to recruit Muslim laypeople. It goes along the lines of “see, see they hate us. They want to wipe us off the face of the Earth. Where is their freedom and democracy?”

They use as examples for this argument America’s support for Israel, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and discrimination against Muslims in western countries. The opposition to and cancellation of Park 51 looks like a future addition to the list alongside the burning of the Qurans in Florida.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone born in a Muslim country who only speaks the language of that country and who has never been anywhere besides that country. Your religious leader, your school teacher or any other person you might have reason to be drawn to tells you about the Palestinian plight illustrated with photos of maimed children and refugee camps. He then talks to you about the innocent civilians killed indiscriminately by American tanks and bombs. Iraqi women raped by American soldiers. He shows you pictures from Abu Ghraib. He talks to you about how Americans hate Muslims and illustrates about how thousands of Americans opposed the building of a mosque and how an American priest is going to burn the Quran. How would you feel?

Do Americans really want to feed into that argument? Islam is the second largest religion in the world, second only to Christianity. It’s not going away, you either help moderate Muslims or you feed into the fundamentalists’ view of the world. Who do you want to be proven wrong?

From Tanzania Corespondent Lute Wa Lutengano…

I was last in Kipengere, a sleepy village below the imposing Kipengere Mountain peak on the eastern end of the famous Mount Livingstone ranges, in the mid 60s. The village which is roughly mid-way from Njombe town to Tandala in Ukingaland, Makete used to be an important stopping stage for our rough ride from the town to our boarding school in Tandala.

It was an important stage because of the nature of road particularly during the rainy season. The rough road from Njombe usually became worse from Kipengere onwards. It was therefore important to send some scouts in advance to check on whether the muddy and slippery road had dried a bit before attempting to drive the 40 or so kilometers to Tandala through the notorious Mang’oto escarpment. Sometimes our waiting would go for days or even weeks. 

I had not gone back to Kipengere since those schooling days. It was therefore with added curiosity that I found myself driving on that same road to Kipengere last week. It was a nostalgic short visit. Many changes had taken place. The road was in a better condition and I was told the notorious Mang’oto section was being tarmaced. Actually this would be done to the whole road to Makete.

I arrived at Kipengere mid-morning and realized it was the same old sleepy village but now surrounded by large farms of wheat and maize. There was however piped water and more traffic along the road with some sleek saloon and four wheel vehicles zooming past the village.

But all life seemed to lead to the Kipengere Roman Catholic Parish mission centre. This is where there are schools, orphanages, medical and agricultural support services and naturally an imposing church. No wonder I had no choice other than turning towards to the straight, narrow and tree lined road to the mission centre. It actually reminded me of sleepy Florence, somewhere in that land of Berlusconi – Italy.

At the Centre I was interested in meeting the only person whose name is synonymous with Kipengere, if not the whole of Njombe development activities – Father Camillo Calliari. He was out on the mountain working on a water supply project he is planning for several villages, some more than 50 kilometers away.

But as luck would have it, as I drove out of the mission gate, Father Camillo arrived. The Romanian born 71 year old Italian father with graceful receding grey hair and generous beard was surprisingly sprightly fit. He is a missionary priest, like so many others doing good in this part of Tanzania. Ordained in 1965 he left for Tanzania in September 1969. Unlike other missionary priests Baba Camillo likes to do his work his way. For those who know him, he is not only a priest but also a farmer, mechanic, manufacturer and charity and development worker.

Since 1996, for example, Father Camillo has built 14 concrete water reservoirs and 250 piped water outlets in 15 villages in and around Kipengere reaching 35,000 residents. He also has 6 prefabricated ovens for bread supplied to villagers. More than 200,000 books, thousands of pens, erasers, crayons, chalks and the like have also been distributed to schools in the area.

Father Camillo, whose mission has its own hydro-electric supply system is now busy trying to expand the supply to surrounding villages by constructing a big dam, piling stringing wires, constructing four cabins for processing and turbine housing. Apart from running medical facilities the mission also has an orphanage for hundreds of children from the area whose parents either died of AIDS or other natural causes.

As an agricultural expert he runs large crop and dairy farms with his artificial zebu heifers now producing up to 25 liters of milk per day per cow. His expertise in these fields is now benefiting thousands of villagers in and around Kipengere. To cap it all, his mission is now ready for the mineral water project after successfully testing hundreds of water from the natural springs flowing down the Kipengere mountain peak.

Eight thousand kilometers from Italy, Father Camillo is not only changing the spiritual lives of thousands of Njombeans but also providing each of them with clean drinking water, medical facilities, a light bulb, a glass of milk and wheat bread on the table. Not only is he the Baba of 13,000 baptized Kipengerians but he also a true manifestation of Giorgio Torelli’s recitation “The Gospel of Toil.”

“The end of any mass,” says Father Camillo,” is the dawn when you remove the white garment worn and dive into greasy overalls and devote efforts to the most desperate. I worry though whether there will more to follow this line of duty after I pass on.”

From Saudi Arabia Corespondent Eman Al Nafjan… 

I was invited by the German Foreign Ministry to spend ten days in Berlin as part of a blogger tour initiative. I’ve never been to Germany before as a tourist, let alone a guest of the government. It was an educational experience in which I learned a lot about Germany and also the countries of the 14 other bloggers who were invited too.

As a Saudi coming from a strict Islamic country, it took me a couple of days to get into the swing of things–like walking around without my mandatory black cloak on and not stopping to wonder when the next prayer break is when everything has to shut down for thirty minutes.

Once I settled in, I truly enjoyed the presentations and tours we were taken on. I found especially intriguing our visit to the Stasi Archives where I was amazed at how thorough the Germans are in preserving this piece of their history. I was also taken aback by the Parliament Watch project. All I could think was wow what a force of good! Nothing gives transparency and fights corruption like giving so much access and direct communication to the average citizen.

We also got a chance to meet Markus Löning, the Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights. Hearing his point of view was interesting, and I do agree with him that sanctions against a country punish the innocent citizens rather than the government. However I was disappointed that he prioritizes the prevention of the death penalty. As a Saudi, I have yet to formulate my opinion on the death penalty seeing that people in my country are legally discriminated against just for being born female.

What really struck me though is that Germany was able to rise above the Third Reich and its Holocaust and then again rise above the Berlin Mauer until it eventually became a democratic state that values human rights and freedom. After that horrific past, there finally was a light at the end of the tunnel. The glass dome and all the inner glass of Reichstag with its old exterior symbolize everything that is Germany. Being able to see that inspires me and renews my hope that Saudi too will be able to overcome its religious fundamentalism and its systematic discrimination against women.

Saudi Arabia is a beautiful country with a rich heritage. There are villages here that go back more than a thousand years. It’s the birthplace of the Arabic language and literature, and from it rose empires. Unfortunately this is all hidden behind a thick curtain of extremism that might differ superficially from Nazism but has the same debauched core.

From a country where 78% of all female college graduates have little to no chance of finding a job, where women are banned from driving cars and public transportation, where getting a job, getting married, and travelling has to be signed off by a male guardian, this Saudi woman wants to thank Germany for the inspiration and hope for a better future.

From Saudi Arabia Correspondent Eman Al Nafjan…

Great controversy is brewing in Saudi Arabia and it all starts and ends with Sheikh Ahmed Al Ghamdi. Al Ghamdi is a 47 year old PhD holder in administration and strategical planning and also has spent 15 years studying Islam.

The whole issue began when Okaz Newspaper published a lengthy article last December written by Sheikh al Ghamdi in which he proclaimed that there is no such thing as gender segregation in Islam. He stated that what we are at today is based on extremism and cultural considerations. Moreover he points out that the very thing that we have been prohibiting is practiced in most Saudi households with the presence of maids. Anyhow this is not the first time that a Saudi sheikh has written about the illogicality of gender segregation. Sheikh Ahmed Bin Baz wrote about it and so did the judge Eissa al Ghaith. Although both got an earful, their articles were eventually forgotten. The difference with Sheikh al Ghamdi is that he is head of the Makkah PVPV commission. And as everybody knows, maintaining gender segregation is one of the highest callings of the PVPV. So for Sheikh al Ghamdi to come out and say that this form of segregation is Islamically baseless, it becomes an issue of conflict of interests. And then he tops his gender segregation article with another article on not banning shops from business during prayer time.

Going around shopping areas to insure that they close during prayer is another main component of a PVPV member’s job description. As one journalist points out, Shiekh al Ghamdi may be free to write what he thinks but as an employee of the PVPV, he shouldn’t be publishing things that go against their policies and practices.

For the PVPV and the whole ultra conservative majority, to have one of their own, someone who they had given a high position in their hierarchy go against their beliefs is a slap in the face. Attacks on Shiekh al Ghamdi’s character, credentials and articles were on every one of their TV channels and papers. Some claimed that he was paid to write what he wrote. And then a group of influential muttawas got together and decided to invite Sheikh al Ghamdi to a televised debate. He came onto to the show and it struck me as more of a trap.

Insults were thrown at him right and left. The opposing debaters instead of discussing al Ghamdi’s points kept calling him a mere accountant who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Another claimed that al Ghamdi was blasphemous towards the Prophet (PBUH). The call-ins were a confirmation of my belief that the whole show was a set up. Again a bunch of sheikhs called in and insulted al Ghamdi and then HRH prince Khalid bin Talal called demanding that al Ghamdi be fired from his PVPV post and called him an embarrassment to Saudi Arabia. This lead to a flurry of news organizations reporting that a PVPV sheikh was fired for not believing in gender segregation. The next day it was learned that Al Ghamdi was still at his PVPV post.

The following week sheikh al Ghamdi was again invited to the show to debate the issue. The second show was an improvement on the first. The debaters were given three uninterrupted minutes to state their case and everyone tried to avoid personal insults. The call-ins too were more balanced with some calling in in support of al Ghamdi. On both shows I was impressed by how confident and articulate al Ghamdi was. In comparison, the other two shiekhs seemed baffled and unprepared.

However the outcries against him haven’t subsided and his job at the PVPV is still up in the air. The afternoon of April 25^th, a statement was released to the newspapers that a routine shuffle has resulted in the demotion of sheikh al Ghamdi, and then a couple of hours later all newspapers were requested not to publish the statement. And up to the writing of this post no news of whether or not Sheikh al Ghamdi will be allowed to keep his job has come out.

From Filipino Congressman Mong Palatino…

In 1995 I joined a protest action to condemn the decision of the French government to conduct nuclear tests in the Pacific. I was only a high school student at that time. We relied on mainstream journalists to document and report the rally.

In 2001 I was part of the historic Edsa Dos uprising which toppled the Estrada regime in the Philippines. Aside from mobilizing students and youth groups in Edsa, we also launched information brigades on the Internet. We sent rally updates through e-mail and e-groups. For the first time, texting became an important tool in organizing protest activities. Text jokes were used to undermine the credibility of the president.

Today, rallies are virtual, mobile and real. Street rallies are announced through various social networking sites. Photos of protest actions are instantly uploaded on the web through mobile phones. Blogging and micro-blogging allow ordinary citizens to express dissidence in the comfort of their homes.

Despite the limited Internet penetration rate in the Philippines, web activists have proven that cyberspace can be the terrain of political struggle. In the past decade, activist groups have been successful in maximizing new technologies to advance their advocacy. These tools are essential in reaching a broader audience.

Activists have learned that campaign strategies are more effective if offline activities are linked to online solidarity actions. On the other hand, cyber activism becomes a potent force only if it is fused with grassroots activism.

The majority of Internet activists recognize the limitations of online campaigning. But there are individuals who worship the amazing power of virtual rallies without acknowledging the disadvantages of Internet activism. This is quite disturbing since it distorts the meaning of activism: activism that truly empowers the oppressed.

Virtual activism can discourage people from participating in collective actions. Today we have students and idealist young citizens who believe that they can change the world by adding causes on Facebook or if they sign online petitions. There is a new breed of activists who spend their productive time sitting in front of a computer. Instead of organizing communities, they build virtual communities.

Online activism minus the essential offline component is impressive and creative but politically impotent. It gives a false impression that change is possible by being aggressive and passionate only in the virtual world. It prevents the educated segment of the population from developing a genuine link with the working masses.

This kind of activism does not frighten the evildoers in society. Politicians in the Philippines don’t read blogs. They don’t open their e-mail. They hire people to handle their social media accounts. They can tolerate a virtual revolution.

Activism demands sacrifice. Struggling for change is difficult because its aim is to dismantle the exploitative structures of the status quo. Those who wield power would not easily surrender their hegemony. It is important for change crusaders to learn these “inconvenient truths” about activism.

Activists who prefer traditional modes of campaigning should not worry if they are perceived as uncool and unfashionable. Their priority should be to come up with a magic formula that effectively combines elements of online and offline activism.

Activists should not be asked how many members they recruited on Facebook or Friendster. They must be more concerned about the number of people they are able to recruit in the real world.

Activists must continue to use their mobile phones, mp3 players and laptops if they want their campaigns to succeed. But to achieve their long-term goals, activists must turn off their gadgets from time to time and concentrate on the rigorous task of talking to people about the need to support and join popular and even unpopular campaigns.

Activism in the 21st century features new action words like texting, retweeting, clicking, chatting and social networking. But 20th century action words are still more persuasive and powerful – like talking, organizing, marching, pushing and rallying.

From Saudi Arabia Corespondent Eman Al Nafjan…

Gender Apartheid is the best word to describe the situation in Saudi Arabia. I don’t believe there is any other place in the world where gender decides everything a person does on a daily basis and to the minutest details. To the outside world this manifests in the ban on women driving and the compulsory abaya. However it goes much deeper than that in that gender discrimination is institutionalized in every sector of the Saudi government.

The majority of government ministries are off limits to women, both as visitors and as employees. Women are assigned a side building that is usually in the back with a separate entrance and it’s usually cramped. Moreover, when a woman needs to get her own papers done, these women sections are only authorized to do the most routine and mechanical administration. As an example let me tell you about a close friend of mine; she happens to be a Saudi who was born in another country and as such carries dual nationality. She went to renew her other passport and the embassy noticed that there was a discrepancy between her Saudi passport date of birth and her birth certificate by a few days. They insisted that this discrepancy had to be corrected before they could issue her a new passport. So naturally she took her Saudi passport and her original birth certificate to the ministry of foreign affairs. Of course she didn’t go through the main door like the men but to a small building to the side, added like an afterthought. That’s bad but it can be tolerated since it’s basically an aesthetic issue. But what was really frustrating for my friend was that the women working inside told her they were powerless to help her. They told her that her husband, brother, or father has to go to the men’s section to get her passport birth date corrected.

Of course, she got upset because at the time she was separated from her husband, she does not have a brother and she didn’t want to bother her father with such a mundane errand.

This scenario is extremely common; Najla Barasain here gives an account of how pointless the women’s section is at the ministry of higher education. And I’ve personally visited the women’s section at the ministry of education and they too had no decision-making power. Neither did female heads of departments at the women’s sections of universities. They were there just for appearances sake. Any real decisions had to come through the men’s section.

This translates to the impossibility of Saudi women getting hired, transferred, starting a business and even properly quitting without the total support of a man. When I had to get some paperwork done, I resorted to hiring a stranger and giving him a cell phone and my file. He would go to the offices that I directed him to, call me and then hand the cell phone to the official behind the desk. I couldn’t call the officials at their office numbers because frankly they rarely answered. And so this guy I hired would go from one official to the next at my instructions like a remote controlled robot. All this because as a woman, I am prohibited from entering a government ministry.

There is little likelihood that this will change anytime soon. Shiekh Al Barrak recently issued a fatwa stating that those who call for the mixing of genders even in the workplace should be killed. The Fatwa led the government to censor the shiekh’s website, but that did not stop him. He just moved to another website.

Moreover 27 other fundamentalist shiekhs signed a petition in support of Al Barrack’s violent fatwa. Al Barack himself is the last living member of the traditional, misogynist eighties rat pack of sheikhdom. However he has a loyal following within the muttawas of Nejd. His call for the death of gender mixing people has been linked by some to the burning of a literary club tent in Al Jouf. Feelings run high when it comes to women’s rights issues in Saudi Arabia. For every Saudi willing to speak up for women’s rights, there is a Saudi willing to attempt murder to shut them up.

To read more about Saudi gender apartheid check a translation of Dr. Fawzia Al Bakr’s article here.

From Eman Al Nafjan…

If you read anything related to Saudi Arabia or have a conversation with someone living there, inevitably this remark comes up ”but change is coming soon”. Well from my perspective, it’s just not true. Short of an outright war or a western invasion, women will never get their rights. I remember a Bahraini friend of mine telling me how her grandfather respected her grandmother because he was influenced by the British. Sometimes the thought that we would actually be better off if we were colonized in the late 1800s and early 1900s like our neighbors creeps into my head.

The muttawa way of life, in which everything that brings a smile to your face is HARAM (prohibited), is integrated into the very heart of our society. Music, plays, festivals even when they are segregated are strongly discouraged. And the prohibition is only related to doing it in public. It is a fact that most Saudis do not practice what they preach. Get on any plane leaving the country and witness it for yourself. Abayas come off and men and women become much more relaxed. Women are pressured and brain-washed into living the way they do. But why do men live the way they do, when for many it is obvious that they would rather be more relaxed with their families and have their wives drive their own cars…etc.

International tourism was not affected by H1N1 or the economy in Saudi Arabia. Strangely enough, more and more Saudis are leaving the country each year for a vacation. I know one woman who actually took a loan from the bank just to treat herself and her family to a trip to France. Another woman in her sixties, never had a passport until two years ago and ever since all she talks about is where she’s going and where she’s been for the summer. Just a week ago, there was no traffic in Riyadh! And I could get an appointment at my favorite hairdresser on the same day! Usually it takes at least two weeks advance planning. Everyone was outside the country.

And then they come back to another year-long round of pretending that they agree that everything should be prohibited. I think that what goes through their heads is something in the vein of “well I can handle all this freedom because I’m a responsible person but my fellow citizens need to be treated like caged animals, otherwise they’ll go crazy”. By crazy they mean things like convert to another religion, openly announce their homosexuality, walk around in revealing clothes and/or promote someone that has no blood relation to them.

But these things have not happened in any of our surrounding countries. Why can’t they see that a little freedom does not mean Hollywood?!