Shrouds

Warning: rant ahead. Children under 12 and those with sensitive eyes should probably just go to the next post. Go on ahead. It's a funny one. This one is not funny.

I've been meaning to write about this topic for some time. I couldn't do it while I was actually in KSA because doing so might have put me in jeopardy of being fired or even expelled from the country, and I've been diverted by other topics from some time.

But this article from the Guardian and its accompanying comments has prompted me to tap out a few thoughts.

I'd have to agree with the overall sentiment of the Guardian article, and many of the commenters, that the domestic abuse ad pictured in the article is hardly going to make a difference in Saudi Arabia. The abuse itself is widely sanctioned by the same religion giving men all the power. Please, readers, give me an example from history when those in power gave it up, in all or part, to make things more equal for their people.

When I first arrived in KSA, I was pretty appalled at the abayas and niqabs and heavy gloves and socks. They are explicitly designed to negate the reality of women as humans. The sight of those black-shrouded ghosts made me really angry. I'd want to say to them, sister, it doesn't have to be this way. You need to fight!

But time passed. I spent more time in the company of Saudis. I spent more time listening and watching. Instead of anger, I felt sad at the extent of the brainwashing and indoctrination. I felt sorry for those zeroed out women. I'd want to say, look what he has done to you, sister.

Eventually, I spent enough time listening and watching, and talking to overtly westernized Saudis, who turned out to be quite the opposite, but their westernized veneer allowed them to talk to infidels relatively easily, and I came to the conclusion that those women are architects of their own misery. Sure, the horrible, barely Bronze-age tenets at the base of Islam (and Christianity and Judaism, when you come down to it), derived from crazed desert nomadic tribes' heat-shimmering visions, that spend a lot of energy proscribing what one can or cannot eat, wear, say, do, fuck, kill, and to whom, in the end, the tenets themselves are not much more than historical curiosities unless one is willing to buy into the craziness. Then things get kind of serious.

And no, sorry, you can't cherry-pick your way out of this. You can't say, well this verse of the qu'ran or the bible says this happy, love-your-neighbor sort of thing, and isn't that nice? No. Because too much of that stuff is garbled, violent nonsense.

Sorry, back to the main point. That's where I completely lost any sympathy or empathy for fully veiled women. Some few, some very few, might be forced into it. Most are not. They like it that way, just like they don't want to drive (despite the uncomfortable yet apparently too easily dismissed theological situations that having an unrelated male driver puts them into). You will hear many fully veiled women say they find it "protecting" or "respectful" to wear the niqab yet they will in the same breath rail at the feral youth roaming streets and shops and malls harassing women. Who raised those young men? Who allows, even condones, this behavior of men?

Their mothers, their sisters, their grannies, their aunts, their neighbors. All of those women have abdicated responsibility for assuming any role as full and complete humans. Why should their sons and brothers and fathers act any differently when the women themselves fail to step up and say, hey, I am a human being. I deserve to be treated like a human being.

In my opinion, this abdication means they can't whine about the consequences. What's a black eye or a bruised wrist when you can walk around "protected"?