Saudi Arabia Losing Control Over International Public Image

April '09 National Scene Magazine International Article

Ultra-Conservative, Religious Saudi Arabia Losing Control Over International Public Image With Attempts to Control Women


http://www.nationalscenemagazine.com/html/international.html


Written by: Karen Benardello


The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is facing new international criticism and outcry over its ultraconservative religious police and judiciary after a 75-year-old widow was sentenced on March 3 to 40 lashes and four months in jail for being in contact with two men who are not her close relatives.


Abdel Rahman al-Lahem, the lawyer for Khamisa Sawadi, the widow, told the Associated Press (AP) on March 9 that he would appeal the verdict, which also states that she will be deported after her sentence is finished. Sawadi, who has not yet started serving her jail time, is Syrian, but was living in the country because she was married to a Saudi.

Rahman al-Lahem would not provide any more details about the case, as Sawadi did not want to speak with the media. But the newspaper Al-Watan has stated that she met with two 24-year-old men last April as they were delivering five loaves of bread to her home in al-Chamil, a city north of Riyadh, the country’s capital.

Al-Watan identified one of the men as Fahd al-Anzi, a nephew of Sawadi’s late husband, and the other was his friend and business partner Hadiyan bin Zein. The two men were also arrested by the religious police, convicted and sentenced to lashes and prison.

The court decided to convict the three based on testimony from al-Anzi's father, who accused Sawadi of corruption. “Because she said she doesn’t have a husband and because she is not a Saudi, conviction of the defendants of illegal mingling has been confirmed,” the court verdict read.

This conviction was based on the country’s strict interpretation of Islam. Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow men and women who are not immediate relatives to mingle. But Sawadi tried to overturn her conviction by telling the court that she considered al-Anzi to be her son because she breast-fed him when he was a baby. The religion recognizes a degree of maternal relation with breast-feeding, even if a woman nurses a child who is not biologically hers. But the court denied her claim, saying she didn’t provide evidence of this maternal relation.

Journalist Bandar al-Ammar, who works for Al-Watan, wrote in a recent article that he reported on Sawadi’s case “so everybody knows to what degree we have reached.” Her conviction is the latest act in a string of recent harsh acts by the Saudi government. Sawadi case came a few weeks after King Abdullah fired the chief of the religious police and a cleric who condoned killing owners of TV networks that broadcast “immoral content.” The move was seen as part of an effort to weaken the hard-line Sunni Muslim establishment.

Complaints from Saudis about the religious police and courts overstepping their broad mandate and interfering in their citizens’ lives don’t come unfounded. The country doesn’t allow women to drive, and prohibits its citizens from playing of music, dancing and movies that are considered to violate religious and moral values. While everyone is entitled to their own religious and moral views, women, or any other group for that manner, should be oppressed or banned from enjoying life’s simple pleasures.