Wooo Hoooo! Saudi Women to Have Right To Vote!
I found this today on Huffpost World; hey four years is not such a long time compared to forever. Getting the vote makes it more and more illogical for them not to be driving . . . think about it. Does choosing national leaders take less brains than driving? Ummm. . . . well . . . (LOL)
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, considered a reformer by the standards of his own ultraconservative kingdom, decreed on Sunday that women will for the first time have the right to vote and run in local elections due in 2015.
It is a “Saudi Spring” of sorts.
For the nation’s women, it is a giant leap forward, though they remain unable to serve as Cabinet ministers, drive or travel abroad without permission from a male guardian.
Saudi women bear the brunt of their nation’s deeply conservative values, often finding themselves the target of the unwanted attention of the kingdom’s intrusive religious police, who enforce a rigid interpretation of Islamic Shariah law on the streets and public places like shopping malls and university campuses.
In itself, Sunday’s decision to give the women the right to vote and run in municipal elections may not be enough to satisfy the growing ambition of the kingdom’s women who, after years of lavish state spending on education and vocational training, significantly improved their standing but could not secure the same place in society as that of their male compatriots.
That women must wait four more years to exercise their newly acquired right to vote adds insult to injury since Sunday’s announcement was already a long time coming – and the next local elections are in fact scheduled for this Thursday.
“Why not tomorrow?” asked prominent Saudi feminist Wajeha al-Hawaidar. “I think the king doesn’t want to shake the country, but we look around us and we think it is a shame … when we are still pondering how to meet simple women’s rights.”
The announcement by King Abdullah came in an annual speech before his advisory assembly, or Shura Council. It was made after he consulted with the nation’s top religious clerics, whose advice carries great weight in the kingdom.
It is an attempt at “Saudi style” reform, moves that avoid antagonizing the powerful clergy and a conservative segment of the population. Additionally, it seems to be part of the king’s drive to insulate his vast, oil-rich country from the upheavals sweeping other Arab nations, with popular uprisings toppling regimes that once looked as secure as his own.
Fearing unrest at home, the king in March announced a staggering $93 billion package of incentives, jobs and services to ease the hardships experienced by some Saudis. In the meantime, he sent troops to neighbor and close ally Bahrain to help the tiny nation’s Sunni ruling family crush an uprising by majority Shiites pressing for equal rights and far-reaching reforms.
In contrast, King Abdullah in August withdrew the Saudi ambassador from Syria to protest President Bashar Assad’s brutal crackdown on a seven-month uprising that calls for his ouster and the establishment of a democratic government.
“We didn’t ask for politics, we asked for our basic rights. We demanded that we be treated as equal citizens and lift the male guardianship over us,” said Saudi activist Maha al-Qahtani, an Education Ministry employee who defied the ban on women driving earlier this year. “We have many problems that need to be addressed immediately.”
The United States, Saudi Arabia’s closest Western ally, praised the king’s move.
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said it recognized the “significant contributions” women have been making in Saudi Arabia. The move, he continued, would give Saudi women more ways to participate “in the decisions that affect their lives and communities.”
The king, in his own remarks, seemed to acknowledge that the Arab world’s season of change and the yearning for greater social freedoms by a large segment of Saudi society demanded decisive action.
“Balanced modernization, which falls within our Islamic values, is an important demand in an era where there is no place for defeatist or hesitant people,” he said.
“Muslim women in our Islamic history have demonstrated positions that expressed correct opinions and advice,” said the king.
Abdullah became the country’s de facto ruler in 1995 because of the illness of King Fahd and formally ascended to the throne upon Fahd’s death in August 2005.
The king on Sunday also announced that women would be appointed to the Shura Council, a currently all-male body established in 1993 to offer counsel on general policies in the kingdom and to debate economic and social development plans and agreements signed between the kingdom with other nations.
The question of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia is a touchy one. In a country where no social or political force is strong enough to affect change in women’s rights, it is up to the king to do it. Even then, the king must find consensus before he takes a step in that direction.
Prominent columnist Jamal Khashoggi said that giving women the right to vote in local elections and their inclusion in the Shura council means they will be part of the legislative and executive branches of the state. Winning the right to drive and travel without permission from male guardians can only be the next move.
“It will be odd that women who enjoy parliamentary immunity as members of the council are unable to drive their cars or travel without permission,” he said. “The climate is more suited for these changes now – the force of history, moral pressure and the changes taking place around us.”
___
Hendawi reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Maggie Michael contributed to this report from Cairo.
What Tiny Qatar Stands To Gain In Libya
Another fascinating discussion on National Public Radio, which covers subjects not covered by major national news sources.
Of course, anything having to do with Qatar is of interest to us, as we lived there for four years during a time of breathtaking and exhilarating change. It is astounding, and wonderful, to us, that Qatar defies the lethargy and inertia of the Gulf Countries, and has transformed itself into a major influence, in spite of its smaller size, and even smaller population of native Qataris. They have taken the huge influx of cash that came with the discovery of natural gas, and leveraged it into massive modernization, transformation, and influence on the international scene. It’s an amazing accomplishment.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host: The Libyan rebels received decisive air support from NATO. But there was another, less publicized, smaller-scale but equally remarkable foreign involvement in support of the uprising, the involvement of Qatar, Q-A-T-A-R.
Qatar is a peninsula, a little smaller than Connecticut. It juts north into the Persian Gulf. On the south, it borders Saudi Arabia. It is rich in oil and natural gas. Its population is only about 900,000. And while it is an Arab country, a monarchy ruled by the al-Thani family, the majority of its residents are non-Arabs, non-citizens from India and Pakistan. Qatar is also home to the TV channel Al Jazeera. It will host soccer’s World Cup and it was an important player in Libya.
Ibrahim Sharqieh is deputy director of the Brookings Doha Center. Doha is the capital of Qatar. And, Ibrahim, first, what did the Qataris do in support of the Libyan rebels?
Dr. IBRAHIM SHARQIEH: That Qataris’ support to the Libyan rebels has been politically, diplomatically and militarily. We had about five Qatari fighter jets. In Qatar, we had about the training of Libyan rebels. And Qatar also played an important role in developing an Arab League support through the military intervention in Libya, which this Arab League support actually has provided the umbrella for the NATO intervention and for the military intervention and provided the legitimacy that, for example, was missing in Iraq.
SIEGEL: Why? What are the motives behind Qatar’s involvement in Libya and some of its broader ambitions in the region?
SHARQIEH: Oh, there are many theories. The one that makes the most sense in my view is that Qatar is supporting the revolution for humanitarian reasons. And in addition to this, Qatar is working and supporting the revolution is they’re strictly with its vision for its role in the region and in the world.
SIEGEL: One thing we should note, though, in this year of the Arab Spring, one thing Qatar isn’t is it isn’t a democracy. It isn’t an elected parliamentary republic.
SHARQIEH: Well, there is very high level satisfaction of the people here in the country, of the political system and of its leadership. So there haven’t been – we haven’t seen any cause for change or any protests or any different types of complaints. So the system seems to work and we seem to have a stable country. That distance itself very far away from the protests that are happening in the region.
SIEGEL: How would you describe U.S.-Qatar relations?
SHARQIEH: We know it’s a strong relationship. Qatar hosts a military base, the largest in the region here, in Al Udeid. And this has been a sophisticated policy where Qatar managed to have a good relationship between the United States and other rivals in the region, like Iran. In order to protect yourself as a small, wealthy country, some sort of striking a balance is needed and Qatar has been more influential in this crisis and other regions in Benghazi.
Going back to Libya, when you go outside the offices of the National Transition Council, you see the American flag. You see the French flag. You see the British flag, and you see also the Qatari flag.
SIEGEL: Yes. Here’s a country that aspires to a very high profile in regional affairs, but it consists of fewer than a million people. And of them only about 350,000 I read are citizens. That doesn’t sound like a country that can really be a world player, you know? It just sounds too tiny.
SHARQIEH: Well, it is too tiny but, hey, we are living in an international system that you have the means to play it right and become an important player. Qatar has invested in the right political market by mediation. Qatar was successful in the mediating an agreement between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels. Prevented a civil war almost in Lebanon, brokered peace agreements between the Palestinians, Fatah and Hamas, and also intervened in the fall in Sudan.
So, Qatar has proved to me an important, major emerging power in the region and to play it right and position itself very well in the international scene.
SIEGEL: Well, Ibrahim Sharqieh, thank you very much for talking with us about Qatar.
SHARQIEH: My pleasure. Thank you for having me, Robert.
SIEGEL: Ibrahim Sharqieh is deputy director of the Brookings Doha Center. Doha is the capital city of Qatar.
Answered Prayer: Please Lord, Don’t Let it be a Muslim
In the aftermath of the horrific events in Norway, I was praying along with all my immigrant friends – “Please, Lord, don’t let it be a Muslim.” It wasn’t. Just another hater, this one has blue eyes and blonde hair and seems to be a Christian conservative. This one hates for his own reasons. It doesn’t matter much what those reasons are, does it, to the grieving families whose children were slaughtered, or the grieving nations whose peace is destroyed?
The 32-year-old Norwegian man who allegedly went on a shooting spree on the island of Utoya has been identified as Anders Behring Breivik, according to multiple reports.
The Daily Mail and Sky News were among those to report the suspect’s name. According to witnesses, the gunman was dressed as a police officer and gunned down young people as they ran for their lives at a youth camp.
Police said Friday evening that they’ve linked the youth camp shooting and Oslo bombing. Breivik is believed to have acted alone.
Norwegian TV2 reports that Breivik belongs to “right-wing circles” in Oslo. Swedish news site Expressen adds that he has been known to write to right-wing forums in Norway, is a self-described nationalist and has also written a number of posts critical of Islam.
A Twitter account for Breivik has surfaced, though it only has one post, this quote from philosopher John Stuart Mill: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests.” The tweet was posted on July 17.
On a Facebook account that Norwegian media outlets have attributed to Breivik, he describes himself as having Christian, conservative views. He says he enjoys hunting, the games World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2, and lives in Oslo. He also lists political analysis and stock analysis as interests.
Episcopal Reading for the Fourth of July
For those in a hurry, in addition to the daily readings in The Lectionary, there is a small booklet, Forward Day by Day, which prints a short reading for each day.
I love the reading for today:
Today’s Meditation
monday, july 4 independence day
Deuteronomy 10:17-21. For the Lord your God is…the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe…and who loves the strangers.
In the reading from Deuteronomy, Moses charges Israel to love the stranger, because the people of Israel were once strangers in Egypt. In Mark, Jesus entreats us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us because God is not partial. The sun rises on the just and the unjust.
It is easy for us to love friends and people like ourselves. Christians are called to greater challenge: to create a community in which we love the stranger and pray for the one who wants to do us harm.
I remember standing on the Lake Erie shore and reading that during the War of 1812 soldiers died there so that the lake would not belong to the British. The British were the bad guys. A little over a hundred years later, the United States fought two World Wars on the side of Great Britain. The British were good guys. In the intervening years, each country learned to see the other not as evil strangers, but as allies with common interests.
As we give thanks for our country, let us accept the challenge to create a community that includes those who might be our enemies, the people who today don’t seem to be one with us. Our perspective can change.
PRAY for the Diocese of Ottawa (Ontario, Canada)
Ps 145 * 145:1-9; Hebrews 11:8-16; Matthew 5:43-48
Kuwait Tweeters to Face Trial
Kuwait makes AOL News: Huffington Post today, as two guys are arrested over Tweets offensive to royals:
Kuwait To Try Nasser Abul And Lawrence al-Rashidi Over Twitter Posts
KUWAIT (Reuters) – Kuwait will put on trial two citizens for criticizing Gulf Arab ruling families on social media site Twitter, a security official said on Monday.
Nasser Abul, a Kuwaiti Shi’ite Muslim, was arrested for posting criticisms of the Sunni Muslim ruling families in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and Lawrence al-Rashidi posted defamatory comments of Kuwait’s emir, he said.
He said both would remain in detention for two more weeks before a hearing is scheduled, where they will likely face charges of harming the Gulf Arab state’s interests and defaming the country’s ruler after being arrested earlier in June.
Democracy activists have used social media such as Facebook and Twitter to debate, organize and share information in Bahrain, where the kingdom’s Sunni rulers crushed a protest movement in March led mostly by the country’s Shi’ite majority.
Bahrain called in troops from Sunni-led neighbors such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to enforce its crackdown. OPEC member Kuwait, which has a Shi’ite minority, sent naval forces.
Bahrain questioned a rights activist in April for publishing an image which appeared to show signs of torture on a man who died in detention during the unrest. It is not clear if the case will be brought to court.
Gulf Arab states, run by closely-allied ruling families, are trying to prevent protest movements that brought down Egyptian and Tunisian leaders earlier this year from taking off in their patch.
(Reporting by Eman Goma; editing by Mark Heinrich)
Freedom Greater Factor than Wealth in Happiness
Fascinating study, I found it today on AOL Health News
Freedom More Important to Happiness Than Wealth, Study Finds
Personal independence, autonomy trump money in data from more than 60 countries.
SUNDAY, June 19 (HealthDay News) — Personal independence and freedom are more important to people’s well-being than wealth, a new study concludes.
Researchers at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand analyzed the findings of three studies that included a total of more than 420,000 people from 63 countries and spanned nearly 40 years.
Their key finding: “Money leads to autonomy, but it does not add to well-being or happiness.”
The studies looked at data from three different psychological tests familiar to therapists:
The General Health Questionnaire, which measures distress in terms of anxiety and insomnia, social problems, severe depression and physical symptoms of mental distress, such as unexplained headaches and stomach aches.
The Spielberger anxiety inventory, which evaluates how anxious respondents feel at a particular moment.
The Maslach Burnout Inventory, which screens for emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and lack of personal accomplishment.
The analysis revealed “a very consistent and robust finding that societal values of [freedom and autonomy] were the best predictors of well-being,” wrote psychologists Ronald Fischer and Diana Boer in an American Psychological Association release.
“Furthermore, if wealth was a significant predictor alone, this effect disappeared when individualism was entered,” they added.
“Our findings provide insight into well-being at the societal level,” the researchers concluded.
The study appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Thing Around Your Neck
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has compiled a series of elegant vignettes in her most recent book, The Thing Around Your Neck. I had just read Half of a Yellow Sun, and was still wallowing in stunned admiration, when I heard an interview with the author on BBC, and learned she had written this book, The Thing Around Your Neck.
I loved Half of a Yellow Sun. I loved Purple Hibiscus. I felt I began to understand just a little bit about life in transitional Nigeria, with all the social and political forces blowing to and fro, straining the very fabric of nationhood.
In The Thing Around Your Neck, something else happens. It shares with Cutting for Stone and other books I like the impressions of those who come to live in the USA for the first time.
“Would that the wee wee giftie gi’e us, To see ourselves as others see us . . . ”
I’ve had a lot of experience going to live in foreign countries. One of the things I learned is that most of what I learn the first couple years isn’t much. You learn a lot of things wrong. You filter everything through your own cultural biases; you judge, you interpret, you try to make sense of things that just seem wrong.
I love to watch Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s characters do this in reverse, come to America and make judgements based on their own cultural expectations. I love to see us through these eyes.
Once, many many years ago, we entertained a Nigerian in our home, and when we served dinner, steaks, he looked at his plate and said “This would feed my family for a week.” We kind of laughed. We kind of thought he was exaggerating, or even kidding. We just didn’t know. We had never seen anyone truly hungry, we had always lived in this land of plenty. We had no idea what we didn’t know. We saw only what we knew.
Each story is a gem. Each treats the expat experience, coming here, or the reverse, coming to America and then going back and seeing Nigeria through eyes which have changed.
One story I had read before, in the New Yorker magazine and loved reading again, The Headstrong Historian. It starts with a smart woman, weaving her way among the ways of her people, whose husband’s family wants her husband to take another wife. He doesn’t want to. These two chose each other, and managed to live their lives together as best they could, by their own standards. Her son disappoints her, but her granddaughter – she sees her husband’s brave, courageous spirit in the eyes of her little grand daughter. You’ll have to read the story to find out the rest.
Other stories have to do with newlyweds, with students, with love and marriage and affairs – the full spectrum of human experience, through Nigerian expat eyes. There are settings common from all three books, the college campus at Nsukka, a prison outside of town, small villages outside the city. If you read all her books, you recognize place: “Aha! I’ve been her before, in Purple Hibiscus!” You learn how to bribe the guards so you can bring in food for your imprisoned family member, you learn to keep your eyes down to show respect, you learn how Nigeria smells when the rains come, and how dry and dusty it gets during the harmattan.
I’m just sorry there isn’t another book by this author – yet – that I can read!
I guess these books that I love deal with a theme dear to my heart – that we are culturally blind to so many things, and that as human beings we are more alike than we are different. Short of packing up all our lives and our assumptions and moving to many different countries, the best we can hope for in learning different ways of thinking is for books like these by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which show us how differently we perceive things, depending on our cultures, and how alike we are in the things that we feel, as human beings.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Purple Hibiscus
A couple of years ago, when we had a great book club in Kuwait, I read Half of a Yellow Sun, by this author, and I was blown away. Some books you just read for entertainment, and some books have such a strong, compelling voice that it comes back to you, again and again, and you think about it for a long time.
So when Amazon.com recommended Purple Hibiscus, I bought it, along with The Thing Around Your Neck. Purple Hibiscus is the author’s first book, and The Thing Around Your Neck is her most recent. In 2009, I found an interview with her online; you can watch it by clicking here: An Interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She is an enormously talented author.
When I read Half of a Yellow Sun, I became Igbo, growing up in Nigeria. While that story was told through many eyes, I was able to be a boy from the bush brought to the college campus to be a houseboy, I got to be a wife, her sister, her professor husband. We experienced the Biafran succession, the insanity of several regime changes in Nigeria, the total fog and waste of war, through the eyes of the Biafrans.
Reading Purple Hibiscus was a little different; the story is told through the eyes of a girl, Kambili, who lives in a very controlled environment. We know from the very beginning that things are not right in her wealthy, beautiful world. Her father and mother love her, take good care of her, feed her, clothe her – and that is just a part of a bigger picture. Her father has an idea of the way things should be; he attained his position and wealth through his education by the Catholic priests and he has a rigid idea of how everything must be done. Vary from his strictures, and you get beaten, or scalded, or you little finger is broken and disfigured.
Part of what makes this book so compelling is that while the environment is Nigeria, and, to us, exotic, the climate of abuse is the same everywhere. It’s a dirty little secret, even in the wealthiest of families, you keep your mouth shut to stay alive, and to protect your family’s image. Abuse is no stranger to rich or poor families, and can only stay alive because people stay silent.
Kambili, fifteen when we meet her, lives a tiny, small, scared life, following the weekly schedules her father prints out for her and her brother and posts over her desk. She hears her mother beaten over the smallest failure, imagined or real. Her mother miscarries twice due to these beatings, and her father tenderly cares for the mother whose miscarriage his beatings caused. It is crazy-world. Kambeli and her brother are expected to take first in every class; if they do not, they, too, pay a severe penalty.
Just as the political climate in Nigeria starts to tremble and fall apart, so, too, does Kambili’s life, and in the falling apart, comes new ways of doing things, new perspectives, new risks and even learning to run, to laugh, to be ‘normal’ as other children are. She is blessed to have an aunt at the university, no where near so wealthy as her family but able to cajole her father into letting the children visit with her. The aunt, Ifeoma, laughs, and encourages her children to challenge other’s opinions respectfully, and who grows the very rare Purple Hibiscus. Her heart aches for Kambili and her brother, and she tries to give them space to figure things out for themselves, and to chose what they want for themselves.
It is a scary time in Nigeria, a time when men can come to the door and take someone away, and you don’t know if you will ever see them again, or how damaged they will be if they return. Kambili’s own life is full of a similar terror, but the terror is inflicted by someone who she loves, and who loves her.
I love the soul of an author who can write a book like this, a book that makes me feel like in another life I was a Nigerian. I can’t begin to think I know much about Nigeria now, but having read three books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I have the broad outlines of the divisions which traumatize and fracture Nigeria to this day. Even better, I understand how very different the cultural expectations are from our own, and how very similar we are as human beings.
This is a great read. It is inspirational. You might even learn something. You can find it on Amazon.com.
Doha Debates and Where Are You From?
The Baked Salmon Dijon for last night’s dinner took a little longer to cook because Joe Patti’s cuts the salmon steaks so thick (we cook two, split one and freeze the other for another night), so while I was waiting, I flipped around and found WSRE’s Doha Debate coverage.
Who knew?
I didn’t know I could still watch the debates in Pensacola! This one was about whether or not Egypt should postpone elections in the interest of forming a more representative democracy. The vote was 84% in favor; the two young supporters carried the house. 🙂 This was the March debate and you can hear the entire 48 minutes by clicking here.
The winning female debater used a slogan I had not heard, but I love, because it is graphic and memorable – “we do not want a fast-food democracy that brings only indigestion.” The younger debaters want to scrap the entire constitution and re-write it, claiming the current structure needs to be thoroughly revised in order for democracy to have a chance of success.
I love it that these issues have a forum for debate in Doha.
Following the debate was a cringe-worthy video about asking people where they are from. His point was that when he is asked where he is from, and he answers ‘The Bronx,’ people say “No, where are you REALLY from?’ and the implication is racist. He says it is the same as saying that his color is darker, therefore he is not like us, so he must not be from around here.
I’ve asked that question. Never meant it to be insulting, but I will stop now. Or I will only ask those with a slight accent, maybe. Wherever we have lived, we have been asked that question – but then, in Kuwait and Qatar, most of the work force is not Qattari or Kuwaiti. Even in Germany, however, where we might look a lot like them, we are asked where we are from. It used to be a courteous way of showing interest, or initiating a conversation.
One time in Doha, a local man asked me about my breeding, LOL. I told him I was a product of the American melting pot, and from the earliest settlers to the latest, my family includes just about a little of everything. We were at the veterinarian’s office, and I knew the purity of his dog’s blood lines mattered, and probably his own, but I also felt a little insulted, and I haven’t forgotten it. Doesn’t science teach us that diversity in blood lines is a good thing?
We are in the middle of a heat spell in Pensacola, early this year, and because we haven’t gotten anywhere near the normal rainfall, there are also wildfires. The firefighters are struggling to put out the fires, and also fighting heat exhaustion. AdventureMan is out watering all our new plantings, and our tomatoes, every morning, God bless him, because when the temperatures go high, I just want to stay inside.
The Minority Prayer
I listen to National Public Radio in my car and in my project room. I finally figured out how to stream WUWF, my local station. Until today, unless I wanted to use my wind-up radio, I had to stream KUOW in Seattle, or NPR which I like because it has so much BBC.
I am really delighted to figure out how to stream WUWF, because it has a lot of local news and events I might miss streaming one of the other stations, and I also like hearing who the sponsors are, so I can tell them how much I enjoy National Public Radio.
So today I am listening to Talk of the Nations, a segment on Pakistani-Americans, and this particularly articulate young lawyer mentions ‘the Minority Prayer.
Do you know what that is? I didn’t. But I laughed when he explained it, because we have prayed it so often living overseas . . .
He was talking about when attending a Muslim-American Lawyers National meeting, and how the buzz spread that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, and how they all sent up a quick minority prayer – “Please, Lord, don’t let it be Pakistan where he was found” – and of course, it was Pakistan. He was very wry, and I enjoyed listening to what he had to say. At the same time, I was grinning. I cannot count the number of times we have heard rumors – in Germany, in Kuwait, in Qatar, in Tunisia, in Jordan – and prayed . . . “Please Lord, don’t let it be the USA who did this . . . ”
It’s very much an expat’s prayer.
If you want to listen to the interview yourself, you can find it here.
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